Putting AI to Work: Telling Gerald Stulc's Story
Ten years ago, Gerald Stulc stepped into a role that seemed almost preordained. The Saratoga-based Academy for Lifelong Learning (ALL) had reached a pivotal moment in its growth—popular among retirees hungry for intellectual engagement, but in need of steady guidance to shape its future. When the nominating committee asked him to consider chairing the organization, Stulc’s background made him a natural fit. A physician and educator who believed deeply that learning should never end with a degree or a career, he brought both the discipline of science and the curiosity of a humanist to the table.
Gerald Stulc is chair of the Academy for Lifelong Learning. We produced this profile of him with the Smartacus Neural Net.
What convinced him to accept, Stulc recalls, was not the prestige of the position but the promise of building a community where people could continue to grow, exchange ideas, and stay awake to the world.
“Learning is what keeps us alive and human,” he often told friends—a conviction that has carried him through a decade of leadership at ALL.
"I was a nerd in junior high school," he confesses. "I mean, I was truly a nerd. I would spend my weekends in the library, going through the card catalog, looking up the books on the shelves and complaining when the book was checked out. In eighth grade, I became hooked on medical history. I could name you every major airplane from the First World War."
Stulc approaches artificial intelligence with what he calls a blend of excitement and wariness. “I’m wary, first of all, because I don’t know where it’s going to take us. It’s a brave new world,” he admits, quickly adding, “I’m excited about it at the same time.”
Stulc says he plans to take Fun with AI, our six-week ALL course. We figured we'd start with a demonstration of the Smartacus Neural Net, the suite of AI tools by which we're able to efficiently transform interviews with experts into full-length feature stories. We would do this by tasking Smartacus with writing a magazine-length feature profile of him written in the style of his favorite author.
"Hemingway," he said.
"Fine," we said, and got started.
We've discovered in our AI tools a powerful new way to "mine" and publish expert knowledge. Below is a detailed "how-to," which we provide in detail for any journalist who'd like to try a new AI-augmented approach to reporting.
STEP ONE:
EXPANSIVE RESEARCH AND GENERATION OF QUESTIONS
ChatGPT-5 will draw on sources from across the world’s knowledge: books, research, and much of the public web. A quick search typically takes less than a minute. A "Deep Search" can take as long as a half hour, depending on the subject.
We did a "Deep Search," giving ChatGPT this prompt:
For a magazine length profile of Gerald Stulc for Civic Conversations, please generate everything you can find about him, spotlighting especially the contributions he makes to the community in leading the Saratoga-based chapters of the Academy for Lifelong Learning and Torch Club. Tell us all about his upbringing, education, military service, experience as a surgeon, and books he has written. Please also include all the details you can find about his family.
ChatGPT gave us this. We then asked ChatGPT to generate 20 questions for us to pose to Gerald. It gave us this.
STEP TWO:
INTERVIEW IN ZOOM TRANSCRIBED BY OTTER
A few days before our interview, we shared ChatGPT's 20 questions with Stulc to give him the opportunity to think through a few of the main points he might like to make or any stories he might like to share with us.
Then we convened in Zoom, inviting the "Otter Notetaker" to join us so as to record and transcribe every word, enabling us to immediately download in Word a near-perfect transcript, having independently identified the voices of all four participants: Stulc, Bill Walker, Dominic Giordano, and I.
STEP THREE:
CREATING OUR 'GERALDBOT' IN NOTEBOOKLM
NotebookLM is what Google calls its "AI research tool and thinking partner that can analyze your sources, turn complexity into clarity and transform your content.” I discovered its full power last March in writing a series of feature stories on the maple farmers of Thurman, a hamlet in the southern Adirondacks. I was so impressed by its work I reported on it here.
To create a "notebook" in NotebookLM is like creating an extension of my mind that encompasses everything I might conceivably want to write on a subject. By writing or speaking a simple prompt, I may extract from this store of knowledge pieces of writing in any form with any focus I want.
Gemini is the Google tool that operates in NotebookLM. When constrained in a notebook, Gemini can't "hallucinate" because its knowledge is limited solely to the sources I've uploaded. It "knows" what a magazine feature sounds like and will generate a draft at any length I specify and in whatever voice I wish.
This is the "GeraldBot" we created in NotebookLM:
We call the notebook we've stocked with Stulc-pertinent sources our "GeraldBot." That's because, with all of the sources we've uploaded, we've essentially created a simulation of Gerald that enables us to extract his story.
STEP FOUR:
TASKING CHATGPT TO WRITE OUR PROMPT FOR NOTEBOOKLM
The key to writing with AI is to generate highly informed and detailed prompts. The best way to do this, we've discovered, is to task ChatGPT with writing it for us.
So that ChatGPT what "know" everything that NotebookLM would be able to extract form our "GeraldBot" in generating a first draft of our feature, I gave it this NotebookLM-generated Briefing Doc and Timeline.
Then I gave it this prompt:
We're looking for a 2000-word feature story written in the style of Ernest Hemingway that introduces Gerald Stulc to the Saratoga community as the chair of the Academy of Lifelong Learning and a Renaissance man with a passion for teaching. We want to hear as much of his life story as we need to hear in order to understand how and his wife came to Saratoga Springs in 2014 and how his interests in medicine, writing, art and music have evolved over a lifetime. We want to hear in depth about his experience as a teacher In ALL, including the breadth of courses he has taught and his plan to teach The History of China this fall. And we want to hear in detail about ALL's separation from Empire State College in 2022 and how it has fared since.
We want to hear about the influence that his grandfather and parents have had on him. We also want to know about his wife and sons. Simplify and condense to the greatest extent possible his story of escaping Czechoslovakia and coming to Cedar Rapids, his decision to pursue a dual major at Cornell College, and his medical training. Detail in depth his decision to earn his masters in creative writing and then writing The Surgeon's Mate. Keep the prompt short enough so that NotebookLM can accommodate it without our having to rework it.
To be sure ChatGPT knew what we meant by "in the style of Ernest Hemingway," I asked it to clearly describe it.
STEP FIVE:
TASKING NOTEBOOKLM TO GENERATE A FIRST DRAFT
ChatGPT was able to generate this detailed instruction for us to give NotebookLM:
Write a 2000-word feature story in the style of Ernest Hemingway that introduces Gerald Stulc to the Saratoga Springs community as chair of the Academy for Lifelong Learning (ALL) and a Renaissance man with a passion for teaching.
Include:
His early life: born in Czechoslovakia, refugee to Cedar Rapids, Iowa; influences of his grandfather, parents, and grandmother; being a “nerd” in junior high, spending every day in the library; writing a three-page novel in third grade about a turtle going to Mars.
His dual major at Cornell College, medical training at University of Iowa and Georgetown, and distinguished career as surgeon and Navy Flight Surgeon. Condense and simplify this background.
His artistic and literary inclinations: MFA in creative writing, encouragement from his wife Diana, and the writing of The Surgeon’s Mate; also his nonfiction Celadon and The Canvas Within.
His move with his wife to Saratoga Springs in 2014, their two sons, and his wide-ranging passions (painting, guitar, gardening, militaria, etc.).
His teaching career at ALL since 2015: the breadth of courses taught (plagues, military medicine, WWI and WWII, art and anatomy, biology of aging, Chinese history) and his plan to teach The History of China this fall. Emphasize his love of teaching and performance.
The 2022 separation of ALL from Empire State College, the challenges of losing classrooms and members during COVID, and the recovery and growth since under executive director Jeff Shinaman.
His leadership role as board chair, his vision for ALL’s future, and the value of in-person learning.
Use a Hemingway style—direct, spare, vivid. Convey his Renaissance spirit, his humor, and his deep commitment to lifelong learning.
After "thinking" for about 20 seconds or so, NotebookLM generated a first draft, which was OK -- but I knew ChatGPT could do better.
STEP SIX:
C0MPLETING THE STORY
ChatGPT and Gemini in NotebookLM offer different strengths that complement each other nicely.
Gemini is superb at research tasks — it combs through our sources, pulls passages with precision, and builds faithful summaries. It leans om style toward the factual and concise, making it ideal for briefing documents or structured outlines. It keeps us grounded in the evidence,
ChatGPT, on the other hand, excels at writing. It can shift tone, emulate different voices, styles and genres, and weave narrative connections that give text rhythm, imagery, and flow. When we ask it to change a document, it responds with nuance, shaping raw information into compelling prose. ChatGPT lifts our material into finished writing that resonates with readers.
I produced our second draft by asking ChatGPT to first "review, evaluate, and critique" the first draft we generated in NotebookLM. I then said: "Please make any and all improvements that you think will produce a better draft for Gerald Stulc's review -- and be sure to write it in Hemingway's style.
Stulc made a minor correction to the piece, then signed off on it. Here it is.
Dan Forbush
