Outsourcing Executive Function with AI

Hey Team!

While AI has become a buzzword that has lost much meaning, there are still many use cases that can help with our ADHD. One of the places that I have been enjoying exploring is how I can outsource some of my executive functions to these applications so that I can save my brain for the important stuff.

In today's episode, we'll first examine executive function so that we know what we're really working with here. Then, we'll explore a number of tools that we can use—from large language models (LLMs) to tools to help with your calendar, and even smaller tools fit for goblins.

Also, before we get into anything about AI, I do want to make a quick disclaimer about some of the ethics of using these tools and also how they were created. While these tools can be great in assisting with what we create, it's also important that we're still doing our own work and not passing off what LLM did as our own work. I have been using some of these tools to help create episodes, and even cite some of the ways I am doing so in this episode. But what I'm not doing is feeding a prompt into an LLM and just using that. That would be lazy, irresponsible and not something that anyone wants. However, just because I'm not doing that doesn't mean that other people aren't—this is something to particularly look out for with new books about ADHD that aren't coming from established authors and creators.

Additionally, there are ethical concerns about how the training data for many of the LLMs was obtained. This is especially a concern in regard to the lack of content used to source this material. This has been seen more in terms of art and how those models are trained without the artist's knowledge, but it also applies to written word. While I still have been using these systems, I think it is important that we encourage more ethical sourcing of training data and only using data with consent.

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This Episode's Top Tips

1. We can better understand executive function through the lens of self-regulation. There are three core areas that we can look at here: working memory, cognitive flexibility, and inhibitory control.
   
   
2. Tools like LLMs can help us create starting points for our work. By prompting the LLM to ask us questions instead it can help us better think through our problems.
   
   
3. When looking to add a new tool to your repertoire, think about what problem it is going to be solving for rather than just looking for the new shiny.