Monday memo #65
Ask AI to teach you about itself.
The Monday memo is food for thought to fuel your week.
Hi everyone,
Like it or not, a new form of intelligence has entered our lives, an intelligence that is also a technology and a medium. Artificial intelligence is coming on like a freight train and will change our society in ways we cannot yet imagine. It will amplify some of our capabilities and make others obsolete.
New technologies are double-edged swords. We do not know yet how they will help us or what harm they will do.
AI reminds me of some powerful waves of new technology I have experienced in my lifetime, that have interacted with society and each other to create profound change. The personal computer gave birth to desktop publishing. Soon after we were all connected by the internet and social media. Before long the smart phone, which we now just call a phone, untethered all of this from the desktop unleashed us into a continuously connected, always-on world.
How will AI change our lives? How will it change society? It’s impossible to say. As creators, when new media emerge, our tendency is to play with it.
More than two thousand years ago, Socrates said that writing — which was a new technology at the time — would make us more forgetful, that we would no longer exercise our memories, that written texts could not contain true knowledge, because knowledge could only come from conversation.
For the first time, we have a technology that we can engage in real conversations with. I’m not sure how Socrates would feel about AI, but we can use his method to learn about AI.
Exercise.
Here’s your exercise for the week: Pick an AI of your choice and give it the following prompt:
“Act like a Socratic teacher and teach me how to use you by asking me questions and giving me exercises. Ask me one question at a time and wait for my answer before proceeding.”
See what happens.
This week in project studio.
This week in the project studio we have a special guest, Mark McCartney.
Since 2021, Mark has been asking people what makes a good life, and publishing his interviews in a podcast called What is a Good Life? I met Mark about a year ago when he interviewed me for his podcast, and since then we’ve become friends.
This week, Mark will lead us on an exploration of what it means to live a good life.
More information for members is below the fold.👇