Have we reached the tipping point for AI as a useful element of everyday productivity? Ironically, that’s probably a question best suited for AI to answer.
We do know, however, that people the world over are launching AI-infused websites at a feverish clip.
In that spirit, here are four intriguing newcomers you can use to free up some valuable time.
Inbox Zero
Don’t let the name fool you. Yes, Inbox Zero offers email-taming features, such as a rich dashboard you can use to quickly unsubscribe from annoying messages such as marketing spam and unwanted newsletters.
It’ll show you a list of senders, how many times each of them has emailed you, and, most importantly, how many times you’ve actually opened those emails. That in and of itself is a huge time saver, stack-ranking the worst offenders to make your un-subscription decisions easy.
But the site’s plain-language AI assistant is arguably the most impressive feature, letting you quickly create rules for handling your daily deluge of mail. There’s an auto-forwarding function: “If someone asks about benefits, forward the message to HR.” There’s a similar auto-labeling function. And there’s a very handy auto-respond function: “If someone inquires about pricing, respond ‘Hi, thanks for the message. Our premium plan costs $10 per month or $100 per year.’”
The service works with Gmail and includes a free plan that lets you unsubscribe from five emails each month. Use of AI features begins at $10 per month.
What AI Can Do Today
What better way to figure out all the stuff you can do with AI than by . . . well, using AI to analyze all of the AI out there?
If you’re ever about to tackle a task and think to yourself, “I bet AI could do this,” then swing by What AI Can Do Today to see if there’s a tool out there that can help.
The site has sifted through more than 5,000 AI tools and identified more than 30,000 tasks in more than 100 categories.
There’s an AI-powered search function, of course, and new tools get added all the time. It’s one-stop-shopping for AI help.
FreshRemote.Work
An excellent place to find remote jobs, FreshRemote.Work is a no-nonsense site that makes digging around for salary ranges a thing of the past.
The landing page lists positions newest to oldest, but they’re also categorized by pay in $20,000 increments.
Listings are enriched with AI to add a bit of context around each position, and each has a nifty “Preview” button that slides out a sidebar chock-full of details such as region, benefits, skills needed, and more.
AnyTopic
You need to learn about a particular topic, but you just don’t have much time. Take it to AnyTopic instead.
Feed the site a topic and it’ll leverage AI to generate a personalized “audiobook” for you to listen to via your favorite podcast app.
I asked it to tell me about the 1987 Minnesota Twins and got back a shockingly good-sounding, four-minute audio file that, aside from a handful of mispronounced player names, felt like it was being read by a real human. Lengthwise, it wasn’t quite an audiobook, but it still hit all the high notes.
