https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CH24196H/
Tell a little about yourself as the author of Calculating Your Grit Quotient (GQ): As Reported by Artificial Intelligence.
My name is Tom Lough. I was born and raised in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. After ten years in the US Army, I began a teaching career that spanned high school, college, and university courses, as well as international science teacher workshops. During that time, learned a lot about human nature, picking up a PhD in Educational Psychology along the way.
I have always been intrigued by the ability of one’s attitude to make a difference in one’s achievements. I became aware of this personally in my training for the Olympic trials in modern pentathlon and had been looking for a way to condense this awareness into a single concept or approach. The idea of grit came along at just the right time.
I have also done a bit of writing and learned recently about the availability of artificial intelligence (AI) systems such as ChatGPT to influence, augment, or replace the efforts of writers in many fields. I became curious about AI’s potential and began exploring its abilities. From that effort, the GQ book emerged.
Actually, I’m more of the publisher rather than the author of the GQ book. I leaned heavily on AI to provide most of the content, as I will tell you about in a moment.
What was the inspiration behind using AI to write a book about the Grit Quotient?
For several years, I have followed the grit research and reporting of Angela Duckworth. As a West Point graduate, I was interested to learn that her initial research and findings were developed at the academy. As a member of the 1968 US Olympic Team, I realized the key role that grit played in becoming an Olympian. In short, I became a kind of cheerleader and advocate for her work.
Recently, I had been exploring the potential of the convergence of AI and the just-in-time publishing system of Amazon to transform how the printed/published word could be developed and shared around the world. As part of that exploration, I developed a series of books available on Amazon as examples of how this might come about. See https://www.amazon.com/stores/Tom-Lough/author/B0CDS4R8KZ
Then I realized that AI could also serve as a catalyst of sorts to help readers learn about some topics in a more personalized or individualized way. Because the topic of grit was so significant to me, I decided to see how AI would treat it as a book topic. When I saw the various subtopics AI suggested, I got the idea of using them as components of something I ended up calling the GQ or grit quotient.
How does the AI system calculate an individual's Grit Quotient? What parameters or criteria does it consider?
The AI system does not actually calculate an individual’s GQ. Instead, the GQ is based on the self-assigned scores of ten grit-related parameters which were identified by AI. Readers assess the extent to which they are passionate, willing to work, and goal-seeking, as a few examples, and use a scale to develop a score for each parameter. By adding up the ten scores, they arrive at a total, their own GQ.
