The Emergence of Prepared Knowledge

Apple announced Apple Intelligence at their Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC). Apple Intelligence brings the power of AI to a device - namely the iPhone.

The most fascinating part of the announcement was a new distinction between personal knowledge and world knowledge.

Personal Knowledge - Your Digital Information

Apple identified personal knowledge as the wealth of information stored on your iPhone—meetings, notes, emails, photos, and all other personal data. Apple Intelligence looks to make this knowledge accessible with AI.

Think of it as an enhanced Siri but smarter, capable of intuitively managing and mobilizing your files and information. This could supercharge your personal productivity, not to mention help you just find stuff when you need it.

This strategy makes sense for Apple. They own the device, and they are the only company outside of Google (Android) that could connect these disparate data sources as quickly and accurately.

However, many answers we need are outside of our devices. This is what Apple calls World Knowledge.

World Knowledge - Information from Others

World Knowledge is all the information not on your phone - think everything on the Internet.

Apple is outsourcing access to World Knowledge, initially partnering with ChatGPT. (In the years ahead, look for them to auction this to the highest bidder.)

This outsourcing enables Apple to use the best-in-class large language model (LLM) to generate answers based on the entirety of global knowledge. Utilizing sophisticated AI models like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, it will create text and images that could be used for emails, documents, presentations, and more.

Equally important for Apple, incorrect or hallucinated answers are ChatGPT's fault, not Apple's! In this way, they protect their brand and avoid lawsuits while still enabling advanced AI features.

Prepared Knowledge - Bridging Personal and World Knowledge

A third type of knowledge missing from Apple's framing of the world is Prepared Knowledge.

Prepared knowledge is specific knowledge sequenced and organized to shape the output. 

This is what Chipp unlocks for its users.

Each of us has specific insights and experiences that are not captured by the massive vacuum that is ChatGPT and large language models. By sharing your personal knowledge supported by a foundation of world knowledge, others can create ideas based on your expertise and recommended sequence.

Personal + World Knowledge in Action

Using AI individually is a perfect example of combining personal knowledge with world knowledge.

For example, you may write blog posts a certain way. When you are doing the work personally, you combine your personal knowledge with world knowledge. You may ask ChatGPT: "write me a blog post about the future of AI and education including a focus on the importance of project-based learning and integrating AI." This question starts with your personal knowledge about education, project-based learning and AI. It then augments it with ideas from the world knowledge it can find.

Naturally through the editing and conversation with ChatGPT, you will be using your personal processes, terminology, and ideas. Your original kernel of an idea is expanded with world knowledge and then trimmed back with your personal expertise. This is a powerful augmentation of your personal creativity.

Prepared Knowledge in Action

When you want others to leverage your processes, terminology, and ideas, however, prepared knowledge is needed.

Prepared knowledge offers a specific lens on world knowledge. Your colleague might ask to write a blog post. If they do not have the domain expertise in AI and education, they will need prompting to bring forth ideas.

Using prepared knowledge, the AI can be pre-trained to ask the writer questions, giving examples from your own expertise. The AI may suggest topics or questions found from your previous work, e.g. would you want to write about AI? How about education and AI? Do you want to dive deeper on a specific aspect such as testing or access to technology?

Once topic are identified, the AI can be further trained to include specific formatting, terminology, tone, or more. This prepared knowledge continues to elicit information from the writer in a way that matches your typical process.

The world knowledge helps generate the content, but your prepared knowledge informs how it is formulated and presented.

Prepared knowledge provides the multi-player version of personal knowledge. Capturing a company or organization's insights is not done at the device. Instead, it can be done with a prepared AI tool—Chipp being an easy solution.

The power of prepared knowledge is it enables anyone to use AI, even without knowing anything about the technology. By simply answering questions, the invidiaul will be walked through a pre-defined sequence and can unknowingly direct AI to use world knowledge in a particular way.

This is AI for people who don't like AI.

The Future of Knowledge - Personal and Professional

Apple Intelligence unlocks the potential of personal knowledge built upon the power of world knowledge. Tools like Chipp takes it further by augmenting world knowledge with your professional perspective.

The future of knowledge is personal and professional. World knowledge gives everyone the summation of human intelligence. This mass of information on its own is generic and unwieldy.

Personal knowledge grounds this information in your own life. Prepared knowledge grounds this information in a pre-defined sequence and context.

Prepared knowledge enables AI to be effectively used by companies, organizations, and customers.

Adoption of AI and Unlocking Knowledge

Apple Intelligence will instantly provide the power of AI to nearly a billion people- each an expert in their own domain. Prepared knowledge can help them share their personal productivity with others.

Look for prepared knowledge to be the next important step in the march towards AI adoption.