OpenAI released Chat-GPT in November 2022, and it quickly became the fastest-adopted technology of all time. Since then, the following scene has become familiar in homes worldwide.

It’s late, but you must ask Chat-GPT a few more questions before you turn off for the night. It’s crafting the perfect introduction for a report you must turn in tomorrow and helping you outline an eight-week course you’ve volunteered to teach.

After adjusting the question to tease out a satisfying answer, you copy and paste your prize into an empty text document, hit save, and power down.

You’ve no doubt starred in this scene a few times since November, but less than a year after Chat-GPT’s release, a problem is snowballing in the background.

Too Much Information

With Google’s release of Bard, the image generator DALL-E and countless other AI technologies on the horizon, you have more information than you can manage.

In launch week, OpenAI’s chatbot received ten million daily requests. It reached 100 million active users by January 2023, which will only increase as AIs become more integrated into our daily lives. Microsoft has already incorporated its AI Copilot into its Office suite.

What should you do with all the answers AIs like Chat-GPT give you?

• Outlines
• Infographics
• Interesting facts
• Storylines
• Computer code
• Brainstorming Ideas
• Social media posts

You need a way to organize all this new data.

Personal Knowledge Management Software

The answer to this unprecedented tsunami of AI-generated content is Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) software.

Note-taking applications like Evernote and other outlining tools have tried to solve a similar problem, for example, when students are undertaking research for long dissertations. They encounter knowledge and information from various places and need a centralized location to bring it together before starting the writing process.

Analog systems, such as the Zettelkasten developed by Niklas Luhmann, were created for those who prefer pen and paper or want an offline experience. But those methodologies can’t cope with the amount of data AI systems can produce.

You need software that can keep up with the volume and can integrate new information quickly with what is already there.

PKM applications were built to do this.

These systems are more than a place to store text; they’re applications that mimic how your brain works so you can find what you have saved too. You make links between pages, so using a PKM is like having a second brain or a personal Wikipedia, a vast web of interconnected thoughts and ideas you can browse just like a website.

So when your favorite AI gives you another great answer you want to keep, you not only have somewhere to put it, but you can connect it to related pages so it doesn’t get lost in another folder full of text documents.

A Look into PKM Apps

If you’re struggling to keep up with all the information you encounter each day or are constantly searching through your laptop for files you saved, here are two free PKM apps that may solve your problems.

When you first open a PKM app, it won’t be entirely alien; the usual text editing abilities are all there. But you’ll soon realize there’s something more: Twitter-like hashtags for easy categorizing, internal linking, and embedding of other files on your system, and backlinks make your files both browsable and searchable.

These programs can easily replace your note-taking apps, text editors, and task management apps to create a hub for life and knowledge management. A single place where files and ideas meet and turn into creativity.

Obsidian

The developers of Obsidian created it from the ground up as a second-brain application. It includes a “graph view,” a visual representation of the files in your system and how they are linked together, just like your mind. Obsidian themes give it a personal feel as you customize it however you want. It’s free to use and available to download for mobile and desktop.

Obsidian has a large community fueling its growth and creating hundreds of plugins, from Chat-GPT integration to automatically importing Kindle highlights. Linking pages together is simple, so you can create a personal knowledge management system as fast as your AI pumps out answers.

Logseq

Logseq is a free and open-source outlining tool with many second-brain features. It’s also free and has a smaller but growing community. Like Obsidian, Logseq has plugins and themes, so most features you can imagine are already available.

Logseq has more of a learning curve than Obsidian, so if you’re looking for something you can pick up, Obsidian is a better choice. On the other hand, if open source is essential to you, Logseq will be more appealing.

PKM Is the Future

Early adopters of PKM software like Logseq and Obsidian are getting a taste of what the future holds. As AI evolves and becomes ever more integrated with the software we use daily, the need to manage the content they produce will grow.

Understanding how to use PKM will ultimately make you better at managing AI, a skill that will only become more valuable in the coming decades.

This article was produced by Face Dragons and syndicated by Wealth of Geeks.

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