GPT-4: A Copilot For The Mind (2023)

Large language models are perhaps the ultimate study buddy, that one thing that might help you actually absorb information while you’re reading. That’s Dan Shipper’s vision, as outlined in this essay from March 2023. Dan’s essay from last year stands out as a prescient reflection on what’s come since. And with OpenAI’s DevDay set for October 1 and Every taking a quarterly Think Week, we thought it was ripe to republish as part of our week of essays on the power of ChatGPT.

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Over the next year or two, I expect GPT-4 and its successors to become a copilot for the mind: a digital research assistant that will bring to bear the sum total of everything you’ve read, everything you’ve thought, and everything you’ve forgotten every time you touch a keyboard.

It will solve some of the perennial problems in productivity culture: remembering what you read, then helping you apply it to your writing, your business, and your life.

It will bring back the ideas, quotes, and memories you need, when you need them most, with no organizing, tagging, or linking required. It will work as a personalized extension of your intelligence available 24/7 at the touch of a button.

I’ve written about this a few times in “The End of Organizing” and “Where Copilots Work,” but this week it’s clear that the dominos are starting to falling into place: 

• GPT-4 sports an 8x larger context window (the main thing bounding copilot use cases is small context window sizes).
• Microsoft is building copilots into all of its 365 products. It aggregates all of your notes, documents, and meetings together to help you autocomplete memos, emails, and spreadsheets.

It’s still early, and these technologies will need a lot of work before they are ready for prime time. Impressive demos don’t equal actually useful software.

But in this essay, I want to explore in more detail the problems that I think this copilot for the mind might solve, and what’s feasible today with the advent of GPT-4.

Let’s dive in.

The problem with reading

I love reading, but I don’t remember much of what I read. I’ve tried all sorts of hacky solutions: highlights, Zettelkastens, Anki cards, book notes, and more.

The fundamental problem is that I don't know when I’m going to need a particular fact, quote, or idea again. So all of these strategies are aimed at either improving my memory to keep them top of mind, or creating an organizational strategy that makes sure I bump into them later when I need them.

To some degree, the solutions I’ve tried so far have worked—but they only take you so far. I go on and off with taking reading notes and building a Zettelkasten. It’s helpful, but it’s also a lot of work, and I don’t find myself referencing it that often.

Anki cards provide some glimmer of hope here because they purport to load your brain with the knowledge you want, rather than keeping it in an organizational system. But I find that Anki makes me good at remembering the answers to Anki cards—rather than bringing the knowledge contained in them into the world and into my writing.

What I really want is to be steeped in these ideas and in the language of these writers, thinkers, and artists all day—instead of just at night when I’m reading before bed. (There’s a reason why some of the best ideas come out of the university environment. It’s far easier to reference the eminent dead when that’s what everyone around you is also doing.)

The goal here is erudition and application. I want to be able to write referencing the best ideas that have come before me. And I want to be able to make decisions, and see the world through the lenses provided by the people I’ve read. In short, I want to participate as fully as possible in the intellectual and emotional evolution of humanity.

AI as copilot for the mind

When you have extra intelligence at your disposal, you don’t need to worry so much about remembering what you read. Sure, it’s better if you have a good memory. But an AI-powered copilot for the mind is going to beat a memory palace technique or even a genius-level IQ every day of the week.

Here’s how it might work:

Every time you touch the keyboard, the AI downloads and sorts through everything you’ve ever read and uses the sum total of that knowledge to help you complete your sentences.