Deep Background: Using AI as a Co-Reasoning Partner with Mike Caulfield

Mike Caulfield shares about using AI as a co-reasoning partner and his Deep Background tool on episode 590 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast.

Critical thinking problems with students turn out to be critical doing problems.
-Mike Caulfield

AI doesn’t naturally think in terms of provenance, in terms of how it got this piece of information. It’s a little bit of a bolt on afterthought.
-Mike Caulfield

Searching for information is a journey. How can we get the benefits of AI but still preserve that feeling of a journey?
-Mike Caulfield

I’m working on this issue of follow ups with AI. It is magic to get students to think of these responses as not a single transaction. They’re coaching the AI through a process, not to get a specific answer that they want, but to look at the sorts of sources that matter for the question.
-Mike Caulfield

• Deep Background: A “Superprompt” to change the way you use LLMs
• Reading the Room with SIFT Toolbox
• New SIFT Toolbox Release (Substack)
• SIFT Method (The Four Moves)
• Verified: How to Think Straight, Get Duped Less, and Make Better Decisions about What to Believe Online, by Mike Caulfield and Sam Wineburg
• Interview with Mike Caulfield on Deep Background (AACE Review)
• Is the LLM Response Wrong, or Have You Just Failed to Iterate It, by Mike Caulfield
• Episode 492: Verified with Mike Caulfield on Teaching in Higher Ed
• Starlight Bowl in San Diego
• Sound of Music
• “Everything Could Have Been a Huge Disaster”: Nathan Fielder on Making ‘The Rehearsal’ Season 2
• It Runs Through Me, Tom Misch (feat. De La Soul)
• Tom Misch: Tiny Desk Concert
• Me Myself and I, De La Soul (1989)
• The Magic Number, De La Soul (1989)
• Reasonable People with Tom Stafford
•  Pétanque