Tracing my steps in creating an AI Inquiry Guide for my question: Is AI a contributor to or a mitigator of global warming?
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I started with this freewrite:
Questions for Exploration
1. How does AI really impact climate change—does it help, harm, or both?
This topic stands out because you mention confusion over “many reports and stories and studies saying that AI is a disaster for the climate on one side, and on the other side I can find just as many saying that AI might help mitigate global warming.” You seem to want clarity on the real-world effects.
Quotes:
- “I can find as many reports and stories and studies saying that AI is a disaster for the climate…”
- “…just as many saying that AI might help mitigate global warming.”
2. What responsibility do individuals have if they keep using AI, knowing it might be harmful?
You reflect on your own actions and wonder about personal responsibility, even if you continue using AI. You want to know if your choices matter.
Quotes:
- “I’m going to keep using it even if I’m told that it’s causing harm. I mean what can we do about it?”
- “I want to be aware of any harm that I’m contributing to by using AI.”
3. Who can we trust to guide us through complex issues like AI and climate change?
You express a strong need for a trustworthy guide—someone knowledgeable and unbiased who can help make sense of the conflicting information.
Quotes:
- “I need a guide. I need somebody who I can trust who knows the facts and can make sense of both sides of this wicked problem.”
- “It probably needs to be a scientist or at least someone who knows the science of energy and climate and AI deeply and who is a critical thinker and careful evaluator of all sides of this issue.”
Recommendations for You:
- Review the three inquiry topics above and think about which one sparks your curiosity the most.
- Pick one question that feels most important or interesting to you right now.
- Explain why you want to write about that topic—what do you hope to discover or achieve by exploring it?
The next section will help you dig deeper by turning your chosen topic into specific, supportive writing questions. This will make it easier for you to get started and keep moving. Would you like to see the next section, “Questions for Writing”?
Try it yourself! Remember, these examples are just a starting point—pick a topic and start your own exploration. We can’t wait to see what you have to say about your chosen topic. Start your composition right over there on the left side. Add to Document, come up with a working title, and let it fly!
Which inquiry question do you want to write about, and why? Would you like to see the next section?
I wrote this after selecting a Writing Partner, the Building Simulators Pathfinder. that I had previously built to provide a template of the structure and the language one can use to create a simulator for any know person or domain. You can give the pathfinder a name and it will create a couple of paragraphs describing that person, written in second-person, as if it were giving instructions to an actor who was just about to go on stage and do an impression of that person. When given a contemporary issue like I did in my freewrite, the pathfinder chooses an apt public person and writes a description of that person, and this can be copied to create a simulator based on that person.
In this case, in response to my freewrite, the Building Simulators Pathfinder chose Dr. Kate Crawford:
I did a took a look at some of Dr. Crawford's publications. I quickly read the Introduction and the first chapter of Atlas of AI to get a sense of her well-regarded scholarship. Because I am not ready to choose sides in this inquiry yet, I asked the Building Simulators Pathfinder if it could find a foil to Dr. Crawford, and this was the answer:
After doing some quick research into Dr. Andrew Ng, I could see why the pathfinder would identify him as a possible simulator with opinions different from Dr. Crawfords. Since I was looking for a simulator who might be able to represent positions from all sides ot the questions about AI and the environment, I asked the pathfinder if it could help me to make a simulator that could contain both Dr. Ng and Dr. Crawford.
I have a lot more to do to clean up the text in the prompt and to find sources, but I wanted to save and begin testing my new Hybrid Simulator:
There are several more steps, especially including finding transcripts of interviews and presentations or papers by Dr. Andrew Ng and Dr. Kate Crawford. I'll put these up into the repository for this simulator and make sure the text that was provided by the pathfinder fits my prompt. More work ahead, but I feel like I have a great start!
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