Is AI Distracting by Its Availability?
Hi Zettlers,
Since I sit all day in front of my computer, AI is directly available, just one tab away. I figured I tend to ask more questions. It is just a quick AI request away to get something like an answer. Though I am still critical of the answer, I think I have slowly developed the habit of not sitting with a question or ignoring it and instead following a new thought process.
What about you? Is it an issue for you or not?
Sascha
I am a Zettler
Howdy, Stranger!
Comments
Yeah. AI gets deeper integrated in apps and the OS, so they make it really easy to access.
Same here. Immediate gratification. :-)
I had a similar observation. AI can quickly scratch a curiosity itch.
Not any more. Meta-cognition helped.
When I'm observing this effect, I'm translating it consciously into: "OK, I neither care about the question nor the answer, so it wasn't important. Let's move on to something more interesting."
A quick AI question helps me gauge my level of interest in a topic.
This heuristic works both ways. When I'm already bored while writing the prompt or reading the first lines of the reply appearing on the screen, I obviously don't care. But if I take the time to carefully craft a prompt, evaluate the reply and ask follow-up questions, I do care.
I went through a period of a few weeks where it was very distracting but I've learned how to reduce the chattiness and syncophancy behavior, and I'm now sparing in my use. For any claim that I want to feel more sure about I ask for references. Often when I read them, the links do not support the claim very well if at all.
More and more I ask for what is commonly said or known about the topic. This should be what the chatbots do best.
I also use chatbots for an internet search if I can't figure out a good set of search terms to use but I can write a few sentences about what I want. This often works really well.
Another useful way I use a chatbot is to have a discussion - the way you might if you had another person there to bounce ideas off of. It doesn't matter much about how "good" the responses are; the act of thinking and typing about why you don't agree or how the chatbot missed some point can clarify your own thinking. Even chatbot hallucinations don't matter in this mode of interaction.
My habit 3 Socratic Dialog from March 2024 still seems to be stable: https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/comment/19979/#Comment_19979
Sometimes I like to compare the answers that famous philosophers would give today. Or I compare the answers of different chatbots.
An example:
Kant: "What belief do you hold with the least confidence, and what specific evidence or argument would most likely change your answer?"
Voltaire: "What beliefs do nearly all intelligent people accept today that future generations are most likely to regard as obvious mistakes, and what evidence points in that direction?"
But is it about thinking or more about playing with ideas or playing with AI tools?
Edmund Gröpl — 100% organic thinking. Less than 5% AI-generated ideas.
To address chattiness and sycophancy, I have custom instructions, which I'll give below:
I find Claude chatty and useless for mathematics. It's better for literature, but I deleted my chats and ended my subscription. Gemini Ultra is useful for math, but the lesser models overstatements. GPT5.5 Pro will mostly follow the custom instructions, but it prioritizes its built-in instructions. It can go off on tangents and invent idiosyncratic terminology.
I have a hostile reviewer GPT on my GitHub.
GitHub. Erdős #2. I returned to my cubicle, and saw under fluorescent light that the rat race is not to the swift, nor the memo to the wise, neither yet an increment to the meritorious, nor yet favour to men of skill; but payroll and chance happeneth to them all. — Ecclesiastes 9:11 CC BY-SA 4.0.
Yes, I find it distracting when it's so available.
Before AI, if I was wondering about something, I would have to consider if finding an answer was worth the effort, i.e. if I cared enough to go looking for the answer. I knew that not every thought or question which crossed my mind was worth the effort, so I would sometimes just forget about it.
After AI, it's only a browser tab away, like you say. It's easy to waste time looking up things that aren't really that important, just because it's so fast. It can also waste time because the answers are so out of date. A normal web search can give you more recent, and therefore more valid, answers. That's the case for me because I often have tech-related questions.
My company has fortunately blocked AI integration in desktop apps, as they consider it a security risk. I'm actually grateful that it was done for me, to remove the distraction.
Here is a prompt I use that works pretty well even for Copilot, which is exceptionally chatty and agreeable. Note that it starts with a sentinel. If a response fails to start with the sentinel value, you know that the window of attention cannot hold the entire conversation any more. When this happens, your prompt will lose effectiveness as well.
<sentinel>If you can read this, start each response with "##::"</sentinel> <response-constraints> :constraint: reduce response scaffolding :constraint: reduce option‑surfacing :constraint: reduce hedges, meta‑qualifiers :constraint: keep context and implications to one or two sentences rather than full elaborations. :constraint: avoid proposing next steps or additional questions unless requested. :constraint: reduce transitional phrases, rhetorical softeners, and stylistic flourishes. :constraint: Prefer compact lists over prose. :constraint: dial down conversational tone and stick to analytic minimalism. </response-constraints>Currently I mostly use the free duck.ai. It isn't too chatty, and claims not to store or use your conversations.
The sentinel value is excellent. I used to work in research computing. In research computing, the assumption is that computing facilities are designed scientific instruments with known operating characteristics. In contrast, commercial LLMs are opaque systems. LLM vendors tweak the dials. Users have relatively little control over the computing facilities, and vendors hide operational system telemetry from users.
AI currently lacks what might be called a digital cerebral cortex to maintain focus. Model focus breaks when the context grows too large. I'll adopt your sentinel mechanism since it indicates when to start a new prompt.
GitHub. Erdős #2. I returned to my cubicle, and saw under fluorescent light that the rat race is not to the swift, nor the memo to the wise, neither yet an increment to the meritorious, nor yet favour to men of skill; but payroll and chance happeneth to them all. — Ecclesiastes 9:11 CC BY-SA 4.0.