How does Martin Seligman use Claude and ChatGPT?

Martin Seligman uses Claude to write an ongoing story series starring his four-year-old grandsons Max and Denny, now on book six, with ChatGPT making oil-painting illustrations. For his book Agency, Claude wrote a transition between chapters on China and the Hebrews, and both tools spent a day helping test his hypothesis that five cultures gained words for human agency between 1000 and 500 BCE.

Seligman sees creativity as a pair going back and forth, like the Wright brothers or Kahneman and Tversky, and says AI can be the second partner.
The five Axial Age cultures Seligman names are Greece, China, the Hebrews, Persia and India.

▸In their words

“I've come to believe AI is the best companion and supplementer of human agency of my lifetime.” Martin Seligman · at 43:31 — open in the transcript →

Source: our own transcription of the episode. The full conversation is on Modern Wisdom (2026-10-24). Read the whole episode summary →

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