An AI Experiment
Out of the blue, a friend and former colleague sent me a book called Command the Page by Charlie Deist. The book is intended to help writers embrace AI for the benefit of their writing and to do what he calls “future-proof” your future creative career. Deist goes through his own journey over the last year of ubiquitous presence of AI in the hands of the general public. We have all heard the stories of lawyers that relied on AI to write briefs only to have the brief make up a bunch of precedent cases, much to their chagrin. I personally saw how an student early adopter could submit an essay assignment that was riddles with misinformation and made the student, who had claimed originality in the writing of the essay, look stupid and unethical all at once. Deist explains how he, as a writer and synthesizer of information in written and podcast form, explored AI and started to use it as an aid to his writing and overall work. He starts by recommending the use of a workflow App called Notion that has imbedded AI in the form of Claude, the Anthropic AI ChatBot and LLM (Large Language Model). I immediately downloaded the Notion App, which starts off as free, but which I’m sure will find a way to charge me for its capabilities once I am hooked. Notion is a creativity augmenting program that gives you advanced note taking and organizational tools including task management, project tracking, to-do lists, and bookmarking. It has imbedded AI, so I am using it to store my AI experiment.
I started by downloading my currently scheduled blog stories (I have seven in the queue). I then downloaded them one by one and for each I tried applying the AI rewriting functionality. The dropdown menu offers an array of functionalities including a.) improve writing, b.) make shorter, c.) make longer, d.) simplify language, and then an array of aides like e.) Summarize, f.) Explain and g.) Find action items. As an experiment, I want to start applying these capabilities to my stories to see what I really think about what AI can do for me to make me a better writer. This is not an easy thing to do and there is both objective and subjective evaluation involved. I am intrigued enough that I want to share this process with my readers so I am going to give you all the a.) through g.) output from the App of this exact story. I am keeping it much shorter than my usual story to make this a manageable exercise. Let’s see where this goes. [440 words]
Here are the AI outputs from Notion on this story:
a.) Improve writing:
Your friend sending you the AI writing book sparked an intriguing experiment. Testing the Notion app’s embedded AI on your blog stories poses an insightful challenge – objectively and subjectively evaluating if AI can improve your writing. Though uneasy, openly documenting the attempts honors readers and your writing. Each output mode poses distinct effects to explore. Whatever the results, by transparently question our tools we craft wiser relationships with them. [69 words]
b.) Make shorter:
A friend sent a book on using AI for writing. You’re testing Notion’s AI on blog stories to see if it improves writing. You’ll evaluate both objectively and subjectively. Though uneasy, you’ll openly share the process with readers. You’ll try Notion’s different AI output modes on this story to explore the effects. Questioning our tools fosters wiser relationships with them. [60 words]
c.) Make longer:
A friend and former colleague surprised me by sending a book called “Command the Page” by Charlie Deist, which is about how writers can embrace AI to improve their work and “future-proof” their careers. This made me curious enough to download the Notion app which the book recommends due to its embedded AI capabilities. As an initial experiment, I put several of my scheduled blog stories into Notion and tried using the various AI functionalities it offers such as improving writing, shortening or lengthening text, simplifying language, summarizing, explaining concepts, and identifying action items. I’m particularly interested in whether AI can make me a better writer, but evaluating that involves both objective and subjective assessments which is not easy. Still, I want to openly document this process and share the AI-generated outputs with my readers since questioning the impacts of new technologies fosters wiser relationships. I’m starting with this current story about my exploration so readers can see the original and compare it to the different AI versions. This will be an intriguing test case to evaluate both the promise and limitations of AI writing tools. I don’t know yet whether AI will improve my blogging, but by transparently examining its attempts to augment creativity, we craft more thoughtful evaluations. [210 words]
d.) Simplify language:
A friend sent me a book about using AI to improve writing. I downloaded the Notion app it recommended, which has embedded AI features. As a test, I put some of my blog story drafts into Notion and used the AI tools on them. These include improving writing, shortening or lengthening the text, simplifying language, summarizing key points, explaining concepts, and identifying action items. I want to see if AI can make me a better writer. But evaluating this is hard as it involves objective and subjective judgments. Still, I will openly share the process and AI outputs with readers. By questioning new technologies together, we can better understand their impacts. This initial experiment with my current draft will showcase the original and AI versions. We’ll see if AI augments creativity successfully or has clear limitations. Either way, transparently examining the attempts is worthwhile. [144 words]
e.) Summarize:
A friend sent a book on using AI to improve writing. The author recommends the Notion app for its embedded AI capabilities. As an experiment, I put some blog story drafts into Notion and tried the AI tools on them to see if they can make me a better writer. I will openly share the process and AI outputs with readers to evaluate this transparently. Examining attempts to augment creativity leads to more thoughtful assessments. [75 words]
f.) Explain:
A friend of the writer sent them a book exploring how writers can utilize artificial intelligence (AI) tools to enhance their work. Intrigued, the writer downloaded an app called Notion which has embedded AI functionality for writing assistance. As an initial test, the writer input several of their planned blog stories into Notion and tried out the different AI tools it offers, like improving writing quality, shortening/lengthening the text, simplifying language, summarizing key ideas, explaining concepts, and identifying action items.
The writer is interested to objectively and subjectively assess whether these AI tools can improve their writing abilities and make them a more effective blogger. However, evaluating this is challenging. Still, the writer intends to document this experimental process openly and share the original blog stories and AI-generated versions with their readers. By transparently questioning how these emerging technologies are augmenting creativity in writing, both the writer and readers can thoughtfully develop wiser perspectives on both the potential value and limitations of AI tools. This open assessment fosters more informed relationships with new innovations like AI writing assistants. [179 words]
g.) Find action items:
• Download Notion app
• Put blog story drafts into Notion
• Apply AI tools to stories: improve writing, shorten/lengthen, simplify language, summarize, explain concepts, identify action items
• Objectively and subjectively evaluate if AI improves writing
• Openly document process and share original stories and AI outputs with readers
• Compare versions to assess promise and limitations of AI writing tools
• Craft thoughtful evaluations of AI’s attempts to augment creativity through transparent questioning
You decide what you make of this…As you can imagine, while everything here is telling me that I can shorten my prose, I think there is lots of information in my version and some stylistic value that gets lost in translation. Nevertheless, I will keep on testing AI and I suspect, so should all of you.
Would be happy to engage in a longer conversation. I just attended an incredible lecture about AI, ChatGPT(4), and independent school education.
* indeed, while the initial output looks impressive, it is often riddled with mistakes and inaccuracies.
* supposedly, the more it manipulates and works your writing, the better able it is to capture your “voice” and “style”. I would argue that it still lacks an authentic, human, voice.
* the lecture was very clear, though, that the AI “genie” is out of the bottle and not going back!! And the growth and development will only continue to move at a VERY rapid pace!