Hi,
Welcome to the second edition of our eye-opening summer journey, where we continue to duck & weave through the realms of artificial intelligence. This week, we plunged headfirst into the depths of clarity, specificity, and the reimagining of rules in the AI era. We encouraged bending, breaking, movin’/ shakin’ and re-face/making the rules - all in the pursuit of understanding how AI is transforming the landscape of our interactions and assumptions.
Self reflection and growth objectives:
using clarity and specificity to articulate our objectives
using open-ended and closed-ended questions to spark curiosity (keeping in mind our north-star of passionate curiosity)
how rules shape our interaction with society (heavy stuff)
Business learning objectives:
using concise language in working with technology and teammates
how tone can reframe a conversation and ChatGPT
In the spirit of specificity, our young explorers embarked on the Peanut Butter Jelly Time challenge. The task? Guiding me through the process of making a PB&J sandwich - with me playing the part of an AI, taking their instructions in the most literal sense. Picture a jar of peanut butter perched atop a loaf of bread, or a jelly-smeared instructor. Story of my life… a hot mess. But also a practical (and tasty) illustration of the necessity for precise communication when dealing with AI systems and our teammates.
Next, we navigated the Pillow-Stuffed Animal Maze. Once again, I played the obtuse AI, this time amidst a labyrinth of cuddly obstacles. The kids had to guide me through while I was blindfolded, but the catch was the deliberate difference between the usage of 'should' and 'have to' in the instructions. The exercise was an eye-opener about clarity, specificity AND assumed rules and the spaces where they apply (or don't). One child broke the pattern, literally taking me by the hand and leading me through the maze – an exercise in bending rules that won't be soon forgotten. My hope is this won’t come back to bite me later when the kids are in high-school.
We then transitioned to a practical application session with ChatGPT. The focus? Open-ended vs. closed-ended prompts. We delved into the art of crafting prompts with clarity, specificity, and a heavy serving of tone.
The kids were fully engaged, thoroughly enjoying writing the prompts, and even surprising us with their inventive inquiries into subjects like quark subatomic particles (who knew we had budding physicists among us?) in creative and curios tones.
Recap of Lesson 2: Room for improvements? Absolutely. We’re learning to create smoother transitions between exercises given the stark contrast between physical activities and writing tasks. Additionally, we'll provide clearer instructions and more examples for the prompts.
A look ahead: As we look forward, we're planning to merge self-reflection exercises with practical application of ChatGPT, aiming for a cohesive learning experience. We’ll start to implement daily text prompts for the students and collaborate on the review and critique of the prompts/responses.
For all of us, the journey is just as important as the destination, and we’re learning as much from these early steps as we hope our students are.
Stay tuned as we continue to explore, invent, and articulate in the dynamic world of AI.
Stay Curious!
I enjoyed listening to the podcast. I recently read this article https://buttondown.email/hillelwayne/archive/gpt4-should-be-part-of-your-toolkit/ and felt like it had a good rule for when and how to use generative AI tools: "The AI is often wrong and you need to verify everything you get back. So focus on the problems that are hard to do, but easy to check." I wonder if and how you're incorporating that idea into your practice :) Thanks for exploring and sharing your journey.
A fun, surprising lesson! Quickly learning the idea behind creating effective prompts to unlock the power of ChatGPT.