Co-Intelligence

Mollick, a Wharton professor who ran some of the earliest classroom and workplace experiments with large language models, sets out four rules for working with them — always invite AI to the table, be the human in the loop, treat it like a person but tell it what kind of person, and assume this is the worst model you will ever use — and builds the book around what he actually observed people doing with the tools rather than around capability forecasts.

Why it’s on the list: A practitioner’s account of what changes in real work when a capable general-purpose model is in the room, from someone running the experiments rather than predicting them.

Where I saw it: Michael Mauboussin’s favourite books of 2024, posted December 31, 2024.

Connections

• Ethan Mollick — the author.
• Generative AI · Large Language Models — the technology the book is about.
• Prompt Engineering — the craft his four rules mostly amount to.
• Future of Work — the question the experiments are aimed at.
• Michael Mauboussin — the curator whose 2024 list this came from.