I too am concerned about a widespread loss of critical thinking skills and shrinking attention spans due to people having fewer opportunities to focus. For many children, access to social media begins the moment they can hold a smart phone. Constant scrolling replaces reading, play, exploring and other mind-expanding activities. Generative AI like ChatGPT will probably accelerate this trend unless people make more of an effort to live offline and communicate through channels that don't allow AI models to train on our data and original content.
Hi Jane. I've been thinking about this a lot lately! I use an AI tool in my writing process, and I've tried it a few times in the early drafting stage.
My concern is similar to yours: I worry about outsourcing the deep thinking I need to do good writing. Before AI, I'd sit at my desk for hours wrestling with the words and thoughts. Frequently, my articles turned out very different to what I'd planned. And that's the beauty of it. I refined my thinking while writing, creating thoughts that didn't exist before.
Of course, it was hard and I didn't look forward to writing the first draft. But once the piece was done, I felt competent and capable. The next time I got stuck while writing? I knew I'd figure out eventually. I worry AI will rob us of this.
Hi Jane! In what might seem rather meta, I now work for an AI company and have been playing around a lot with ChatGPT to see if it could help speed up the writing process. I’ve determined that it’s not (yet) particularly useful for that. As you point out, an AI writing assistant cannot replace your original thinking. If you give it reliable source material it may be able to do a decent job, e.g. ask it to write social media posts based on a white paper you’ve written. But when you’re working out the positioning and content for your company for the first time, that requires original thinking, and AI cannot replace your efforts there. I have found it to be a useful replacement for general search, so I do use it for research. For example, I’ll ask it questions about the personas to whom we target our product, what they care about, and why they might or might not want to use our product. It has helped me generate tagline ideas and things like that. But it’s not great at anything of any length, really, no matter how much you refine your prompts. So, my take is it’s currently a useful research assistant and brainstorming partner. But it can’t replace me. Yet.
Thank you for writing this article. I share your concern. It reminds me of the first time I learned that because we think in words, our thinking is limited by our vocabulary! That was eye opening. I didn't enjoy reading as a young person but love to read and expand my thinking. I don't want Google or anyone else to bias my thinking and writing either. I think it is unfortunate that the magic wand is set as the default. Happy writing and thanks again.
I too am concerned about a widespread loss of critical thinking skills and shrinking attention spans due to people having fewer opportunities to focus. For many children, access to social media begins the moment they can hold a smart phone. Constant scrolling replaces reading, play, exploring and other mind-expanding activities. Generative AI like ChatGPT will probably accelerate this trend unless people make more of an effort to live offline and communicate through channels that don't allow AI models to train on our data and original content.
Hi Jane. I've been thinking about this a lot lately! I use an AI tool in my writing process, and I've tried it a few times in the early drafting stage.
My concern is similar to yours: I worry about outsourcing the deep thinking I need to do good writing. Before AI, I'd sit at my desk for hours wrestling with the words and thoughts. Frequently, my articles turned out very different to what I'd planned. And that's the beauty of it. I refined my thinking while writing, creating thoughts that didn't exist before.
Of course, it was hard and I didn't look forward to writing the first draft. But once the piece was done, I felt competent and capable. The next time I got stuck while writing? I knew I'd figure out eventually. I worry AI will rob us of this.
Hi Jane! In what might seem rather meta, I now work for an AI company and have been playing around a lot with ChatGPT to see if it could help speed up the writing process. I’ve determined that it’s not (yet) particularly useful for that. As you point out, an AI writing assistant cannot replace your original thinking. If you give it reliable source material it may be able to do a decent job, e.g. ask it to write social media posts based on a white paper you’ve written. But when you’re working out the positioning and content for your company for the first time, that requires original thinking, and AI cannot replace your efforts there. I have found it to be a useful replacement for general search, so I do use it for research. For example, I’ll ask it questions about the personas to whom we target our product, what they care about, and why they might or might not want to use our product. It has helped me generate tagline ideas and things like that. But it’s not great at anything of any length, really, no matter how much you refine your prompts. So, my take is it’s currently a useful research assistant and brainstorming partner. But it can’t replace me. Yet.
Thank you for writing this article. I share your concern. It reminds me of the first time I learned that because we think in words, our thinking is limited by our vocabulary! That was eye opening. I didn't enjoy reading as a young person but love to read and expand my thinking. I don't want Google or anyone else to bias my thinking and writing either. I think it is unfortunate that the magic wand is set as the default. Happy writing and thanks again.
Laura