Using AI to learn about my field

I’ve been doing lots of networking and learning about journalism and business. My theory is that the better I can prepare myself to make decisions based on the success and failures others, the better prepared I am to take advantage of opportunities that come my way.

I’m not trying to avoid failure. Failure is a teacher. I’m trying to avoid tarpits. Tarpits are deadly.

I have to give my cousin Max credit. I got dinner with him when I went home before starting summer classes, and he told me that he’s using chatbots to learn. He uses deep research on ChatGPT to discover case studies so he can learn from history and analyses. He is developing a strong foundation of knowledge to catapult him to success.

My journalism professors always emphasized the importance of context and using resources available to learn about the people I am going interact with.

In class, I’ve written several briefs on academics and researched hundreds of sources for stories based on information publicly available (Google.com). It’s fun but exhausting and time intensive.

I’d rather not give up the my research and discovery process, but I can certainly leave the surface level thinking to a chatbot. My school offers a paid-version of Claude, a large language model similar to ChatGPT.

The chatbot features a deep learning program, so I have it write me biographies about successful journalists and/or people I am going to network with. For its average report, Claude tells me it’s reading anywhere from 100 to 1000 websites to learn before writing.

Last year, I wrote a piece that got published with DC Report, and I discovered their founders were business reporters. One of them is named David Cay Johnston.

What started as a means to make money for his family became a way to explore the world through the lens of journalism. Johnston started working for two local papers at the age of 10. Talk about a hustle.

From 1968 to 1975, he attended seven universities in eight years. He selected courses in a number of different topics and bypassed typical university requirements through the War Orphans Act. Talk about obsession.

In a Q&A at a book signing, he said this about higher education:

"We all should be after completing our formal education. College is for learning how to learn and to show one can undertake and complete a multi-faceted four-year project. I found most 100 and 200 level courses a waste of my time, so I finagled my way into 300 and up courses, including Masters & Doctoral level studies."

Johnston didn’t have the internet. We do. Knowledge is free because of the internet. Don’t forget that.