I’VE STARTED MOST MORNINGS with prompts to my favourite AI. Today I asked Mem.ai to guide me in a process that ensured the results of my questions would include trustworthy evidence from high quality sources. Its first set of answers drilled down into my personal knowledge management (PKM) system.
Because I had included ideas about workflows that incorporate note-taking techniques, Mem shared some observations worth considering.
I teach students that they need to incorporate note-taking techniques into their interactions with their personal knowledge management systems. In my opinion, this is a powerful way to educate whatever AI service you select because this workflow helps to ensure results are based on trustworthy evidence from high quality sources.
In my work with university students, I know there is rampant usage of AI tools. So here are the processes I use to ensure there's a human at the other end of the computer screen:
Source Verification
I insist on seeing verified sources. High-quality sources often include academic journals, reputable news outlets, and government publications.
Critical Thinking
I teach fundamentals of prompt engineering to my advanced students. By refining prompts, students learn to critically think about the information provided by the AI. This includes questioning the source of the information, the methodology used to obtain it, and the credibility of the 'expertise' if the information is based on expert opinion.
Iterative Questioning
If you want to explore nuances embedded in the results served by an AI, you need to ask follow-up questions to dig deeper into the topic. This can help uncover more detailed and accurate information.
Note-Taking
Not only do I take written notes on the information provided by the AI, I normally write down key points in my Travelers Notebook and then use the OCR capability inside my Readwise app to inject these core discoveries back into my PKM. This reinforces my corpus of information and also provides a record of the information for future reference.
I'm glad that I never abandoned a requirement for students to keep a personal Media Writing Journal. There are some high quality nuggets in the journals I'm currently reviewing and I plan to capture the best content with Readwise so students next year can benefit from workflow that revolves around personal note-taking.