Prompt Thinking, Fast and Slow
A New AI-Generated Twist to Daniel Kahneman's Book "Thinking, Fast and Slow”
Like many others, I’ve been thinking a lot about Generative AI recently, the technology that has burst into our lives with tools like chatGPT (for text), and MidJourney (for images).
When we tell these tools what to do —like, “you are Daniel Kahneman, write a new chapter to your book Thinking, Fast and Slow” —we are “prompting” the machine with a persona and a task. The output of that can range anywhere from magically genius to dangerously hallucinatory.
Still, you can’t be a writer/creator these days if you’re not at least playing with some of this stuff. There’s no denying there’s an elephant in the writing room.
No writers have been hurt by using AI, as far as I know. So this isn’t a writing emergency. The moment feels more like a fire drill. A wake-up call.
There’s also no denying that AI can help make some types of writing more efficient, like writing emails, press releases, summarizing legal notes, making presentation, optimizing LinkedIn posts, Landing Pages, and generating “B2B hero messaging.”
In my case, a creative story idea came to me. I was shaving at the time, and my first thought was, “how am I going to prompt chatGPT to flesh this story idea out?”
Did I just think that? What did I just think?
The moment demanded it be let to sink in. What just happened?
Usually, when a story idea comes to me, I just think about developing it. I sit down to write. Or I record a voice note to write from later.
“How am I going to prompt that?” Was I Prompt Thinking? Is that even a thing?
That got the non-prompt-thinking-me thinking: is Prompt Thinking dangerous? Am I developing AI dependency? Will I ever be able to write without AI? What if the electricity went out and I couldn’t write?
I looked around to see if other writers were talking about this.
from a Substack called(no-less), says she’s had enough.
Kallio, who takes a moral stand against “AI’s amplifying the rewards flowing to capital holders” says she’s going back to using her own mind to work on her ideas.
I’m more interested in the existential question for writers: to use AI or not to use AI?
///To prompt or not to prompt, that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of un-optimized writing,
Or to take up arms against a sea of prompts,
And by opposing, end them?
That patient merit of th' unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make with a bare pen?
Thus prompting does make cowards of us all.///—ShakespeareGPT.
Mind you, if you could have all the best minds in the world at your fingertips, wouldn’t you want to work on your ideas with them? Imagine collaborating with Albert Einstein or Steve Jobs, Margaret Atwood or Daniel Kahneman.
Again with Daniel Kahneman? The Israeli psychologist, who won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2002, showed in his book Thinking, Fast and Slow, that humans have two modes of thinking: a fast and intuitive mode (System 1) and a slow and analytical mode (System 2), and that we often rely too heavily on the former.
How does AI prompt thinking fit into Kahneman’s 2 systems? I asked KahnemanGPT.
I’m undecided and could stay like that for a while. Writing, for me, has always felt like grappling with myself. I don’t know if I’m ready to grapple with the machine. It might be inevitable.
