AI Will Amplify You, Not Replace You

Diana Lee joins Richard Lowe (The Writing King) on Leaders and Their Stories for a practical, grounded conversation about using AI as a partner rather than a threat.

Diana helps people leverage AI through a library of micro tools that act as thought partners, teaching them to structure engagements, give deep context, and let AI amplify what makes them human instead of replacing it.

Diana Lee helps individuals, organizations, and visionaries leverage AI to amplify their work. She has built a collection of around 80 micro tools that act as thought partners for business owners and entrepreneurs.

For more conversations like this one, see the Leaders Hub.

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Full transcript of the interview follows.

Richard Lowe: Hello and welcome to the Leaders and Their Stories podcast. I am Richard Lowe, the writing king and ghost writing guru. I’m here with Diana Lee and she’s going to tell us all about AI because she’s an expert. So Diana, why don’t you take it away?

How Diana Uses and Teaches AI

Diana Lee: Thank you. Well, I don’t really call myself an expert, but I’m Diana. I guess I will start off by saying how I use AI and I support others. I help folks, organizations, visionaries leverage AI to turn it into a strategic thought partner while maintaining authenticity in their voice and I’ve been using it myself.

I’ve completely redesigned my life with it and created a business model that aligns with the way that I want to work and fits into my lifestyle as a mom with two kids and running a business. So that’s what I do with AI.

Richard: Interesting, interesting. So how do you help your clients?

Micro Tools as Thought Partners

Diana: I have created a collection of micro tools that act as support to business owners and entrepreneurs that act as thought partners. And it allows them to take the information on the internet and make it very tailored and custom and usable to them. So it allows them to scale without.

Increasing overhead, having to, if you don’t have resources at a point, being able to turn chat GPT into an expert in something and have that strong starting point to be able to start implementing.

Structuring an Engagement With ChatGPT

Diana: Okay. For example, I usually start off with in my workshops and training it’s showing people how to structure an engagement with chat GPT. It’s there’s a lot of focus on making AI very technical thing, calling it prompt engineering. And there is a huge pocket of population that is very terrified of anything that is related to technology.

So if you start framing it as a way, it’s something as simple as just holding a conversation with a tool and you just show them how to structure that interaction, it becomes very natural. So for example, I mentioned earlier that I’m dabbling with the idea of starting a podcast on my own.

I’ve created a little micro tool that will allow startups, beginners who have no idea what it did, what, what is entailed and what podcasting entails, especially as something that’s monetizable to get that guidance from Chachi BT. And if you were to just create a prompt, it’s following my framework.

HIV, H as your hero. I is the impact you want to make via the variables, everything, the context, the hero needs to know E and asking for an execution implementation plan. It becomes very natural to start that conversation and then chat GPT becomes something that helps support you every step of the way to get that done.

So that would look like for me, Hey, chat GPT, I want you to act as an expert in podcast, podcasting and strategy. And you can turn this expert into design it in a way that It’s your ideal podcasting expert. It’s if you follow people that you really like, you can say, I want you to be trained by this person and have the knowledge of this person, have this kind of personality type.

The impact you want to make the eye piece is I want to reach. I want to make AI technology very accessible and natural for everyday people to use, even without a technical background. So they can apply it beyond just business use cases, but in everyday applications. I use it for meal planning.

I take a picture of what’s in my fridge and say, Hey, this is what I have. I have this protein. Help me create a plan to run it. It’s that’s giving it a starting point and the end point and helping you bridge that gap. The variables piece is giving it the context that it needs to know about you, as you would if you were to work with an actual consultant or an advisor.

and just saying, hey, this is everything that you need to know about me. This is my background. This is what I’ve tried. This is what I failed. And execution stuff. If you don’t know where to even start, just ask me, chat GPT, to help you create a plan to start doing this.

AI as a Digital Assistant, Not a Ghostwriter

Richard: Right. Right. I use it as a digital assistant, so it doesn’t write for me and I’ll do things like, okay, here’s, here’s a chapter I just wrote for a client. want you to pretend like you’re a beta reader. want you to read through it and tell me what you think is right about it and what’s wrong about it.

It comes back and says, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. know, you’re it. And then I take that into account or, recently I spent like, four or five hours putting in all the information about my lifestyle, my medical history, tests, everything. It took a while. It was a lot of data.

And then said, okay, I want you to tell me what’s going to happen to me over the next 20 years if I change nothing. And it came back with a pretty scary scenario. And I said, okay, so now what do I, what I need to do to fix that?

It said exercise and eat right. It’s simple terms. gave me some more than that. That’s because chat should be, he tends to be a little chatty and said, Great. So I don’t want to have a heart attack in a few years. So I think I’ll take your advice and, been putting that in and it was very helpful.

Or, with, my marketing, I put in my entire marketing plan. Again, it took quite a while because I just explained it and then got answers and explained it more and stuff. And said, okay, why isn’t my marketing working as well as I think it should be? my sales and marketing and it said, well, you’re not getting qualified leads.

You’re getting leads, but they’re not qualified. So how do you, and then I said, well, how do I do that? And it came up with a plan. was something that I probably would have had to pay thousands and thousands of dollars for a person for. I came up with a plan using simple English prompts to help me.

And now I’m implementing both of those plans. Life is. tumultuous because I definitely want to eat more sweets and stuff, but diabetics shouldn’t. I do like my feet and my eyes. So I’m definitely, you know, changing my diet and changing my marketing and, and I’ll do that for other parts of my life.

I’m, I even started, okay, here’s my spiritual views, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. What do I need to do to be closer to God? And it said, do this and this and this and this. Okay. I didn’t actually think that you were going to give me an answer there.

And it did. And it’s fascinating what you can do with it. But you have to remember that it lies sometimes.

Why AI Will Amplify You, Not Replace You

Diana: It’s this fear of it replacing people, that it’s just going to autonomously run on its own and just create content and put it out there. It’s truly, if you use it in a way to amplify you in the way that you’re using it, I think it’s the self-awareness piece that’s necessary to just be open to hearing how things can be done better. And I think that’s the piece that many struggle with.

Richard: can be done better.

Diana: where with humans being so open and vulnerable to be saying like, am stuck in this area, especially if you are seen as a leader or a C level expect, you have to be the person that knows it all and have the answers. think they struggle with, a lot of folks struggle with saying, I need help. I am struggling with all of this. I have so much on my plate. It’s…

A Partner That Does Not Judge

Diana: Turning to AI who doesn’t judge you, who doesn’t make any judgments and being able to be so transparent with what you are struggling with and asking it to help you bridge that gap. And I think that is so powerful in just growing because entrepreneurship is a very spiritual journey.

It’s more than a business plan. Yeah. Even screenshots for visual branding. You can go to, if you have a website that you absolutely love, it’s taking a screenshot of it and uploading it to CatchyBT and asking it to be an expert in visual design and having it tell you in words what the look and feel of it is.

And even just extracting the colors so that you can pass this information off to somebody who can actually bring this to life for you. Yeah.

A Library of Eighty Micro Tools

Diana: Yes, I have this collection. have a collection of about 80 micro tools I’ve built out in the last year and a half where I have one that has acts as an expert in LinkedIn profile optimization and is a personal branding expert where all you need to do is based on your LinkedIn profile.

just download that PDF, which turns it into a resume, upload it and just simply say, this is my baseline. Please recommend. how to optimize this. I’m happy to share this with you.

Richard: Okay, that’d be awesome. Yeah, if you could send that to me, that would be awesome. Definitely need to work on my LinkedIn. I think it’s pretty good, but it certainly could be improved as could everything. So it’s awesome having these tools. And now if I took a picture of my refrigerator and said, make a meal plan, it would be an empty refrigerator because I’m a bachelor, you know, typical.

There’s some cheese in there and some milk and that’s about it. And maybe some eggs and it would come up with some very boring recipes, but I could say what do need to buy to make good stuff? With my dietary restrictions and my taste restrictions and preferences.

Diana: Yeah. with your dietary restrictions and whatever color. Yes. Preferences, your cuisine preferences, making it so specific to you that you only buy what you need to buy. And it’s significant cost savings too. And you have exactly what you need to buy at the grocery store.

Everyday Uses, From Meals to Health

Richard: savings too. I even did something like my cat has a habit of throwing up and I said, why is my cat throwing up? And it gave me a bunch of answers. know, it could be this, could be that, could be this. So I gave it more parameters. And finally, after about, it took about two hours, we narrowed it down to the food was going bad.

So I went and bought new food and cat doesn’t throw up anymore. So two hours work, didn’t have to hire a vet. Didn’t have to rush to the vet and find out why it wasn’t anything bad. It was just, she’s eating food that eventually after you open it, goes bad.

Diana: Yeah. My daughter had a five, a fever today this morning and she’s at dad’s house. And naturally as a mom, I freak out. I’m like, do we have to take her in? What do we do? So I talked to chat GPT and I’m is this considered an emergency?

And even as a mom and the, and the concerns that I have, the worrying that I do, helps me just kind of placate some of those concerns and it lessens my anxiety just in general.

Richard: Of course. even as. Unless it tells you that it is an emergency.

Diana: Then I know that I’m not overreacting and I would act. Yeah.

Richard: Right. Yeah. Unless it was lying.

Diana: Unless it was lying, but.

Remember It Hallucinates

Richard: And that is a big thing, it’s called hallucinations. It does lie. And you have to use your brain and go, like I did with the meal planning and stuff and the diet and exercise thing, you know, I can’t do that, right? I have to do this a different way and use my brain, engage brain.

Getting Past Quick Fixes

Diana: Yes, 100%. It’s getting away from, think just generally folks are still using it for really quick fixes. It’s around only perpetuating the fear of AI being a replacement, right? It’s create a blog for me, create an email for me and make it more professional. Create a post for me for Instagram without having, but if you step back a bit and do it from a more strategic.

standpoint, the way that you’re doing it as a thought partner, then you can just get it to a point where you have a list of blog titles and you have a starting point and ideas to start generating plans or even content. Having a plan on the content that you put out and being intentional about the content pillars that you create so that it resonates and nurtures and connects with your ideal clients online so that you don’t always have to be online all the time and your content does that for you and being very purposeful about what you put out.

And then having that plan and passing it off to a VA so you’re not stuck in the work doing it.

Richard: Nevermind. So anyway, yeah, that’s that’s important that you, you have to ask is garbage in garbage out, you have to ask good questions and give a good information or it’s going to give you bad answers or bad information. That’s very important. There’s a there’s a movie you probably never watched because it’s back in the 70s.

It’s called Colossus the Colossus the Forbin project. And it has this huge AI that’s the first one that’s built Inside about they literally carve out a whole mountain put the AI on there and it’s hilarious looking at it from now because this is an AI built with vacuum tubes and paper tape and all those kind of things and magnetic tape literally, but they also force fields and ray guns so and teletypes, you know old 300 baud teletypes and it’s a Very interesting movie to watch you should hunt it down.

It’s way out of print, but you find on eBay Colossus the forebend project And it’s about, it’s what Terminator is based on. Or I think it Terminator is based on, but it’s about this AI that takes over the world. And it was intended to control US missile systems and then winds up using them. And fascinating book, fascinating book and fascinating movie. You do have to remember that it’s really dated, but…

Diana: But it’s, it’s still, that narrative still holds true in the last two years since open AI chat GPT has been available to the public in the capacity that it is where anyone can really just figure anything out with chat GPT now, right? It’s for free. It’s a free account.

As long as you know how to use it. yeah, I love the $20 account for those micro tools that you can create those GPTs.

Richard: Anyone can really. I use the $20 account, but yeah, same thing. I like it because it just doesn’t have any limits.

Diana: Yes, but they changed that my custom GPTs I have to I think I have to upgrade because they put a limit on it and the next jump up is now 200 a month

Richard: Yeah, there are some things that they push up. haven’t, it hasn’t affected me. but I’m not sure what they pushed up of the, I think the, the deep research stuff, if you want to do very much of that, you have to go up to the next level. I tried deep research and it didn’t actually work very well for me. I didn’t find it very useful.

Diana: Okay. Yeah, that’s huge problem. I just don’t use it that way. I use it more of as like a brainstorming partner and a creative partner. I brain dump into it and just help them ask it to put words to how I feel and put labels to my emotions. And I guess I do do research, but a lot of it is me driving it. Yeah.

Richard: Me too. Me too. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I, I’ve learned not to depend on it for research. And of course I can just put it in Google and, or I don’t use Google very much anymore. Cause it’s big brother. use, Braves, Brave search, which is based on Bing and it’s got, it’s got an AI and it’s actually pretty good.

And it gives you the AI answers. And I found that that works better than Google because I don’t get all the stupid ads. Brave doesn’t have much advertising and they took out.

Diana: same. Yep.

Richard: In Chrome and anything based on Chrome, all of their ad blockers are going away. You can’t do them anymore. So you’re to get that. There’s a, amount of ads that’s in Chrome now is disgusting. It’s all ads.

Diana: feel a certain way about Google right now and just how impressionable they are by political pressure. Yeah, it’s, I’ve lost a lot of respect recently.

Richard: For probably all of the big companies, I would say Google is the worst. Apple’s very closed and very close minded and very close. And although they are, think that the richest are pretty close. I prefer Microsoft. find them to be more, I mean, a lot of people hate Microsoft, but I like Microsoft.

Basically I’m the person responsible for changing Trader Joe’s from Apple to Microsoft back when jobs left for the first time and came back.

Diana: Yeah.

Richard: Boy, the Max went to crap. They just went awful during that two or four year period where he was gone. They were terrible.

Diana: lost the visionary, you lost the person that embodies the whole company’s essence.

Richard: Right. Right, so I switched the solar to Windows and it was much better, much better. Although Windows NT was pretty buggy when it first came out.

Diana: It gives me, I just feel a certain way about it because it brings me back to the days when I was working in a government space and we use Microsoft. So just in my body, I still feel a little bit of trauma around it. I feel a lot more free to come outside of that ecosystem.

Richard: I understand totally understand totally. Bye. I’ve been using Windows since it was Windows 1.1. used it back when, you know, I’m so used to it that Mac is totally foreign to me. And that’s probably the big reason why I use Apple. That and it’s twice as expensive as anything else. And it’s closed. It’s closed environment. Microsoft’s more open.

Diana: It’s. For me, Apple is very intuitive, the way that it just connects my phone to my iPad, to my laptop, the continuity of information, it’s just so easy. Yeah. Yeah.

Richard: Yeah, that’s because it’s a environment. They can control that. Yeah, but AI, I gather that Alexa is going to put AI in there pretty soon and they’re going to charge for it. I’m sure. And I won’t be doing that. I’ve never been impressed with Alexa. I use it simply to ask, wake me up and is it raining? And that’s about it.

Diana: I’m sure. Yes, and music while I’m in the kitchen. have these little little docs throughout my house, but it also feels really invasive sometimes. And I don’t know, know, I just know that it’s always listening.

Richard: Yeah. Oh, I’ll say something that sounds like it and I’m surprised it didn’t answer when I said a word. And it’ll say, hey, what do you want? I’m like, just shut up. Just be quiet. And probably the only time you can tell a woman, because I think of Alexa as a woman, to shut up without getting creamed.

Diana: Yes. You don’t know what you’re talking about, Alexa.

Richard: Exactly, exactly. And you know, could, as a man, know, you go tell a woman that

Diana: Or the calm downs, right? Alexa, calm down. She responded. She’s like, okay, I’ll stay calm.

Richard: Yes, that’s definitely not something you want to say when you’re married. Alexa you’re overreacting. Yeah, definitely. I was married and those were those phrases that you don’t say to your wife. If you want to be sleeping, not in the doghouse.

Diana: are you trying to get murdered, richard? If you were to wake up alive, you don’t say that.

Richard: Exactly. Exactly. I learned that the hard way. And she was, she was from Guatemala and had the Latin temper. So, boy.

Diana: No need to elaborate.

Richard: Wolverine class, Yeah. Yeah. Funny, funny story. We, we both took a liking to WWE at the time. This is in the nineties and certain wrestlers and things. And we would both stand around screaming at the wrestlers when we were, especially it was a great way to let off steam.

Um, and I look back, you know, the rest of those wrestling things are pretty stupid, but they’re still entertaining. Especially back then, cause they were, they, they were rated R instead of now they’re rated like G.

Diana: It’s funny. in the costumes.

Richard: The costumes were great. The acts were funny. And anyway, that was a big, big diversion from the subject.

Diana: No, that’s good. I mean, that’s the point of this, right? Just go with the flow.

Richard: Go with the flow. That’s the way I like these to work. Yeah. You know, I haven’t tried it. I’ve tried it. I art art. I use Leonardo and it works. It’s still difficult to tell exactly what you want. It’s just, it’s got this language and it’s one thing that I dislike about it is I’ll okay, I want, I want a picture of a bird that’s, you know, bluebird.

I’ll give it all those prompts and it’ll come up with a bluebird. Well, that’s not quite right. Can you change this?

Diana: same.

Richard: And it comes up with something totally different. It’s like, hello, I wanted you to, I liked the one you did. I just want you to change it.

Diana: Have you tried mid journey yet? I really like mid journey to create series of images that have the same look and feel. There’s a little bit of a learning curve, but this is how I created a tool in chat. GPT that it will craft a prompt for mid journey so that now I can copy and paste it into there and get the series. I’ll share that with you. I’m happy to share that with you. huh.

Richard: I am not. Midjourn. midjourney.ai

Diana: I don’t know if it’s AI, just Google mid journey and I think it’s.com. But like I said, there’s a little bit of a learning curve, but you have a lot more control over the imagery. I’m not sure how, where they’re at with the texting, the text on the, on the images. Like Dolly within Cathy PT is still a hit or a miss, but yeah.

Richard: Oh, Dolly is just terrible. Leonardo comes up with some good images occasionally, but it’s just kind of a hit or miss. Fortunately for that $12 a month plan, they give me like 30,000 credits. I could just, I’m not going to use 30,000 credits a month and it rolls over. So I mean, I could create thousands of images.

Diana: Nice. Okay, I’ll check out Leonardo. I have not tried it before. Is it prompt based as well?

Richard: Is it prompt based as well? It’s prompt based. And you can load in a picture like yourself and then base it on your picture. I have only scratched the surface. I’ve barely, because I who has time.

Diana: Okay. Okay. Yeah. You have to learn the tool itself. So with all of these tools that are just being thrown at you, it’s like thousands a month that they’re coming out. I hate having to learn the technology and not all, not, not all platforms are very usable. And if I had to spend more time learning how to navigate your platform, then the usability sucks and you lose me really quickly.

Cause with my, my software development background, it’s. That’s just unacceptable. I don’t care how cool the technology is, if I’m learning how to navigate it, because you didn’t put any thought into that, and that’s not a tool for me.

Richard: Are you aware of the hype cycle? Okay. The hype cycle, I think was created by Gartner. but it’s, it’s a well-known cycle where you have something that, that comes out and people like it then it catches on and goes, you know, usage goes way up. Then you hit the top of the high cycle and it just drops like a stone. Yeah. Literally. Then you saw this with, older technologies, and then it,

Diana: No.

Richard: drops way down and then it levels out at a normal. And from what I’ve been able to talk, I’ve talked to a lot of people about it. AI is close to the top of the hype cycle. So it’s nearing a crash, a big one.

Diana: Yeah. At least in the way that we have been marketing it and the public is receiving this information where so many tools that you see out there that create content for you or. just these quick wins, you could really within chat GPT in itself, redo that very, very quickly if you just know how to structure your engagement with it.

So I think this year I’m seeing a lot more reception to folks just using chat GPT beyond just cheating and the quick wins, which is really exciting for me. Cause I’ve been doing this for about two years and quite honestly, the first year, many people were not happy.

Richard: Bye.

Diana: with me talking about AI even. I remember an incident where it was after I trained Jiu-Jitsu and in a group setting, was, there was a group picture and I used mid-journey to, there was an individual that we started playing around with it with mid-journey and made it into a funny image. And this individual was so upset.

Richard: Here’s a group picture and I used nature. There was an individual that we started playing around with it with head journey and made it into a funny image and this individual was so

Diana: about it it wasn’t even about him, but he got so upset at me about it and it was like, it was like an accusation of digital rape. Like you’re not getting consent of it. I’m like, relax, dude. The government has every piece of information on you because you are in the military, right?

Richard: about and it wasn’t even about him. He got so upset at me and I didn’t even see. It was like an accusation of digital wedlock. I didn’t get consent of it. If you want to be afraid just look at what Amazon or any of those companies have on you. Everything.

Diana: And it took me a while to realize it wasn’t so much about me or the AI piece. It’s this fear of change. It’s this fear of replacement. And it’s more than just a technology of itself. It’s a mirror to the individual that things are about to be different and they’re just not ready for it.

Richard: Life’s changing pretty quick, sometimes for the good, sometimes for the bad. We don’t even need to get into politics, but back in the 60s, politics were very, very tumultuous. mean, just as bad or worse than now. I remember Kent State where they were shooting students in the schools, and riots in the schools were happening and stuff. It was pretty bad back then. And in the 50s, Eisenhower had tanks on the road.

Diana: very quickly. That’s life. Yeah.

Richard: You know, all kinds of things back then. And this is just more of the same, probably social media has made it a lot worse perception wise, but is it really worse? Don’t know.

Diana: Perception, yeah. I think this is where the importance of understanding history so that we don’t repeat it is really important. yeah, I don’t want to get into politics right now either. just involves me. It’s just,

Richard: No, who needs to? I’ve turned off the news. I’ve turned off social media news. I don’t care. I mean, I can’t change it. All it does is make me upset. So why would I watch it? Why would I watch something that’s gonna make me upset?

Diana: I It’s my energy gets so drained trying to keep up with it. It’s just not how I want to, I just don’t want to exist in this world in that way. want to, if I can use AI and this technology to make things better and focus on working with folks who are trying to amplify their impact to do better. That’s where I prefer to focus my energy.

Richard: Indeed, indeed. Well, this has been a fascinating conversation and I appreciate you coming on. If you had some final words for our viewers, what would they be?

Diana: Thank you. Yes. Final words. AI is not a replacement. It’s an amplifier of impact. It’s a supporter of you, your goals. It allows you to have hope and design a life that You never thought at once a new point in your life could be possibly created. It’s potential.

It’s a different way. It’s an outlook on life that’s completely different than what you’ve been indoctrinated into believing all your life. So if you haven’t started already, the simplest way to do it is just pick up ChatGVT with a free plan and just say, I’m stuck in this. This is what my unstuck state is. Help me bridge that gap.

Richard: Yeah, and there’s always the other ones, Bard and Sir, and there’s a zillion of them. Yeah. Chachi PT is probably the easiest one for most people. Well, thank you for appearing. Where can our listeners find you?

Diana: Any. Any. Yes. But it’s just getting started. That’s it. Just get started. I am on LinkedIn most actively under Diana Lee AI. There’s a few Diana Lees out there. So make sure you look for the one with the AI and also www.waggle.ai.

Richard: Very good. Thank you for appearing. I am Richard Lowe, the owner of The Writing King and Ghost Writing Guru. I am a premier ghostwriter, premium ghostwriter, excuse me. And I write books for people who need them to increase their brand. You can find me at thewritingking.com or ghostwriting.guru.

And I appreciate you listening to this podcast. It’s pretty much daily now. So I’m going at a fast pace, meeting a lot of interesting people and thank you for listening.

Diana: Thank you.

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