The biggest surprise in the latest release of Ayoa Ultimate was the launch of a new AI tool called GenerateIdeas.ai. It enables you to extend your thinking in new ways by adding AI-generated topic suggestions and questions to your mind maps. This powerful ideas engine can help its users discover new ideas and insights and explore new paths of thinking and creative solutions they may not have considered otherwise.
The amazing human brain responds to creative stimuli. GenerateIdeas.ai expands the range of triggers that your brain can leverage to create higher value ideas and solutions.
Of course, I had to learn more about the thinking behind GenerateIdeas.ai, so I connected with OpenGenius CEO and creativity expert Chris Griffiths to learn more about it.
Chuck Frey: What’s changed about the nature of work that makes AI-enhanced creativity important today?
Chris Griffiths: Information is cheap. Using the internet, we can find out what we need to know, when we need to know it. The problem is that this leads to status quo thinking as everyone is accessing the same information and has the same dots to join. The ability to think objectivity and truly creatively is becoming even more important in today’s fast paced society.
Frey: You talk on the GenerateIdeas.ai web page about workers being burned out, making it hard for them to be creative. How big of a problem is that today, in your opinion?
Griffiths: Non-stop access to information is on the one side wonderful and on the other utterly overwhelming. Before we know it, we’re in a stressed-out frenzy trying to keep our head above the flood of e-mails, reports, projects, blog posts, updates and sundry that add up to information overload. Watch out for the tendency to react instantly and automatically to information. A quick decision is seldom the best decision. Using AI, not only can we help people think divergently, it is a great way to challenge and stress-test ideas, showing you which aspects are potentially underdeveloped.
Frey: How does GenerateIdeas.ai extend the human brain?
Griffiths: The mind works through image and association with mind mapping putting a visual structure to that thinking. If you want to go expand your own individual creative capability you need concepts and ideas that are beyond your own scope of knowledge, and that are still associated to your branches of thought.. Generateidea.ai, and Ayoa.com empowers this through AI.
Frey: GenerateIdeas.ai doesn’t just provide AI-generated keywords to stimulate creativity. It also serves up questions that can lead users’ thinking in new directions. How important are questions to the creative process?
Griffiths: When you were at school, do you remember being told to make sure that you read the question in the exam properly before answering? The same advice applies to problem solving. Normally, when faced with a problem our first instinct is to go looking for a solution; the sooner we put it to bed the better.
However, what we should really be doing is looking harder at the problem. Instead of rushing headlong into finding solutions, invest time in defining your problem correctly. The way you define your problem sets the principal direction for all your creative sweats and struggles. It influences the line of thought you follow and has a powerful effect on the ideas you entertain, so it’s important to get it right. We use technology to help people define and understand their problem.
Nothing is more futile than solving the wrong problem.
Frey: When I was given a demo of Ayoa, I was told that some of the brainstorming templates in the GenerateIdeas.ai tool came from some of Chris’s ideation techniques. Is that the case?
Griffiths: The creative process is not without its challenges and it’s likely that you will encounter setbacks along the way. In The Creative Thinking Handbook, Melina and I have produced a repeatable system that enables people to open their minds and conquer their professional challenges, using the power of creative thinking. Structure enables creativity to grow.
Unending, chaotic creativity is almost as bad as no creativity at all. To change the way we do things, we need to start by changing the way we think. We do this by putting a strategy around our thinking processes. Just like a business creates strategies, systems and processes to facilitate its success, our thinking needs a proactive and purposeful strategy through which we can bring about the results we want.
We include many of these processes into GenerateIdea and Ayoa.
Frey: How do AI credits work and why do Ayoa users need to buy them?
Griffiths: A subscription to Ayoa Ultimate, or GenerateIdeas.com will include AI credits within the subscription. However, true natural language processing AI is an intensive activity and therefore if one goes over their limit for the month, more credits can be purchased. The majority of users have found that the allowance included within the normal subscription is rarely exceeded.
Frey: What kind of feedback are you getting from customers about GenerateIdeas.ai?
It has been an awesome response, and, as with any first release, lots of suggestions for improvement. The biggest thing that has really stood out is how amazed users are when using GenerateIdeas.AI on very specialist subjects and how successful it is at building concepts within niche areas.
Frey: If you were to lay out your ultimate vision for how AI could enhance visual thinking, what would that look like?
Griffiths: We mapped out lots of plans (and used our AI to help shape them) so watch this space for more details!
You can learn more about GenerateIdeas.ai on the Ayoa blog. Read my review of Ayoa Ultimate here.
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