We’re seeing a lot of students, teachers, and scientists produce more, and worse, outputs because of improper AI use. It’s possible to use it better: Have it imitate a critic. Learning and creativity come from getting criticism and experiencing friction.
We found that when knowledge workers intentionally use AI to challenge their ideas – to generate friction – they can significantly improve their performance. Previous research on human-AI collaboration for loan evaluations had similar results.
A study I was not involved with found that creative writers produce better copy when they use AI as a sounding board rather than to ghostwrite.
I’ve actually been able to shape GPT this way via a bunch of global settings I’ve invoked over the years. Don’t get me wrong-- it’s a PITA, and pretty much a never-ending process, but I think I have two dozen settings now it follows as best it can in order to provide something like a ‘pros and con’ list for any opinion it spits out. This cuts way down on its classic tendency to hallucinate bullshit and spit out half-baked / incorrect replies.
(ready for the downvotes now assuming that I love AI as a general concept 😅)