Digital Wisdom

How a conversation with AI has opened up new possibilities of thought.

I used to have an ambivalent relationship to AI.

Until a few days ago, I hadn’t used it since I quit working as a Product Manager in early 2023. At that time, the AI hype train was gaining turbo speed with the release of ChatGPT a couple of months before and I remember using it to write my last documentation before I quit.

I was burnt-out and the last thing I wanted was anything to do with technology, productivity and information overload.

And so I lost all interest in AI and LLMs.

Recently though, AI has come back into my life.

I now work as a teacher, and a couple of weeks ago a student handed me in an essay; I read the first couple of paragraphs and immediately stopped reading, dejected.

It had clearly been written with AI.

I was disappointed because I was curious to read what the student thought about the assigned topic. And I was disappointed because this negated the whole point of why I had asked them to write the essay in the first place.

I’d asked my class to write the essay for them to learn about the topic. For them to digest their understanding and to lay it out in a coherent way.

Process over output.

This is because I see writing as a way to discover what I think.

Yes, writing is a conversation I want to have with you, but before I can do so, I first need to figure out what I want to say. And the only way to figure that out is to start putting pen to paper and explore promising lines of thought.

Then, if you’re anything like me, you’ll soon enough come across gaps in your understanding about your chosen topic. Things you thought you knew will turn out to be a superficial understanding.

These realisations will then open up new and interesting questions, which will lead to a more concentrated thought process.

Writing then is as much about the process — how it changes you — as it is the finished text.

Unfortunately, my student didn’t see it this way.

How does AI fit in?

This episode got me thinking more about the use of AI, particularly in the context of learning.

On the one hand, I know that ignoring AI is unrealistic.

Technological breakthroughs have a way of dramatically altering the course of humanity. And AI is going to do that in ways we can only speculate on.

Just like previous technological breakthroughs — the invention of the written word, the printing press or the internet, for example — there is no way to put this genie back in the bottle, even if we wanted to.

So, not only would it be impossible for me to stop my students from using AI, the way I see it not encouraging its use would be a huge disservice to them.

The question I was then left with was, how can I combine the importance of thinking deeply that writing stimulates, whilst harnessing the power of AI?

The Einstein in your basement.

Then, this week I had somewhat of a revelation.

I watched this awesome explainer video. In it, the host used the analogy of AI being like an Einstein in your basement, ready to listen to you and help you whenever and however you wanted.

And all the current LLMs aren’t just as smart as one Einstein; they’ve been trained on the knowledge of pretty much all the geniuses from our entire history!

Think about that for a second.

Imagine you don’t understand a particular problem. Wouldn’t you want to talk with all of the smartest people who have ever lived to help you out? From the the comfort of your own sofa, via your phone?

Of course you would! (It would be madness not to).

Conversing with AI

And so, one day earlier this week, I put on my headphones and got on my bike to ride to work. I turned on ChatGPT, selected the voice to text function, put my phone back in my pocket.

Then, with the first stroke of the pedal, I started to talk.

There’s a topic I've been interested to write about for a while now but I didn’t where to start. So I asked ChatGPT to ask me questions about it, to uncover what I thought about the topic.

As I cycled, I’d then ask it follow-up questions and — before I knew it — off I was down different avenues of thought, slowly uncovering what I found interesting about the subject.

Soon enough, we were having a conversation.

And it was fascinating.

I write to find out what I think but I publish to start a conversation with you. So if this sparked something, do reply to this email and let me know!

As always, thanks for reading. 👋

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