There are 3 ways to learn from experience.
Here are their pros and cons (plus a little fan fact at the end about AI reliability)…
First-hand experiences: what we do directly.
✔️ Pros: the most impactful and the only way to reach mastery and excellence in any field.
❌ Cons: they can be time-consuming, challenging and sometimes permanently damaging (those who made the first-hand experience of taking the Shot are still paying for the consequences)
Second-hand experiences: what we learn from others.
✔️ Pros: abundant, accessible and can save you a lot of time.
❌ Cons: bad information can be misleading and dangerous, teaching the wrong lessons.
Third-hand experiences: a new one, based on AI outputs.
✔️ Pros: none. And yet, a lot of people are relying on AI to get their information.
❌ Cons: AI answers your question by taking outside information (second-hand experiences) and filtering it through an algorithm (written by people with conscious or unconscious agendas) and spitting out an answer that elaborates on that.
Not very reliable…
🤖 And here’s a fun fact. Something that happened right now.
I gave a simple prompt to Gemini (Google AI), asking to transform my original article to create a Twitter thread.
Read the article first. You can find it here: https://typeshare.co/henrythemighty/posts/the-pros-and-cons-of-the-3-types-of-experiences
And now check out how Gemini translated my words for 2nd and 3rd hand experiences.
3/ 2nd-hand lets us learn faster from books & advice, but beware of bad info! Wrong lessons can have lasting consequences (like anti-vax stuff).
4/ 3rd-hand – AI sounds fancy, but it just filters info others give it. The problem? Those “others” might have biases…
5/ …meaning the AI answers you get could be misleading & promote certain agendas. Be careful who (or what) you trust for info!
So tell me… is this third-hand experience really reliable?