Three Sleepless Nights

Assignment Details

*I believe the cost of getting to know AI—really getting to know AI—is at least three sleepless nights.

After a few hours of using generative AI systems, there will come a moment when you realize that Large Language Models (LLMs), the new form of AI that powers services like ChatGPT, don’t act like you expect a computer to act. Instead, they act more like a person. It dawns on you that you are interacting with something new, something alien, and that things are about to change. You stay up, equal parts excited and nervous, wondering: What will my job be like? What job will my kids be able to do? Is this thing thinking? You go back to your computer in the middle of the night and make seemingly impossible requests, only to see the AI fulfill them. You realize the world has changed in fundamental ways and that nobody can really tell you what the future will look like.* — Ethan Mollick, Co-Intelligence

Drawing inspiration from Ethan Mollick's observation about how to get to know AI, this assignment challenges you to conduct two in-depth exercises with a leading LLM system and document your journey. Your goal is to push beyond surface-level interactions to understand both the capabilities and limitations of AI in familiar and unfamiliar domains.

Requirements:

1. Conduct Two Extended AI Sessions:

   • Familiar Domain Exercise: Choose a topic or task where you have substantial expertise
   • Unfamiliar Domain Exercise: Select an area of interest where you have minimal prior knowledge

   Choose tasks that are interesting to you! (For those with less programming experience, I highly recommend trying a programming task.)

2. Session Guidelines:

   • Each session should involve at least 30 minutes of concentrated interaction (feel free to go longer!). Use a timer!
   • You should use a leading (free) LLM such as OpenAI’s GPT-4, Anthropic’s Claude Haiku, or Google’s Gemini. Feel free to use more powerful models if you have access. Try to use one that you haven’t used before.
   • Document your conversation flow, including false starts and redirections.
   • Save meaningful excerpts from your interactions in a notes page (for your own personal reference)
   • Take notes on your emotional and intellectual reactions

Potential Example Tasks (to illustrate the possibilities!)

• Brainstorming potential final projects for this class (see F5 - Final Project ). Be sure to iterate as your thinking evolves.
• Create and refine a research proposal in your field of interest.
• Write a simple full-stack web application and deploy it online.
• Design an pitch document for an innovative solution to a known industry problem.
• Learn quantum computing fundamentals and write a simple algorithm.
• Write an cinematic analysis of “Fight Club”.
• Develop a physical therapy routine for a specific condition.
• Do a legal analysis of ride-sharing from the perspective of the United States before the rise of Uber and Lyft.
• Reconstruct a "day in the life" across different social classes in a specific historical period
• Compare military tactics and technology between two historical battles

Deliverable

A 500-word blogpost that addresses the below points. After posting, you must also comment on at least two other classmates posts, highlighting something that you found interesting — whether because it was surprising, resonated with a past experience, or because you disagree.