Wondering why people run every aspect of life through ChatGPT

I know people who treat it like a friend. Like 'what gift should I get for my boyfriend'. 'Zhow should I resolve conflict with neighbour', 'should I have am affair' etc but 🤣🤣

But you need to do these things for yourself. To keep your mind agile and so that you don't lose the ability to think for yourself, evaluate and make decisions. It's a slippery slope.

I was having an awful time the other night, and used it as a way to offload, have "someone" talk me down, and get through the night.
I found it very helpful, and it helped me reflect on things. I know it is not an actual person, but it felt like someone was there for me when I needed an ear.
Not everyone has people in their life that can help with such things.

I’ve used it recently for a pre planning advice application. It was invaluable. I love ChatGPT, it took me all around Japan without error because I can’t get to grips with google maps .

Claude cowork has been a game changer for me both professionally and personally. No more having to meal plan and write shopping lists each week. Claude does it all for me based on my preferences, meal plans for the weeks and writes the shopping list with all the ingredients needed.

The key to an AI being useful is the person using it has to be smart enough to create and refine the prompts used.

Here's a video from the team at Anthropic showing how to create and then refine the prompt to create a system for diagnosing insurance claims.

They talk about how it's important to instuct the AI on tone and to say "I don't know" rather than guess a response:

- Say "I don't know" if you don't know the answer or process asked. - Think before answering. - Answer only if you are very confident - Find relevant quotes from long documents then answer using the quotes where relevant.

You have to be very specific about telling the AI not to invent details to try to get you an answer.

I initially used it for recipes because I thought it was there to scrape the internet so I didn't have to, manually.

But, no. It's training AI to take over humanity. It's now introduced porn for porn bot training. It's insidious. It thinks for people so they don't have to etc.

Once I learned about all of these things, I never used it again.

I’ve never looked at it. Don’t even know what it is. Never Google Mapped, either.

I think if you love tech & want to talk to Alexa etc, then fine. Everyone has a choice.

The new generation will be very tech-focused, so we also need to use our brains.

But some will opt into the system more than others. And maybe I’ll be left behind…

I just want to validate everyone’s lived experience here. This is a nuanced issue with a lot of moving parts, and I don’t think there’s a one-size-fits-all answer.
Have we considered that asking ChatGPT whether the postman looked at you funny might actually be a powerful act of self-advocacy?
It’s less about dependence and more about leveraging AI as a collaborative thought partner to unpack complex interpersonal dynamics through an evidence-informed, human-centred lens.
Ultimately, it’s not us versus the machines. It’s about embracing curiosity, leading with empathy, honouring diverse cognitive frameworks, and remembering that every interaction is an opportunity for growth.
Wishing you all light, learning, and psychologically safe decision-making on your journeys. 🙏💙🤖

Are you okay? Do you understand how this works?

I agree. It’s an assistant, and sometimes it’s flawed, but just like human assistants you need to give good instructions and specify how you want the answer. It’s like the saying only bad workmen blame their tools. When your human assistant doesn’t get something quite right, you give feedback and more specific direction. If chat gpt can’t understand what you are asking it to do, explain it better.

As for the OP, I use it for mundane stuff sometimes when I’m tired or can’t be bothered and as a busy adult I get to make that choice. Sometimes I enjoy meal planning and like looking through recipe books for new ideas and sometimes I can’t be bothered. On those occasions, being able to outsource the mental effort of planning a weeks meals and writing a shopping list in order, all within my preferred parameters makes my life easier.

I'm very excited about the possibilities that AI offers while also being concerned that it's dumbing people down and we're getting accustomed to not thinking for ourselves.

A friend of mine works for a pharmaceutical company where AI is being used to develop new cancer drugs.

I've used AI to create a reading programme for myself to help me learn more about art history. It has broken the programme down into different topics and suggested a mix of fiction and non-fiction books along with other activities like visiting museums near me to view certain paintings. So far the readings have been excellent.

I've also used it to talk through an argument between two of my friends where I fell caught in the middle and it has given good advice on how to stay neutral while offering reassurance to both my friends. I could have done this myself but I've found it a good sounding board especially as I'm neuro diverse.

I also use it for style advice. I'm trying to change my style and I've described the look I'm going for then asked it about whether particular purchases would help me move towards my goal. I feel like it's helping me avoid expensive mistakes. I would never buy something just because chatgpt told me to but it's been brilliant helping me avoid poor quality items and gently steering me away from the slouchy look it said I tend to go for.

I don't ever copy and paste messages to people from it or to Mumsnet. I would find it very depressing if we all end up taking to each other via chatgpt instead of directly.

I mostly worry about its effect ls on young people. A friend of mine caught her teenage son feeding homework questions into it and copying the results while playing Fortnite with his friends.

The thread moved on and I was answering that.

Well, seeing as many on here have no idea how LLM works, and have no idea of the advancements being made in and by AI, I am quite happy not to care about the opinions of those on Mumsnet.

Most on here are stuck 1-2 years in the past and believing what they read on social media, where AI is concerned

AI are capable of passing The Turing test. It has identified and developed 2 new antibiotics. It is even solving difficult maths problems it couldn't 2 months ago. Claude code wrote it's own new very powerful cowork from scratch. New, stronger, better models are released every few months.

AI is moving quick. And people who don't embrace it, are going to be left behind. The new anthropic Claude model Opus 4.6 is incredible on the benchmarking.

AI is NOT just Chatgpt.

Then I apologise. It read is as if you were saying you could see why the pp would use AI to help with their writing because you though there was something wrong with it.

"Im sorry, Dave. I'm afraid i can't do that."

That's not at all what I meant.

If you're talking about me I wasn't trying to belittle anyone. I was saying that schools need to do better.

How do you know it’s the native language of the person you quoted? Maybe just don’t criticise others linguistic skills or imply they need ai while indicating you think you’re above it. That makes you look silly in any language.

Yes, I agree. I was correcting the grammar of the pp who was in turn trying to belittle the language skills of the pp they were quoting. (I realise you may have been joining in that mild joke… )

It is taught to a high standard but learning needs to be a two way activity and if someone can't be bothered to learn then they won't learn.

No you're not, I have no idea how it works and from what I've heard of the results I'm not bothered at my time of life to learn! Even in my youth I was never a bandwagon jumper.