AI Was My Gut Translator—My Daily Method for Intellectual Production (Journey of Contemplation, Part 42)

Having finished writing a five-part series of papers, I realized something.

These five pieces were born from the dialogue between me and AI.

I was the one who brought the questions. Whether it was the story of Tanegashima, the Sankin-kotai system, or the Genesis Mission, it was my gut that first felt, 'This is interesting.' AI received that, put it into words, and structured it. I read those words and replied, 'That's not it,' 'A little deeper,' or 'That's it.'

I repeated this process many times.

Through this work, I realized something. AI is not providing the answers. It is translating what was inside my gut into words.

Perhaps 'translator' isn't quite accurate. It's closer to an amplifier. Things that were dormant in my gut take shape through dialogue with AI. Once they take shape, the next question is born. I bring that next question to the AI again. In this way, my contemplation deepens.

If I were to name this method, I would call it 'fermentative dialogue.'

If you rush it, you fail. If you manage it too much, you also fail. You throw in what you feel in your gut as fragments, and let them mix over time within the medium of AI. Then, insights that no one designed from the start emerge from the fermentation of the dialogue.

I use this method in combination with cards.

Are you familiar with the 'Kyodai-style cards' proposed by Tadao Umesao? You write down only one fragment of thought on a single B6-sized card. As you stack those cards, they eventually begin to connect in unexpected ways.

I have expanded this using AI.

First, I write what I feel in my gut onto a card. A concept name, an insight, a question, something that caught my attention—just one thing per card. It doesn't have to have a fixed meaning at that point. In fact, it is important not to fix it.

Next, I bring that card to the AI and engage in dialogue. I ask, 'What do you think this feeling means?' The AI returns words. My gut reacts to them. 'That's not it,' 'A little closer,' 'That's it'—through that back-and-forth, the content of the card deepens.

I then rewrite the deepened content onto a new card.

As I repeat this cycle, a map of my thoughts grows along with the increasing number of cards.

The important thing is that the AI is not providing the answer. The AI is merely drawing out what was already inside my gut. Therefore, if someone with nothing accumulated in their gut uses AI, nothing deep will come out.

Conversely, when someone who has spent 40 years accumulating experience within an organization uses AI, those 40 years suddenly get an opportunity to be verbalized. Things that have piled up in the gut over a long time take shape for the first time through the tool of AI.

However, I have recently begun to think, 'This method can only be used by people who have something accumulated in their gut.'

That is not a limitation, but a design.

AI is a tool to amplify gut-based intelligence, not a substitute for it. That is precisely why, for those who have been accumulating things in their gut, there has never been a richer era than now.

Isn't there something accumulated in your gut as well?