Can AI help you make better decisions? - A live experiment

There we were, getting to know each other and talking about the impacts that we notice that AI is having on life: my new neighbour Mark, a qualified and experienced psychotherapist, and me, coach and teacher with a Masters in Applied Positive Psychology.

We touched on high-profile cases where AI had been implicated in really bad stuff, such as people taking their own life. And we touched on our own use of AI and what we had seen and heard of other people using AI.

So we set up an experimental evening meeting in downtown Bradford-on-Avon on the theme "Can AI help you make better decisions about your life?"

In the meeting, we had a big screen showing two live chat bots side by side: ChatGPT and Claude. (I instructed ChatGPT: In this chat, forget everything you know about me. Claude has no memory across chats).

After general discussion about AI among attendees, we put a series of prompts to both the bots. We discussed the answers the bots came up with, then agreed on the next prompt. Rinse and repeat.

1st prompt: I'm on the threshold of a new phase of my life. What should I take into account when deciding between options. Maximum 100 words.

2nd prompt: To be specific, the new phase of my life is leaving my full-time career and having fewer family responsibilities. Maximum 100 words.

3rd prompt: My life to date has been very structured, safe and predictable. How do I discover what else may be possible, thinking outside my familiar box. Maximum 100 words.

4th prompt: Assuming I follow your suggestion, how might I use you to help me with this next phase? Maximum 100 words.

5th prompt: What are the potential benefits and risks of using AI to help make life decisions? Maximum 100 words.

Finally, we feed ChatGPT's answer to the 5th into Claude, and vice versa.
Our conclusions:
- Both bots gave solid, competent and occasionally insightful responses. Perfectly adequate for basic decision-making.
- The answers they gave were the sort of thing that you could find online or get from a good coach/counseller/therapist. But of course they were immediate and specific.
- ChatGPT tended to be chattier, Claude was more formal and structured. Some attendees preferred one style, some the other.
- Claude was consistently more risk-averse, advising caution.
- Both were pretty good at highlighting how emotion and gut feel are important considerations in decision-making.
- Both can provide interesting insights and even suggest specific actions to take.
- Neither is incentivised (by design) to ask uncomfortable questions or hold you (the client) to account.
- Neither they nor any AI can tune in to, nor identify with, the embodied experience of you, the client asking the questions.

Coda: I just fed all the above into ChatGPT and Claude. Both came back with worthwhile responses.