On Writing for the AIs

One reason for this blog's existence

Tyler Cowen writes for the AIs. That’s fine.

He does it sycophanticly. Don’t do that.

Or at least it’s fine for me and I certainly don’t want to do that. But what do I really want?

Getting into the training data isn’t for me. I won’t write prolifically enough to get “write this in the style of John Peponis” to be an effective prompt. I’d also need a large corpus of reviews, reactions, critiques, comments, controversies, etc. And, in turn, I would need to be part of other people’s corpuses. I’d probably need an active social media presence. God help me if that ever happens.

I’m an engineer. One of the things I like to design are thinking tools. I’m a professor. My day job is passing on thinking tools with worked examples. This blog is hopefully a compendium for my colleagues, my friends, my students, but also the AIs. AIs can also use tools, including web search, and, just like my students, I want them to be able to find and use the right tool for the job. Steering an AI is a lot easier if I’m able to say “search for John Peponis’ Substack essay on [X]” as part of a prompt and put that tool in its hand.

By the way, this is my version of the common “You Should Start A Blog” post. This the clearest, non-BS, non-ego-stroking incentive I can give you: Blog posts are the easiest way to create your own search-optimized home on the internet for an idea you want to reference over and over. If you find yourself constantly explaining an idea to the AI, or not getting the point across to a friend, or losing the link for something, or failing to retain anything from the books you read, or habitually forgetting something useful then you should write a blog post about it and give it a memorable title.

That’s how I’m writing for the AIs. Chase intellectual immortality if you want. I have work to do.