Co-Creating with AI

Real Skills Workshops
, ,
1

Coming Sun Jan 26 2025 at 5pm EST

3 Likes
2

From David. I share this to help “prime the ideas” for how you might also be co-creating with AI. He speaks about ChatGPT but I use this type of approach with all the AI’s I engage with.

Here’s a 90-minute look at how I’ve used ChatGPT to improve my writing.

Some things that work for me:

  1. People usually talk about using ChatGPT to find ideas from others, but it’s equally useful for prompting your own mind too.

  2. Don’t expect ChatGPT to think for you. Instead, use it to improve your own thinking.

  3. The more specific your request, the better it works.

  4. It’s good at helping you refine words and sentences, but don’t ask it to write an entire piece for you.

5. ChatGPT isn’t as smart as the best person who could answer your question given unlimited time, but it works well on three other dimensions: the diversity of requests you can make, the affordability of it, and the near-instant speed of responses.

THIS. I love that I have super smart people in my world, and being able to “take” two hours with the equivalent of a circle of “smart interns” can make all the difference! For $20/mo. (And sometimes free)

  1. If you’re having trouble visualizing a scene in a novel, copy and paste the text into ChatGPT and ask it to make a painting of it for you.

  2. Russian literature has always been tough for me because the names are hard to keep track of, but given how much ChatGPT can help with that, I should probably pick up The Brothers Karamazov again.

  3. At the very least, it’s a darn good spellchecker.

  4. My most common prompt is: “Any typos?” Then, I paste what I’ve written.

  5. Don’t expect the first few answers it gives you to be helpful. The good stuff usually comes after the 4th-6th prompt.

The more an AI learns about you and your style, and you incorporate that into prompts and custom instructions, the more likely the first result is going to be close.

  1. Half the benefit of writing with ChatGPT is starting from something rather than nothing. People are much better at editing something that already exists instead of creating something from scratch.

  2. One of my favorite prompts is: “Generate ten different versions of this sentence in the style of [author].”

I’ll ask for different styles - concise, clear, assertive, confident, etc. I don’t think in terms of authors, and I write shorter pieces so…

  1. Building on the previous point… If you want to improve a sentence, try asking it to rewrite it in the style of a famous writer. Names are particularly useful because GPT can instantly pull from somebody’s full body of work to mimic their style. This works because a writer’s name packs a lot of information in a few words, much of which is subtle and hard-to-describe, which makes it an efficient, high-octane carrier of information.

  2. Tyler Cowen is right when he says that the implication of ChatGPT is that you’ll probably read fewer books, but you’ll get much more from the books you choose.

Another example: I use AI to summarize videos first, before choosing whether to watch them or not! Why? Because some amazing sessions are… an hour or more long. I’ll watch that, or watch a segment, if what is extracted by AI feels core to me. It is, indeed, like having a savvy intern “watch and take notes” so you can decide whether to go deeper or not, knowing that what the intern makes note of is not going to be all of what you get from it. (By the same token, if AI picks up nothing fresh or that activates my curiosity, I sincerely doubt it is worth an hour of my time!)

(This was the most distinct interview I’ve done in a long time and I just about insisted on doing it in-person, so thanks for accommodating me, @danshipper. And also, yes, this tweet was edited by ChatGPT).

If you’d rather watch our conversation on YouTube, I’ve linked to it:

@david_perell on X

3

image
image946Ă—1328 68.1 KB

1 Like
4

Just finished Season 6 of The Circle. Spoiler alert! If you are currently watching or plan to watch, do not read below.

But if you are not, this relates to this upcoming session. I was blown away at this social experiment involving AI explained in this video. #Holycrap

1 Like
5

WOW!! I had never heard of The Circle!!

1 Like
6

Creativity means constant exploration, but by using AI we can push our creative boundaries in new and exciting ways. Remember, the goal isn’t to replace human creativity with AI, but to enhance and expand our creative capabilities - and our courage to defy those conventions in favor of something new.