The lazy aspect of using AI assaults me daily, when I'm writing and the word I intended (or not) appears before I type it. I believe it is responsible for many of the typos I read in books.
Yup, been thinking this for a while. A nasty binary. It feels somewhat similar with the possibility of those who might end up all-in on the social media circuit and those who eventually feel the need to opt completely out.
I love David Brooks, and particularly his article you cite. As an author whose books have been stolen to train LLMs, I am dealing with literally several thousads of AI-bot powered scams that reflect detailed description of my work and me. Which means that because my voice & my writing style have been ingested into these LLMs, there's a chance that future manuscripts I seek to publish will be flagged as AI-written. Brooks points out that "In this age, cultural output will feel ever more familiar, as writing, songs, and movies become syntheses of what has already been produced. [Creators]...want to produce work, by contrast, that feels personal, that reflects their unique self. They’re going to want to find ways to use AI to increase their agency, rather than diminish it."
I use AI for research to support my writing as well as for info in my personal life. Brooks suggests that better value can be gained from AI when it's treated as a brilliant librarian rather than as an oracle. Then he offers how to post queries to AI in a way that will not allow it to write for you, rather to find the info you seek to write your own unique story, style, and self:
• Ask for hints, not answers: People who ask AI to directly answer their questions suffer severe declines in motivation and ability. But people who ask AI for background thinking or clarifications do not.
• Start with a blank page: Before you go to the bot, start with a blank piece of paper and write up your own analysis and conclusions. Then ask AI to challenge your thinking, not produce it.
• Rotate tasks: Every time you do a task with AI, follow it with a task that doesn’t involve AI. That will keep your creative-effort muscles alive.
• Make a sharp distinction between rote work and creative work: Let AI write functional emails. Don’t let it write your essays or your memos. Shame people who do.
• Ask for thinkers, not thinking: My favorite trick when using Claude is to never ask it to think through a problem for me. I ask it to summarize the thinkers who have already addressed a given problem. If I’m trying to understand child development, I ask it to imagine a debate between Jean Piaget and Erik Erikson. What would these two great psychologists say to each other about the problem I’m wrestling with? Then I ask it what books by these thinkers I should read if I want to understand their work.
He ends with the suggestion to "Redesign the bots: General chatbot use undermines learning. But as the writer Alberto Romero notes, AI tutors actually improve learning and motivation. That’s because although chatbots mostly answer questions, tutors lead students on structured learning journeys. It should be possible to redesign the normal bots so that they function less like encyclopedias and more like personal trainers whose jobs are designed to build mental muscles, rather than replace them."
Love this nuanced and detailed reflection, Leslie. I’ve stumbled upon some of your same tricks, and some of the ones suggested by Brooks, for working with AI while subverting or deflecting its inbuilt invitation to substitute for my own creativity.
"Do you feel more awake to your own mind, or less" might be the best diagnostic question for basically any tool, not just this one. Leslie's list in the comments is the practical version of the same test (ask for hints not answers, start with the blank page first) because the value was never really in the finished paragraph. It was in whatever changed in the person who had to sit with the difficulty long enough to produce it.
Your work works well without the graphics. It is reassuring to know you are not heedlessly burning resources creating AI images, and I applaud your long searches for open source materials. But really, your words are the power and the draw.
I grok that. It’s basically a creatively radioactive technology. Handle with great care. With great power comes great responsibility. All that stuff. Damnably difficult to disentangle its potential benefits from its potential harms.
The lazy aspect of using AI assaults me daily, when I'm writing and the word I intended (or not) appears before I type it. I believe it is responsible for many of the typos I read in books.
Yup, been thinking this for a while. A nasty binary. It feels somewhat similar with the possibility of those who might end up all-in on the social media circuit and those who eventually feel the need to opt completely out.
I love David Brooks, and particularly his article you cite. As an author whose books have been stolen to train LLMs, I am dealing with literally several thousads of AI-bot powered scams that reflect detailed description of my work and me. Which means that because my voice & my writing style have been ingested into these LLMs, there's a chance that future manuscripts I seek to publish will be flagged as AI-written. Brooks points out that "In this age, cultural output will feel ever more familiar, as writing, songs, and movies become syntheses of what has already been produced. [Creators]...want to produce work, by contrast, that feels personal, that reflects their unique self. They’re going to want to find ways to use AI to increase their agency, rather than diminish it."
I use AI for research to support my writing as well as for info in my personal life. Brooks suggests that better value can be gained from AI when it's treated as a brilliant librarian rather than as an oracle. Then he offers how to post queries to AI in a way that will not allow it to write for you, rather to find the info you seek to write your own unique story, style, and self:
• Ask for hints, not answers: People who ask AI to directly answer their questions suffer severe declines in motivation and ability. But people who ask AI for background thinking or clarifications do not.
• Start with a blank page: Before you go to the bot, start with a blank piece of paper and write up your own analysis and conclusions. Then ask AI to challenge your thinking, not produce it.
• Rotate tasks: Every time you do a task with AI, follow it with a task that doesn’t involve AI. That will keep your creative-effort muscles alive.
• Make a sharp distinction between rote work and creative work: Let AI write functional emails. Don’t let it write your essays or your memos. Shame people who do.
• Ask for thinkers, not thinking: My favorite trick when using Claude is to never ask it to think through a problem for me. I ask it to summarize the thinkers who have already addressed a given problem. If I’m trying to understand child development, I ask it to imagine a debate between Jean Piaget and Erik Erikson. What would these two great psychologists say to each other about the problem I’m wrestling with? Then I ask it what books by these thinkers I should read if I want to understand their work.
He ends with the suggestion to "Redesign the bots: General chatbot use undermines learning. But as the writer Alberto Romero notes, AI tutors actually improve learning and motivation. That’s because although chatbots mostly answer questions, tutors lead students on structured learning journeys. It should be possible to redesign the normal bots so that they function less like encyclopedias and more like personal trainers whose jobs are designed to build mental muscles, rather than replace them."
Love this nuanced and detailed reflection, Leslie. I’ve stumbled upon some of your same tricks, and some of the ones suggested by Brooks, for working with AI while subverting or deflecting its inbuilt invitation to substitute for my own creativity.
"Do you feel more awake to your own mind, or less" might be the best diagnostic question for basically any tool, not just this one. Leslie's list in the comments is the practical version of the same test (ask for hints not answers, start with the blank page first) because the value was never really in the finished paragraph. It was in whatever changed in the person who had to sit with the difficulty long enough to produce it.
Your work works well without the graphics. It is reassuring to know you are not heedlessly burning resources creating AI images, and I applaud your long searches for open source materials. But really, your words are the power and the draw.
Thank you sincerely, my friend.
I am using A.I kinda like a search engine, for research, but every time I use it I feel like I lose 'critical thinking' time in place for convenience.
I grok that. It’s basically a creatively radioactive technology. Handle with great care. With great power comes great responsibility. All that stuff. Damnably difficult to disentangle its potential benefits from its potential harms.