Diary Posts
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A new way of working
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…
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Collaboration in ChatGPT?
transparency label: human only There are reports that: OpenAI has been quietly developing collaboration features for ChatGPT that would let multiple users work together on documents and chat about projects, a direct assault on Microsoft’s core productivity business. The designs have been in development for nearly a year, with OpenAI’s Canvas feature serving as a…
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First thoughts on a lab framework
transparency label: Human-only A few hours spent with ChatGPT-o3 resulting in good first draft of a framework for thinking about our labs. It covers No doubt the framework will need to be tweaked and added to as our ideas mature. The chat with o3 was a valuable mind-clearing exercise for me, and I was impressed…
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Use cases for NotebookLM
Posting in his SubStack Adjacent Possible, Steven Johnson discusses how “language models are opening new avenues for inquiry in historical research and writing“. He suggests they can act as collaborative tools, rather than replacements for the writer’s engagement with primary sources. Johnson argues that NotebookLM is designed to facilitate rather than replace the reading of…
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How ChatGPT helped draft our first acclimatisation lab setup
Date: 24 June 2025 transparency label: AI-heavy Our latest Lab Note records a quick experiment where I asked two ChatGPT models to draft the outline for an “acclimatisation” session – the starter lab we plan to run with newcomers to AI. Highlights: If you are curious about our process or want to see how structured prompting keeps…
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No substitute for reading the paper
transparency label: Human-only … what I can say is that a theme throughout this self-analysis is this: I find ChatGPT to be a really useful tool when I already have some idea of what I want to do and when I’m actually engaged with the issue. I find it much less reliable or useful for completely automating…
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ChatGPT models: which to use when?
transparency label: Human only ChatGPT-4o fast, for brainstorming, quick questions, general chat o3 powerful, for serious work (analysis, writing, research, coding) o3-pro ultra-powerful, for the hardest problems Source: One Useful Thing, Substack newsletter by Ethan Mollick, 23 June 2025
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That was the moment …
transparency label: Human only It hit me that generative AI is the first kind of technology that can tell you how to use itself. You ask it what to do, and it explains the tool, the technique, the reasoning—it teaches you. And that flipped something for me. It stopped being a support tool and became…
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Mapping the territory: a conceptual framework for our labs
Transparency label: AI-assisted As Anapoly AI Labs begins to take clearer shape, we’ve stepped back to ask: what exactly is a lab, and how should we think about the different types we’re running or planning? We now have an answer in the form of framework that describes what labs are for, how they vary, and…