science of happiness: gratitude, compliments, helping others, spontaneous contacts
Our current instructional design approaches assume that access to expertise is scarce, expensive, and delayed. That’s why we “capture” disciplinary expertise in “content” – so we can economically provide access to expertise to learners. But what if access to expertise was abundant, cheap, and immediate? If your students have access to the internet,... See more
IFS comes with a user manual. The role of the therapist is not to diagnose or to heal the client, but rather to guide them step-by-step through the relevant protocols. With a less structured modality like talk therapy, AI chatbots can only mimic therapist behavior, producing a simulacrum of empathy. With IFS, an AI-powered tool can do much of the... See more
IFS is particularly well suited for AI-powered tools given the protocol-like structure.
A fourth paper looks at spontaneous contacts, when we reach out to someone in our social circle who we may not have spoken to in a bit - to say “hi” or to catch up. We don’t do it enough, and (I know this will shock you!) the reason is because we think it will be akward and not appreciated. And, of course, as you might suspect, people really... See more
Metacognitive Prompting
The overall goal is to create AI systems that can deeply understand and align with individual human users. To achieve this, the researchers propose using a learning technique inspired by cognitive science theories about how human brains work.… Show more
A third paper looks at a related topic: helping others. When a person needs help & all someone can do is provide a little assistance, rather than solving the entire problem, the helper is often reluctant to do anything because they think partial help will not be valued. Again, people really appreciate even small amounts of help.