Transparency: AI-assisted (see justification below)
A reflection on where I have got to after using ChatGPT and other AIs intensively for the past six weeks.
In earlier times, my digital workspace was built around the usual office applications – Microsoft Office or Google Workspace, and their ilk. Now, it’s different.
Microsoft is going down the path of embedding AI (mainly ChatGPT) into its productivity suite. I have taken a different path, choosing to use ChatGPT, Perplexity, and NotebookLM independently. My workspace is now populated by a team of AI assistants, researchers, analysts, editors, and more, sitting alongside the standard office productivity apps.
Where I would previously have started a piece of work in Word, now I start in a ChatGPT project canvas. During the course of work, I switch between AI team members. ChatGPT is the main thought partner – good at shaping ideas, helping structure prose, pushing back on woolly thinking. The 4o model is an excellent collaborator for many tasks, but if deeper thinking is needed I switch to ChatGPT-o3; the difference is remarkable. When the flow falters, I’ll hop over to Perplexity: fast, well-cited, useful for breaking through with a different angle or clarifying a half-formed idea. NotebookLM, meanwhile, knows my files; it acts like a personal librarian, drawing references and insight from the sources I’ve given it.
It’s not seamless yet. But this is a distinctly new way of working, shaped by interaction between multiple AI agents. Even when ostensibly alone at my desk, the feeling is less of working as a solitary engineer and more as the leader of a team. A quiet, tireless, and always surprisingly helpful team. The skill here is no longer about choosing the best tool. It’s about understanding which kind of tool to use and when – treating each one as if it were a specialist on call.
This hopping back and forth isn’t distraction, it’s coordination. Each assistant brings a slightly different lens. Triangulating between them often clears a logjam in my thinking or brings up a new insight. An intrguing thought is whether – or perhaps when – they will gain an awareness of each other’s contribution, turning coordination into collaboration.
For the record, I drafted this post in a ChatGPT project canvas, helped by the AI in a chat alongside the canvas. When complete, I told the AI to write the “transparency label justification” below. It was spot on!
Transparency Label Justification: This diary post was drafted collaboratively with ChatGPT using the GPT-4o model. Alec described his working patterns in detail and directed the structure and tone throughout. ChatGPT proposed phrasing, clarified distinctions between tools, and refined transitions, but the observations, reflections, and examples are all drawn from Alec’s own practice. The post captures a real and evolving style of AI-supported work, shaped and narrated by its practitioner.