My Background Processor and AI
How AI chats can send the human background processor into overdrive
I’ve always been creative—doing things my own way rather than the conventional way—and have been lucky enough to only work at jobs that I was fully committed to. But the outflow of creative ideas and insights became so amplified in the months I started using AI for extensive conversations that it alarmed me.
To give an example of my pre-AI creativity: when I was a substitute high school teacher, I designed custom-made fans for my students. On one side I put English mood adjectives from recent standardized tests paired with matching emoji; the other side showed which test questions to prioritize for different college admission tiers. I gave out these fans to interested students after they’d sworn never to bring the fans in during exam weeks. My hope was that students might accidentally learn these words by puzzling over the emoji pairings while waiting for the bus—leveraging their visual learning preferences, emoji familiarity, and love of free stuff.
While chatting with Claude, it occurred to me that the sudden creativity boost may have to do with the entire act of spelling out the ideas and visually processing the discussion as it unfolded on the screen, which seemed to “seed” these ideas (and even parts of the discussions I’d skimmed through) for my brain to “chew on.”
I don’t have a background in psychology; this is the lay person’s hypothesis that makes the most sense to me for understanding this surprising surge in productivity. But whether true or not, the takeaway is that with AI, as with everything in life, you reap what you sow: typing prompts into AI alone will not get a visual learner fresh ideas; if that were the case, writers would never encounter a writer’s block! You need to be present in the conversation to reap all the benefits. So if unleashing your creative potential is your goal, then my suggestion is to fully engage in these chats.
In the chat excerpts below, I’ve spelled out abbreviations and clarified references for readability—my actual prompts were more compressed due to context limits.
Want to see how this unfolded? Here are excerpts of pivotal points from those actual conversations.
Am I Being Too Creative?
Prompt: I think of work all the time (even when not actively doing it, something is “cooking” on the back burner and pops up when it’s “done”). Should I be worried of depleting my intellectual resources? I know it’s an out-there question, and I won’t hold you to your answer, but I’m wondering if this is something scientists have studied.
Why Now? What’s Different about This Job?
Prompt: “There’s also the possibility that you’ve finally found work that truly matches your capabilities and interests.” - Not true in my case. I’ve always loved my work and thought I was the perfect fit for those jobs. I really like being the consummate professional in everything I do (just not here, because I don’t proofread my prompts :D)
The liberation from psychological strictures (e.g., expectations from parents or mentors) was Claude’s initial hypothesis. But since that liberation had taken place well before my stint as a substitute teacher, my background processor kept looking for a better explanation.
AI Use as the Only Differentiator
Prompt: “Brainstorming: AI can help generate ideas and perspectives you might not immediately consider” - Not really. But the human background processor gets stimulated while I’m chatting (the typing, even with typos, seems to act as a trigger), and then ideas just pop into my head upon waking up or while I’m running an errand.
A Meta-moment
Prompt: Yes, I hadn’t thought of the typing aspect until now. So the background processor and connection-maker kicked in during this chat as well.
Visual Learner’s Luck
Prompt: Probably better with typing than just speaking to an AI, although that might depend on the person. I’m a visual learner (even for languages, I start with the textbooks and feel shaky about languages I picked up using Pimsleur—horrible) so maybe seeing the text helps? Those who are auditory learners (not sure if this is a term but you get what I’m saying) might be different. That might be more common among women, I guess?
