Jay Dixit
I teach people how to use AI as a Socratic thinking partner instead of a content generator.
Award-winning writer, Yale writing instructor, former Head of Community for Writers at OpenAI, and founder of Socratic AI.
I teach people a better way to use AI.
As a thinking partner, not a content generator.
To elicit human creativity, not outsource it.
As a tool for thinking, not a substitute for it.
I call my approach Socratic AI.
Bio
Jay Dixit is an award-winning writer, writing professor, and former Head of Community for Writers at OpenAI.
His journalism and writing have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Rolling Stone, Harvard Business Review, Wired, and Psychology Today.
Jay attended Yale University, where he studied nonfiction writing under Fred Strebeigh and Robert Stone, and graduated cum laude with distinction in the psychology major. His senior thesis was published in The Journal of Social Issues and has been cited more than 400 times.
Jay launched his journalism career covering college life for Rolling Stone, then went on to cover standup comedy for The New York Times, emerging as a leading voice covering psychology and neuroscience. His work appears in the anthology The Best of Technology Writing.
For four years, Jay served as Senior Editor at Psychology Today, where he covered personality, neuroscience, behavioral economics, decision making, learning and memory, social influence and persuasion, consumer behavior, happiness, love and relationships, and attraction and sex, writing and editing many of the magazine’s most successful cover stories. Later, he joined the NeuroLeadership Institute, where he wrote about creativity, performance, unconscious bias, and the neuroscience of diversity and inclusion.
Jay taught writing and storytelling at Yale University, where his acclaimed course The Art of Storytelling was offered as a senior writing seminar. He’s also the founder of Storytelling.NYC, through which he teaches storytelling classes, writing workshops, and corporate training seminars to companies including Amazon, IMDb, LG Electronics, Redfin, and Bank of America.
He’s also a winner of The Moth, a live stage storytelling competition based in New York, and his story “My Father’s Love” was featured on The Moth Radio Hour and NPR, and is the basis for the short film In Transit.
As a red carpet photographer for Wikipedia, Jay has photographed Conan O’Brien, Emma Stone, Matt Damon, Jeremy Strong, Ana de Armas, Sydney Sweeney, Jude Law, Anne Hathaway, Kirsten Dunst, Willem Dafoe, Jennifer Lopez, Demi Moore, J.K. Simmons, Ron Howard, Judd Apatow, and Mike Judge, as well as futurist Ray Kurzweil, investor Vinod Khosla, whistleblower Frances Haugen, and Nobel Prize-winning journalist Maria Ressa. His red carpet photos have garnered more than 10 million views on Wikipedia.
As an interviewer, Jay has spoken to Spike Lee, Tim Roth, Willem Dafoe, Tony Robbins, Kristen Schaal, Valerie Plame, Will Shortz, Paula Scher, as well as researchers including Dan Ariely, Jonathan Haidt, Mihály Csikszentmihályi, and Helen Fisher. Jay also conducted George Carlin’s last interview, which the legendary comedian called the “most complete interview” of his entire career.
At OpenAI, Jay authored some of the company’s flagship education resources—praised internally as among the strongest writing on openai.com—including guides for writers and students on how to use ChatGPT for brainstorming, wordfinding, research, and iterative editorial feedback. His Socratic approach to AI helped shape ChatGPT’s Study Mode, and he’s taught the method to students and faculty at Harvard, Columbia, and Wharton, as well as SXSW EDU and PopTech.
Today, Jay runs Socratic AI, an ethical AI consultancy that teaches knowledge workers, companies, and universities how to use AI to surface their own best ideas, express themselves with greater clarity, and improve their work through iterative feedback.
A few of the moments I’m most proud of:
A few of my favorite things I’ve written.
All writing →What I’m doing now.
Socratic AI
Ethical AI consultancy and keynotes for companies and universities.
Storytelling.NYC
Storytelling and writing workshops for teams.
The Substack
Essays on writing, creativity, and using AI without outsourcing your thinking.
Red Carpet
Portraits for Wikipedia at the Nobel Prizes, Sundance, TIFF, and NYFF.
Notes on human creativity in the age of AI.
Ideas, techniques, and examples on how to use AI to aim higher and think better — to challenge your thinking, not replace it.