Great article! Funnily enough i've been trialling AI in much the ways you're describing here recently myself, mostly focusing on local AI however (models I can run on my own hardware), getting it to review articles, suggest improvements, bounce ideas off. I find it's more comfortable if you give your AI a persona as well (or multiple personas, I have done a round-table essentially as you discussed above, with different personas acting in different roles). With a persona it not only feels more natural, but you also seem more likely to be critical of its suggestions, as you would be of another person. It has less "machine authority" so to speak.
I did try NotebookLM this week and it was interesting. I have used perplexity a fair bit as well lately - it can search the net and give you answers based on its (fairly shallow, on the free-edition) research. I find it really useful for exploring areas I want to write about in an article.
If you have a quick moment, give "https://storm.genie.stanford.edu/" a look. It's probably not that useful for the type of writing you're talking about here, but it's another direction that could be useful to writers moving forward.
Great way to look at writing with AI -- hiring it as a partner. I've been experimenting with a variety of ways to use AI, and I agree that it is more likely to replace the person doing the grunt work as opposed to the true writer. Several people I've spoken to recently have said something along the lines of, "AI isn't going to replace you as a good writer, but a good writer who knows how to use AI will."
Terrific article Fred, I loved this - “Before you respond, you can ask me 5 questions that will help you give me a better answer.” Such a great idea. As I read your introduction and you referenced a person called Al I was momentarily confused and I immediately was minded of a brilliant piece by @stephenfry - I had not full grasped what he was getting at until I was reading your excellent article.
"You may have noticed that I render Artificial Intelligence as “Ai” not “AI” throughout this piece - this my (fruitless no doubt) attempt to make life easier for people called Albert, Alfred, Alexander et al (ho ho). In sans serif fonts AI with a majuscule “i” is ambiguous. How does the great Pacino feel when he reads that “Al is a threat to humanity?” So let’s all write as Ai not AI."
I can't recommend the article this was from highly enough, I think I might just read it again so impressive and insightful it was, here's a link.
Very helpful. Perplexity does an average job at searching and summarizing with footnotes. A good AI whose first job is not search is better for responding to a question and most can provide citations if requested. I like using LMArena to get side by side responses from top AIs that I choose.
Great article! Funnily enough i've been trialling AI in much the ways you're describing here recently myself, mostly focusing on local AI however (models I can run on my own hardware), getting it to review articles, suggest improvements, bounce ideas off. I find it's more comfortable if you give your AI a persona as well (or multiple personas, I have done a round-table essentially as you discussed above, with different personas acting in different roles). With a persona it not only feels more natural, but you also seem more likely to be critical of its suggestions, as you would be of another person. It has less "machine authority" so to speak.
I did try NotebookLM this week and it was interesting. I have used perplexity a fair bit as well lately - it can search the net and give you answers based on its (fairly shallow, on the free-edition) research. I find it really useful for exploring areas I want to write about in an article.
If you have a quick moment, give "https://storm.genie.stanford.edu/" a look. It's probably not that useful for the type of writing you're talking about here, but it's another direction that could be useful to writers moving forward.
Great way to look at writing with AI -- hiring it as a partner. I've been experimenting with a variety of ways to use AI, and I agree that it is more likely to replace the person doing the grunt work as opposed to the true writer. Several people I've spoken to recently have said something along the lines of, "AI isn't going to replace you as a good writer, but a good writer who knows how to use AI will."
Terrific article Fred, I loved this - “Before you respond, you can ask me 5 questions that will help you give me a better answer.” Such a great idea. As I read your introduction and you referenced a person called Al I was momentarily confused and I immediately was minded of a brilliant piece by @stephenfry - I had not full grasped what he was getting at until I was reading your excellent article.
"You may have noticed that I render Artificial Intelligence as “Ai” not “AI” throughout this piece - this my (fruitless no doubt) attempt to make life easier for people called Albert, Alfred, Alexander et al (ho ho). In sans serif fonts AI with a majuscule “i” is ambiguous. How does the great Pacino feel when he reads that “Al is a threat to humanity?” So let’s all write as Ai not AI."
I can't recommend the article this was from highly enough, I think I might just read it again so impressive and insightful it was, here's a link.
https://substack.com/home/post/p-148895861
Also I forwarded your article to a friend who is a writer and has just started playing with Ai like myself.
Very helpful. Perplexity does an average job at searching and summarizing with footnotes. A good AI whose first job is not search is better for responding to a question and most can provide citations if requested. I like using LMArena to get side by side responses from top AIs that I choose.