AI Summer School #4: On the Lookout for Wild Boar

There is a well-trodden path I usually take when walking to Bagno Vignoni, but this morning I ignored it.

I knew where it went and I knew it would be easy, so instead I went across the hillsides, through the vineyards, clambered down tracks that were steep and overgrown and into woods with an alarming amount of rustling (which, with all the wild boar around here, had me planning my reactions should one appear).

Halfway down I did wonder whether the sensible thing would have been to stick to the route I knew. Then it struck me that this is exactly the mindset we keep asking people to find with AI.

Carrying on the way we have always done things is the easiest thing in the world. We write the report the same way, do the research the same way, prep for the meeting the same way, and start with the blank page because that is where we have always started, telling ourselves AI isn't very good at this sort of thing anyway.

Or you can occasionally ask what happens if you try a different route. It might be worse, it might not work at all, and you might come back convinced the old way was right, which is a perfectly good outcome. But it might save you an hour, or show you an angle on the problem you had not thought to look for.

You will never find out unless you wander off the path now and then, and that willingness to think "I know how I normally do this, but what if I did it differently today" is worth more to you than any prompting technique I could teach you in a workshop.

So take the long way round something this week.

PS I never did see the boar, though I did find a view I would have walked straight past on the other route.