Deep Background: Using AI as a Co-Reasoning Partner with Mike Caulfield

Mike Caulfield shares about using AI as a co-reasoning partner and his Deep Background tool on episode 590 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast.

Quotes from the episode

Critical thinking problems with students turn out to be critical doing problems.
-Mike Caulfield

AI doesn’t naturally think in terms of provenance, in terms of how it got this piece of information. It’s a little bit of a bolt on afterthought.
-Mike Caulfield

Searching for information is a journey. How can we get the benefits of AI but still preserve that feeling of a journey?
-Mike Caulfield

I’m working on this issue of follow ups with AI. It is magic to get students to think of these responses as not a single transaction. They’re coaching the AI through a process, not to get a specific answer that they want, but to look at the sorts of sources that matter for the question.
-Mike Caulfield

Resources

• Deep Background: A “Superprompt” to change the way you use LLMs
• Reading the Room with SIFT Toolbox
• New SIFT Toolbox Release (Substack)
• SIFT Method (The Four Moves)
• Verified: How to Think Straight, Get Duped Less, and Make Better Decisions about What to Believe Online, by Mike Caulfield and Sam Wineburg
• Interview with Mike Caulfield on Deep Background (AACE Review)
• Is the LLM Response Wrong, or Have You Just Failed to Iterate It, by Mike Caulfield
• Episode 492: Verified with Mike Caulfield on Teaching in Higher Ed
• Starlight Bowl in San Diego
• Sound of Music
• “Everything Could Have Been a Huge Disaster”: Nathan Fielder on Making ‘The Rehearsal’ Season 2
• It Runs Through Me, Tom Misch (feat. De La Soul)
• Tom Misch: Tiny Desk Concert
• Me Myself and I, De La Soul (1989)
• The Magic Number, De La Soul (1989)
• Reasonable People with Tom Stafford
•  Pétanque