Impromptu: Amplifying Our Humanity Through AI

Much of what we do as modern people—at work and beyond—is to process information and generate action. GPT-4 will massively speed your ability to do these things, and with greater breadth and scope. Within a few years, this copilot will fall somewhere between useful and essential to most professionals and many other sorts of workers. Without GPT-4,

Write an interview between [20th-century. American political theorist] Iris Marion Young and [20th-century German social theorist] Jurgen Habermas about whether, and if so, how, internet technologies structurally transformed the public sphere.

Principle 3: Just try it!

Here are three key principles I’ve found useful in my own attempts to use GPT-4 in my work. Principle 1: Treat GPT-4 like an undergrad research assistant, not an omniscient oracle. If you’ve ever worked with an undergraduate research assistant (or if you were one in college), you know that a helper like that is both powerful and limited in specific

But unless someone has already taken the trouble to compile and publish the exact information you’re looking for, it could be very time-consuming to find. Even if that information exists on a single website, like Wikipedia or NFL.com, it will likely be spread across multiple pages. Getting your answer will still chew up a lot of your time.

the futures we imagine are inevitably the futures we steer toward.

we need new processes and formats where verification, context, and accountability can be easily applied in very transparent, persistent, shareable, and easy-to-evaluate ways.

When people make the choice to see GPT-4 this way, I call it an “AHA!” moment, to underscore the “Amplifying Human Abilities” perspective at the heart of that choice.

“AHA!” moment, to underscore the “Amplifying Human Abilities”