{"id":136772,"date":"2025-10-21T20:33:12","date_gmt":"2025-10-21T20:33:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/136772\/"},"modified":"2025-10-21T20:33:12","modified_gmt":"2025-10-21T20:33:12","slug":"how-to-get-the-most-out-of-ai-without-letting-it-think-for-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/136772\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Get the Most Out of AI\u2014Without Letting It Think for You"},"content":{"rendered":"

Every week<\/a>, over 800 million people use ChatGPT to answer questions, complete tasks, and make decisions. AI systems are being rapidly adopted in schools, universities, and workplaces worldwide. Meanwhile, with billions of dollars being invested in building better systems, the technology itself continues to advance\u2014and the future is set<\/a> to be weirder<\/a> than ever.<\/p>\n

AI could cause mass unemployment, enormous energy<\/a> consumption, and even, some experts<\/a> worry, the destruction of civilization. While such issues remain under debate<\/a>, one practical step individuals can take is to learn how to work with AI systems without letting them usurp your agency.<\/p>\n

TIME spoke with five experts who use AI in their own work\u2014from math to psychology to neuroscience\u2014to distill advice on how to use these systems most effectively, without eroding<\/a> critical thinking in the process.<\/p>\n

Experiment for fit<\/p>\n

AI systems are \u201cjagged<\/a>\u201d\u2014their performance can be uneven and unpredictable. They can excel on complex tasks while struggling with simple ones. And the boundaries of what they are or aren\u2019t good for are changing all the time. For example, \u201cbefore [OpenAI\u2019s reasoning model] came out, they really weren\u2019t useful for research mathematics,\u201d says Daniel Litt<\/a>, an assistant professor at the University of Toronto.<\/p>\n

To know which model is best for your needs, you need to spend at least a few hours playing with it. New and more capable AI systems are released on a near-monthly basis, and \u201cwhich models you pick makes a difference,\u201d says Ethan Mollick<\/a>, a Wharton professor and author of Co-Intelligence, a book on how to collaborate with AI. \u201cGive it a shot in an area you know well,\u201d he advises. \u201cIf it does badly, correct it. If it still does badly, come back in a few months.\u201d Mollick uses one set of models for coding, and another for editorial help\u2014common among power users. \u201cUse one for ten hours, and you\u2019re gonna know what kinds of questions you get good answers for,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also worth taking advantage of the fact that, in addition to text, you can now send most AI systems pictures and voice notes\u2014providing them with greater context and improving their responses. You could ask it to identify a kind of tree or give you the history of a local building. There\u2019s lots of value to be found in a few hours of intentional play.<\/p>\n

Currently, on free tiers, OpenAI<\/a>, Anthropic<\/a>, and Google<\/a> all limit how many times per day you can message their top reasoning models. Once this is exhausted, they default to cheaper and less capable models, or require you to wait for the limit to reset. Subscriptions to each company\u2019s top models start at $20 per month.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Understand their strengths<\/p>\n

Current AI systems have four key advantages over humans: they provide near-instant responses, process large amounts of contextual information, do not tire, and can access vast stores of human-created knowledge. \u201cIf the answer is no good, you can ask it a follow-up. You can home in on what you need: you can go through a feedback loop very quickly,\u201d says Scott Aaronson<\/a>, a computer science professor at the University of Texas at Austin.<\/p>\n

AI systems perform better if you provide them with relevant information about yourself and whatever task you\u2019re trying to complete. \u201cI upload all my notes and documents, and it provides me with feedback that makes sense based on how I think, and on ideas I’ve had in the past,\u201d says Anne-Laure Le Cunff<\/a>, a neuroscientist at King\u2019s College London. No matter how smart or talented a human collaborator might be, \u201cthey’re never going to be able to hold all of that information in memory and give me feedback based on that,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Long after a person would get frustrated with your queries, an AI system will keep listening and responding. This can be good, as you can stay in a flow state while consulting with it. But Le Cunff also cautions that this can create an \u201cillusion of creative momentum,\u201d in which it feels like you\u2019re making progress when in fact you would be better served by taking a break, going for a walk, and letting your brain process the task in the background.<\/p>\n

Given that AI systems are trained on and have access to immense amounts of data, we can think of them as \u201ca technique for accessing information from other people,\u201d says Alison Gopnik<\/a>, a psychology professor at UC Berkeley. They can act as more sophisticated search engines, surfacing high-quality human-created content\u2014essays, books, music, films, and more\u2014that might not be found through traditional methods. \u201cIn my case, I use it as a substitute for search,\u201d she says.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Keep your brain in the loop<\/p>\n

For Le Cunff, it\u2019s vital to \u201ckeep your brain in the loop\u201d\u2014to actively collaborate with the AI, rather than blindly relying on its outputs. She uses AI as a thinking and conversational partner to improve her work\u2014asking it to point out any blind spots or biases in her thinking, or key points she might have missed\u2014rather than having it create material from scratch.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you\u2019re trying to learn something, the process is the point,\u201d says Mollick. For example, if you\u2019re trying to learn how to write an essay, the process of writing is where the learning happens. If you outsource it, you won\u2019t learn anything. As Litt puts it, \u201cAI can\u2019t understand something for you.\u201d<\/p>\n

Several experts highlighted the importance of not blindly relying on AI outputs. \u201cIn just about no area would I want to rely on the AI\u2019s output without putting my own thought into it,\u201d says Aaronson. Ideally, you should know enough about a subject to be able to tell if it\u2019s wrong, he says. \u201cIt very often will be wrong, but it will still be confident and superficially persuasive.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since the introduction last September of reasoning models\u2014AI systems that make notes to themselves before responding\u2014and with most AIs now able to search the internet, you can usually just ask for sources for a claim. Always follow the source and verify for yourself if a claim is supported.<\/p>\n

Consider them imaginary friends<\/p>\n

\u201cAll the evidence we have suggests [AI systems] work best when you treat them like people, even though they\u2019re not people,\u201d says Mollick. This looks like asking follow-up questions, pointing out when a system has made mistakes, and pushing back when you disagree with something. Every response gives the system more context, improving its response.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That said, maintaining clear boundaries is crucial to avoid falling prey to manipulation. \u201cYou could think about the way you interact with ChatGPT as being like interacting with an imaginary friend,\u201d says Gopnik. Studies have found that most children intuitively understand the difference between real and imaginary friends, and the different roles played by each. \u201cBut it\u2019s really important that it\u2019s an imaginary friend. If you start treating your imaginary friends as if they\u2019re real, you\u2019re gonna be in trouble,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Set personal boundaries<\/p>\n

People are already using ChatGPT to write eulogies, wedding toasts, and bedtime stories for their children. \u201cWe’re going to have to figure out what we think is too intimate or too sacred for the AI,\u201d says Mollick. \u201cI think it’s an important human decision we get to make. I don’t know where that line’s gonna end up being.\u201d His personal line: he does all his writing himself first, before consulting AI, and he never uses it to grade student papers. \u201cThere are just some things where I feel an obligation to keep them human,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

While a small but growing fraction of people are turning to AI for emotional support, the social impacts of this are still unclear. In the absence of evidence, it\u2019s worth being cautious about letting AI substitute for human contact.\u00a0<\/p>\n

There is also a real risk of getting caught in consultation loops: bouncing between different models as a way to circumvent making a decision. To avoid this, you need to draw from your own experience. \u201cYou have to make a judgment call,\u201d says Mollick.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Every week, over 800 million people use ChatGPT to answer questions, complete tasks, and make decisions. AI systems…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":136773,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[261],"tags":[291,289,290,18,19,17,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-136772","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-eire","12":"tag-ie","13":"tag-ireland","14":"tag-technology"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136772","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=136772"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136772\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/136773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=136772"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=136772"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=136772"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}