Back when Cliffs Notes were popular in schools, there was a quick message from Clifton Hillegass (“Cliff”) at the beginning of each booklet that said:
“A thorough appreciation of literature allows no shortcuts.”
His thought was that you should read each work of art, and then use the Cliffs Notes to refresh yourself and better understand the literature. Needless to say, that’s not how most people used his product (though some likely did).
AI
We have a similar option today with AI. Are you going to use it to get out of doing work, are you going to use it to enhance your work and your learning?
There’s not a clear line between “helpful” and “lazy” uses of AI, but we all have seen it. You can use AI to broaden your thoughts and come up with new ideas, or you can use it to write papers and emails for you because you don’t want to put in the effort.
While I’m certainly using AI for shortcuts in my life where I can, I’m really enjoying using the AI text-to-speech in ElevenReader to help with my reading, and my friend Adam has used AI to help generate a course to teach non-profits more about AI.
Things will certainly change in the comings years, but we’re at a point right now where there is a pretty clear divide: are you using AI to make you a better person, or are you just using it to be lazy?
