The importance of note taking in the age of AI
You don't need to be told that LLMs impact our critical thinking. You can feel it. When you ask ChatGPT or Claude a question, you are skipping the effort that comes with finding the answer. This is the selling point. It makes life easier.
Why walk when you can drive? Why cook when you can order in? Why read when you can summarise?
Each of these examples, whilst adding convenience, also takes something away.
Your fitness. Your health. Your comprehension.
I'm not saying these things are inherently bad, but that you should be aware of what you lose from relying on them.
And whilst LLMs have their uses, you need to be aware of what you lose.
Critical thinking and retention skills.
Before ChatGPT and Claude entered the mainstream, I had been working in my field for 10 years. To be in this field, I needed a bachelor degree, which took years of study to acquire. I was working at a senior level with a high level of daily variation. And I achieved all of this without AI assistance.
As had many millions of people now and in the decades before.
Whilst I am no longer in my original field of study, I still remember the minute details of rules and techniques I learned many years ago, despite their irrelevance to my current life.
This got me thinking. How was I able to learn before the rise of AI, and what helped me retain my knowledge? The answer in my view is note taking.
Think about it. Skilled note taking fills in the AI gap between asking a question and receiving an answer. That being the research process, the part where we actively think and process our thoughts in order to understand.
These thoughts get written down for later reference. This brings similar energy saving benefits as AI, in that you can rely on your notes without having to actively remember every detail.
Naturally, this process isn't as quick as typing a question into an LLM, but I think should be highly considered as a way of preserving our critical thinking skills. Until AI, we had no choice but to think for ourselves and I think as a species we have taken this skill for granted.
As the saying goes: 'Use it or lose it!'
And if you take your notes digitally, then over time you can form a knowledge base. That is, a collection of all your obtained knowledge stored and searchable on your device. Your knowledge base will be written in a format that you understand, containing information that is personal and relevant to you whilst also remaining private.
For this, I use a program called Obsidian1 (which is where I am currently writing this post). Obsidian is free open source software that is available on all major platforms and allows you take, organise and search a vast number of notes. For the visual user, Obsidian also has a graph view that enables you to organise your notes into a galaxy like cluster.
Don't get me wrong, I am not saying that LLMs have no use in our lives. I just think it is important that we are mindful of the drawbacks of relying on AI. Critical thinking is a very human characteristic, and relying on a machine to do this for us strips us of meaning.
We need to approach AI like we approach social media, junk food, video games and alcohol. These things can be fun and fulfilling, but we know what we stand to lose without moderation.
AI use needs to be intentional, moderate and meaningful.
Sources
https://obsidian.md/↩