What are the AI Field Notes?
A transparent look at how Artificial Intelligence is used in this project—what it contributes, where it falls short, and how it shapes the work as it unfolds.
The AI Field Notes are working notes on how I am using artificial intelligence as a thinking, research, and writing partner in the Memoir Project.
They are not tutorials, prompt collections, or product reviews. They are reflections on process: what I’m trying, what helps, what doesn’t, what I’m keeping, and what I’m discarding as the work evolves. Some entries record small discoveries; others document doubts, frustrations, or second thoughts.
Writing these notes in public is essential to what I’m trying to do. The Memoir Project depends heavily on memory, authorship, and interpretation, and it feels important to make the tools and methods visible. Mainly, though, I have a long-standing conviction that humans learn best by doing and making things. I observed that for the better part of a decade in the 1990s, when I owned and ran a summer computer camp for kids. Spellbound by having control over an engaging new technology, they fearlessly embraced learning through trial and error.
I’m approaching a personal project—a memoir for my current and future family—like my students did in computer camp. Experimentally. Try stuff. Ask questions. See what works and what doesn’t.
The AI Field Notes run alongside the memoir entries themselves. They will usually be written at roughly the same time as the vignettes they reference, and links connect the two. Readers interested in the finished narrative can follow the memoir alone; readers curious about the human–nonhuman collaboration behind the scenes may find these notes a useful companion. If the stars align, perhaps even fun and fascinating.
Nothing here is polished or final. These are field notes in the literal sense: provisional observations made while the work is underway. They reflect experimentation, learning, missteps, and revision as much as success.
If you are interested in how AI might (or might not) be useful in your own writing, research, or creative projects, you may find something here worth knowing—or worth avoiding.