Tag Archives: Perplexity

Dr. John Middleton

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It was just a few months after I got my Land Rover that I met John Middleton. Someone told me he had a collection of Rovers so I tracked him down and he invited me up to Columbia. In the ensuing years John was an invaluable resource whenever my Land Rover had a problem. Even joined the crew to help me take the top off and on.

Today I took the hoop kit (I used for just one summer) up to John’s farm and to see some of his recent acquisitions. During my brief visit I mentioned the MU vet school where John is a professor. He said something about his duties changing since we last talked so when I got home I asked Perplexity what it could find.

Continue reading →

Perplexity is a better writer than I

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A couple of years ago I pulled together some notes and files about Learfield’s early adventures with the Internet. (I’ve posted on this topic more than once.) Yesterday it came up in a conversation with Perplexity which asked I would like to see a “narrative chapter” of that history. I was pretty sure Perplexity would produce something more readable so I said “go ahead.” 

It boiled my fourteen page ramble down to three pages while creating a story that –to my mind– accurately captured the vibe of those frantic days. [Links above to PDFs]

I’ve resisted the temptation to let an AI write or rewrite these blog posts and will continue to do so. But I wonder if it’s much different than an author submitting a manuscript to an editor who cleans it up and generally improves it.

The more your AI knows about you…

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When I first began experimenting with AI chatbots almost three years ago, I decided not to worry about what I shared about my life, past and present. I’d been blogging for more than 20 years so it was all “out there” already. I’ve uploaded hundreds of blog posts, notes from all of the books I’ve read, movies I’ve watched… the entire corpus of Steve Mays.

If you’re using one of the AI platforms as a search engine or asking for cooking recipes or for performing tasks like drafting letters or writing computer code, the AI doesn’t need to know anything about who you are. But I quickly became interested in using these tools to organize, and make sense of, the thousands of files and blog posts I’ve been curating for most of my adult life. To do that, the AI needs context. Who is this person? What does he think? What does he feel?

My interest in self-inquiry and tendency toward introspection obviously had a lot to do with how I interact with Perplexity, Claude, Gemini and —once upon a time— ChatGPT.

Today I added some work history to the “corpus.” Continue reading →

The Ten Commandments for Al-Augmented Creativity

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  1. Thou shalt not outsource thy soul. Use Al to enhance, not replace. If it writes for you, it thinks for you. The danger is the Al effect, one step beyond the Google effect, where your brain no longer expends the energy needed for cognition and creativity-and these skills atrophy.
  2. Thou shalt suffer for flow. The struggle of creation is signal. Flow requires challenge. Effort drives focus, and focus drives us into the zone. If we let the machines remove all the friction, we stop growing, stop flowing, and stop becoming.
  3. Thou shalt keep sacred the first draft. Let AI critique your work but never conjure the original spark. Creativity is associative: We draw connections from vast, messy networks of memory and intuition. If Al drives the process, you short-circuit your retrieval system and risk losing access to the deeper and weirder part of your imagination.
  4. Thou shalt use Al as a challenger, not a crutch. A good tool makes you think harder. Forcing the brain to work triggers the neurochemistry required to activate memory. If it’s too easy, you’re not learning. AI has to elevate your edge, not erase it.
  5. Thou shalt preserve the joy of creation. If Al removes the satisfaction of making, you’ve automated too much. That satisfaction feeds motivation, meaning, and purpose. If Al erases it, life feels empty.
  6. Thou shalt set boundaries for digital influence. Keep parts of your life untouched by algorithms so your thoughts remain your own.
  7. Thou shalt not mistake efficiency for depth. Faster is not always better. AI should deepen thought, not just speed up output.
  8. Thou shalt train thy mind alongside thy machine.The sharper the tool, the sharper the brain must become. Let AI steer you toward the right research papers, but if you don’t read them yourself, then you’ve stunted cognition and creativity, abandoned foundational motivators like curiosity and mastery, and limited your shot at flow. AI needs to stretch skills forward, not siphon off drive.
  9. Thou shalt honor serendipity and chaos. Don’t let Al’s predictive patterns strip your work of surprise, randomness, and the unexpected. Novelty is the seed kernel of creativity. We need the unexpected to drive the brain into new directions; it’s the basis of all innovation.
  10. Thou shalt remain the master, not the servant. AI is a choice. We can choose to unplug it whenever we want.

From We Are As Gods by Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler.

I ran these by Perplexity and it suggested some ways to integrate these into our interactions. (PDF) As expected, Claude had a somewhat different take.

Minds enhanced by machines

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“AI is a feedback loop between mind and machine that is starting to enable a new level of cognition. Machines that understand minds. Minds enhanced by machines.”

— We Are As Gods (Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler)

Slowly but surely, my little AI pals are changing how my mind works. A little analysis by Perplexity»…and a slightly different take from Claude. Gemini calls the quote “classic techno-optimist rhetoric.” Or, bullshit?