This is a wonderful piece, a guide that I knew I needed, and was trying to intuit from a heart-led and human-centred place. Thank you so much for articulating these ideas, Fred.
I caution everyone to be very careful with how much you outsource the brain. There is mounting evidence that prolonged use of generative AI will cause cognitive decline. Users over a certain age might even speed up whatever natural decline they may be preconditioned for. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11020077/
You bring up an interesting point that could probably be raised about our entire digital lifestyle. That said — I’ve got a post I’m working on about what happens to our brain when we use Gen AI that features research on “Generative Thinking.” More to come.
I've asked Claude for its favorite sentences and passages in pieces of writing and it's remarkable how well it identifies the better stuff over the generic. It has a kind of "taste" even if it doesn't experience the feeling of having preferences
yep! Late reply... I was talking about my own writing samples, asking Claude to pick favorites seems to work pretty well. It considers not just the writing but makes an effort to choose sentences that align with themes and storylines
Wondering how far people here have gone to have AI write an entire screenplay. I've had it come up with an idea and write the first scene, which was pretty good, if not super-original. It's still pretty clunky when it comes to comedy imo, but it knows how to write an "Onion" headline.
I’ve had it come up with a line or two that I thought “okay, that’s not bad.” I think it “gets” Onion because the Onion itself is a perfect “learner” of all the idioms and cliches.
Sounds like fun, Fred. Are you using NotebookLM instead of Gemini itself because it's specifically targeted at writing? I wasn't familiar with it until now.
This is a wonderful piece, a guide that I knew I needed, and was trying to intuit from a heart-led and human-centred place. Thank you so much for articulating these ideas, Fred.
Great advice Fred. I'll certainly be keeping this in my mind for the next (first ) post in my second Substack👍😁
I caution everyone to be very careful with how much you outsource the brain. There is mounting evidence that prolonged use of generative AI will cause cognitive decline. Users over a certain age might even speed up whatever natural decline they may be preconditioned for. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11020077/
Jim -
You bring up an interesting point that could probably be raised about our entire digital lifestyle. That said — I’ve got a post I’m working on about what happens to our brain when we use Gen AI that features research on “Generative Thinking.” More to come.
I've asked Claude for its favorite sentences and passages in pieces of writing and it's remarkable how well it identifies the better stuff over the generic. It has a kind of "taste" even if it doesn't experience the feeling of having preferences
Have you tried creating a project and putting your own writing samples into the project knowledge? It gets better.
yep! Late reply... I was talking about my own writing samples, asking Claude to pick favorites seems to work pretty well. It considers not just the writing but makes an effort to choose sentences that align with themes and storylines
Also, saw this article today: https://deadline.com/2025/01/paul-schrader-chatgpt-ai-good-scripts-1236260963/
Wondering how far people here have gone to have AI write an entire screenplay. I've had it come up with an idea and write the first scene, which was pretty good, if not super-original. It's still pretty clunky when it comes to comedy imo, but it knows how to write an "Onion" headline.
I’ve had it come up with a line or two that I thought “okay, that’s not bad.” I think it “gets” Onion because the Onion itself is a perfect “learner” of all the idioms and cliches.
Sounds like fun, Fred. Are you using NotebookLM instead of Gemini itself because it's specifically targeted at writing? I wasn't familiar with it until now.
Yes — the team at NotebookLM designed it with writers in mind. More this week!