Why PKL exists

PKL began with a book about the way social media platforms erode critical thinking. 100 pages in, I realized that what I was writing was obsolete. Social media platforms overload us with information and spur us to form beliefs emotionally rather than logically. But they don’t actually think for us. ChatGPT and other LLMs do.

The first time I used an LLM, it was like stepping into Neal Stephenson’s iconic book Snow Crash. In it, a virtual Librarian sits inside the Metaverse (Zuckerberg didn’t invent it, Stephenson did), self-aware, conversational, having read essentially everything. Stephenson created the Librarian in 1992 but it took thirty years for anyone to build it. What matters now is what we build with it.

LLMs are training us to think less as we outsource more to them. We’ve become middle managers of the thinking process. If you’ve already developed the writing and thinking you’re outsourcing, you can hold that role. For those who haven’t invested thousands of hours into those skills, LLMs will provide an answer they’ll trust without questioning. It takes deep thinking to land on the right questions.

Maybe there’s an alternate future to the one we’re building. One where we use AI to help students think better — to defend a claim against real pushback, to revise until an argument actually holds, and to build the habits of reasoning that writing has always required. That’s what PKL is for.

And yes, I’m taking back the em dash.