The Universal Self Instructor: An Epitome of Forms and General Reference Manual was published in 1883 during a time of significant change. The Industrial Revolution was gaining strength, immigration was surging, and the cities were growing at a rapid pace, some doubling in size in a decade. People were trying to make sense of their changing world and adapt to the challenges of an industrial society. The book’s goal was to provide in one place “a publication embracing in a single volume such a quantity of practical information” as needed by the citizens of the emerging world.
The Universal Self-Instructor covered a wide range of topics, from legal forms and bookkeeping to advice on how to write a letter or treat a medical condition. There were also sections on the latest technological advances (like telegraphy and phrenology). It served as a source of learning and a basis for the personal growth to which so many aspired.
It is interesting to compare the Table of Contents of The Universal Self-Instructor with a search of GPTs in ChatGPT. A GPT is a specialized application built on top of ChatGPT, the most prominent of generative AI platforms. For many topics, no specialization is necessary; ChatGPT itself can provide exactly what the user is looking for. If you want to find out an historical fact, learn about a person, or draft a memo in a certain style, a relatively simple prompt will get you what you want. But if you want to go deeper, there are popular GPTs for specialized subjects. Currently available GPTs provide legal advice, do bookkeeping, and address medical concerns. They will also tutor you on technological advances, like AI and cryptocurrencies. The big difference, other than the era of their introduction, is that GPTs are interactive: you ask specific questions and get responsive answers (albeit, at times, with caveats).
There are unique twists to GPTs that can make them even more intriguing. Instead of using a GPT to learn the biography of a notable person, there are GPTs that help you write your own biography. Instead of using a GPT to learn the history of an era, there is a GPT that lets you explore alternate histories. GPTs aren’t just a better old thing; they are becoming a new thing.
But what if you just want to learn? A GPT can be a powerful way of quickly building new knowledge. It is like a personal tutor, one that can significantly enhance your learning by meeting you at your current level of understanding. I was astounded by the depth and nuance I received in trying to make sense of Heidegger using a GPT called Philosophy Sage, for example. The GPT introduced me to Heidegger’s key philosophical contributions, enabled me to probe terms that I did not clearly understand, and helped me to put Heidegger the man in a broader historical context. I was even able to relate his work as a professor of philosophy in Nazi Germany to that of Walter Ciszek, a contemporary who was a priest imprisoned in Russia during World War II.
An example of a GPT tutor with very broad scope is Mr. Ranedeer. It can customize learning for your personal learning style, adjust its responses to your level of knowledge, and focus its lessons on your specific goals. If you want to systematically learn a new area, Mr Ranedeer can generate a detailed, step-by-step learning plan and help you to accomplish it, as if you had a knowledgeable tutor at your side.
Creating a basic GPT is really quite easy. People closest to the work and without coding experience can do it. I know of a few examples that indicate the range and accessibility of the tool: a nurse who is creating a GPT for discharge management for a care facility; a 10th grade World Lit teacher who created a set of GPTs to help students review essays that they had studied earlier in the academic year; and an innovation manager who created a GPT to help select a business model to fit an innovative new concept. More sophisticated GPTs, ones that draw on large volumes of base material, require additional skills, but basic GPTs are valuable, and they democratize the creation of expert assistants.
What does this mean for business leaders?
- GPTs specialized for your business can be powerful job aids, making complex (and sometimes contradictory) manuals interactive. The people doing the work can create the GPTs.
- GPTs can help manage the scale, scope and pace of learning that wil be required in the next decades. Unlike online courses and YouTube videos, they can provide structure and create an interactive tutorial experience that accelerates learning.
- GPTs can also be used to capture the expertise of experts in a domain who are retiring soon. This was a major motivator of expert systems in the 1990s. The barriers to doing so are now much lower than they were then, and the experts can do much of the programming themselves.
Technology is creating an explosion in both knowledge and the ability to harness that knowledge. Smart executives will encourage their staffs to experiment enough to take advantage of this, the low-hanging fruit of generative AI.