Talking to AI Blew My Mind

When was the last time you had a real aha moment? The kind where your mind just unlocks. Maybe you watched The Lord of the Rings when you were young, came back to it years later after really knowing the Bible and being a bit older, and thought, "Oh, this Tolkien guy really knew what he was talking about." That type of moment. Now, I see any LOTR clip on Instagram and immediately stop scrolling to get inspired.

I had one recently with Claude.

I have been trying to walk more lately. I still go on runs, but way less. On a recent day off, I set out for a walk and unintentionally started chewing on a work problem in my mind. Some lingering thoughts from a meeting the day before. It was a simple but common one. We had been talking about too many announcements/ads during our worship service and trying to figure out how to filter what actually makes the cut.

Here is some context about me. I was born in the late 80s. When I really want to work, I have to sit at my computer with all eight fingers on the keyboard, ready to go. That is how I was trained, and that is how I shift into overdrive. I use Claude on my phone for quick questions all the time, but when I really lock in with AI, I am at my desk. I even use a second computer so one device runs Claude and the other is for email and Chrome browsing. My phone cannot compete with this setup.

So on this walk, the audiobook I was trying to listen to was losing me because this work problem was taking over. I thought, you know what, I am going to turn on audio mode in the Claude app and just talk to it. I started explaining the problem out loud, going back and forth as if I were talking to a friend. Then I asked if it could build a document to help our church decide what should be in our worship service and what should not, and it started generating PDFs right there.

I honestly did not expect much. I am not used to being productive on my phone. But there I was, walking on a trail, watching it generate a one-page PDF tool. I turned my phone sideways, read through it, and said, "Okay, can you revise this?" Over a 40-minute walk, I went through about ten versions. By the time I got home, it was 95 percent of what I needed. All of it done by voice, on my phone, while burning some extra calories.

I was blown away. AI is going to unlock a whole other mode of working, one that a child of the 80s like me is not wired for. I am used to waiting until I reach my laptop to shift into a higher gear. But now I can just talk. It generates. I edit on the fly without ever touching a keyboard.

It made me wonder why I do not do this more, and the honest answer is that it is simply unfamiliar. Even when I am driving, I do not fully trust speech-to-text. But I have watched this shift happen with my kids. They ask our Google Home speakers questions without thinking twice and often use voice with AI while doing homework. I thought talking to your phone out loud was just something old people do in public spaces. Audio/voice is a native experience to younger generations, and I am starting to wonder how quickly it becomes the default for the rest of us. Because connecting audio with AI is so polished and so powerful. It is a simple thing, but a profound one, because it unlocks more opportunities to continue to work. To be clear, I still prefer the home row typing approach.

Not surprisingly, OpenAI released a new version of ChatGPT Voice called GPT Live, and the whole pitch is that talking to AI should feel like a real conversation. It listens and speaks at the same time, drops in a "mhmm" so you know it is following, and stays quiet when you pause to think. Their launch video is just people chatting with it like a friend, one woman working through a knitting problem for her grandson while she talks. When the biggest players are pouring this much into making voice feel natural, that tells you something. Voice is not a gimmick. It is where a lot of this is heading.

So here is my encouragement. If you have never tried to create something while walking, give it a shot. It is one thing to type. It is another to just say what is in your head. There are ideas you would speak out loud that you would never take the time to type out, and that is a different kind of creative mode, just saying it naturally.

Mess around with it. It is really powerful. And if you have any tips or tricks, let me know. And if you see me walking down the street talking to myself, well, hopefully I do not look too crazy.