Wondering why people run every aspect of life through ChatGPT

This thread prompted me to try it for the first time ever. In my 60s now and fearing redundancy, I really struggle with tech so it's the sort of thing that worries me. Having just tried a couple of things, I have to say it's unsettling; it makes me feel uneasy and I am not sure why.

Oooo…I’ve been having an ongoing discussion with my DH about this. I’ve recently started classes to finish my degree and holy hell is it a lot easier this time around.

Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth and I was at University, google hadn’t been invented. Now I just type “How do marketing segments work and give me examples” and I get a nice little summary plus the articles that I need to site.

So protip if your student is failing it’s all on them!

Beyond that I’m concerned with those who can’t navigate simple life without it or are using it as a human companion replacement. That shit is just sad and creepy.

Because it's leaching on other people's work. The entire system is plagiarism.

Yes, it is. So I have stopped using it. Limited, anyway, and I only wanted some pictures. I did get it to write some literary short stories for me - very poor and derivative. Ditto picturs, whose originals I frequently recognised. The whole system is a plagiarist's dream and needs heavy regulation. Not only that but the amount of energy it uses is obscene and unsustainable.

I'm curious - how do you know it was AI? Banks are notorious for having bad templates and not very customer friendly letters - batch templates that should be customised by an employee but hardly ever Is. I'd hazard a guess it was that instead of AI....

It's very useful and if it's there why not.

You don't have to use it.

My latest ChatGPT moan is someone for whom English is their third language using it to draft a slightly complex email. The language required wasn’t tricky, but there was a crucial point that absolutely could not be got wrong (an exclusion of liability: ie email said we will do xyz but we are not liable for abc). Email was correct, all good.

Recipient got it, rang him up to ask for clarification of something. He doesn’t speak English well enough to have answered properly, got confused, ended up accepting liability for abc, the thing he’d excluded, other person wrote an email to the head honcho thanking them for accommodating all their requests and accepting responsibility for xyz and abc, and proceeded on that basis before head honcho got the email. Alllllll afternoon was spent undoing the mess.

If this man had taken the time to apply his perfectly decent brain to finding and learning the right words before he sent his email instead of asking ChatGPT to draft it for him, none of this would have happened. He was lazy, lost an opportunity to learn, ended up costing 3 people their afternoons and a fair whack of money on lawyer time. Ffs.

If you are planning any kind of project, appeal, campaign or complex task AI is amazingly useful for suggesting lines of enquiry or action that you may not have thought of. It will generate a basic plan which humans can then flesh out according to their own tastes. I just think of it as a kind of assistant which will help me to analyse and plan any complex undertaking. Because it analyses dispassionately it can give me fresh insight into the motives of others, where I might be blinded by emotion. While its true that AIs are designed to sound supportive they will also point out flaws and risks in my plans and warn me of risky or potentially illegal strategies.

I've read it's generational. Older people use it as an admin tool, whilst younger people use it to help make life decisions, both large and small. I think because of social media, people have got used to the constant low hum of feedback and validation, and simply can't cope with being alone with their own thoughts.

There's also so much choice of everything now, it's helpful to have a resource to do the first sift of data for you.

I fucking despise the cadence it uses and I'm now seeing it everywhere. I would never use AI to write something for me because of the risk of it being obvious I used AI.

DH does this. He has even given ChatGPT on his phone a name and constantly asks [X] for "his" opinion using voice recognition, so they actually have a conversation in front of us. Even our DCs say they're not interested in what [X] thinks.

I think to say it drives me mad would be going too far. [X] is definitely a lot quicker at looking things up than I would be and "he" does draft emails well. But I just don't think it's necessary. We coped quite well before.

That said, when I grew up my main source of information on the world outside my home town was a set of encyclopaedias that were even then about 30 years old, so goodness knows how out of date they were. But it didn't seem to matter as much. Maybe because everybody else, including my teachers, were also relying on equally out of date information.

And if you didn't know something you just lived with it. Why do we have to know everything about everything within seconds?

I have made DH promise not to talk about me or my job to [X]. "He" seems quite reliable so far but I don't trust "him" 100%..........

(Do you think "he" heard me?)

If you haven't used it for work or even personal planning as an example you are missing A trick ! Not sure what line of work you are in but most office jobs you can increase productivity hugely

My mother received a letter from her bank apologising for a cock up of theirs. Clearly written by AI. So the apology wasn't from them at all - it was from a computer program.

You might increase your productivity, but you won't impress your clients if you use AI to communicate with them.

That's how it works, isn't it? It steals/uses your information and mixes it with everyone else's information and turns it all into a big information soup to be served up to other customers.

Calling 111 or her GP would have been a much safer thing to do!

Not OP but I have co-pilot (it's Microsoft's AI) on my laptop and started asking it to draw me pictures. Suddenly it is uploading my files - for what, who knows? I don't like it and don't know how to stop it. I don't want it reading my stories, diary etc. Feels like spying.

Chat gpt is great. I run a lot of my problems through it. And I have some bloody big problems. My mum is very ill and I’ve used it for all sorts to do with that. For example, a little while ago, she accidentally double dosed one of her pills and I asked chat gpt what to do and it told me what would happen and how to deal with it.

I don’t rely on it as gospel, but it’s exceptionally useful.

No one else to talk to. Loneliness.

SoloMumJustMuddlingThrough · Today 23:24

I use AI primarily for language learning. Its excellent for checking/explaining grammar and suggesting different ways to say the same thing depending on the scenario.

But if you don't know the language how do you know it's teaching you correctly?

My husband does this. If not that he calls my name followed by 'what time does Tesco close', whats the weather like in Morocco in Oct. Its so annoying...I really think over use will contribute to earlier onset of dementia. My DH doesnt think for himself at all!

they're probably the same type of people whom you read about having got their cars stuck in a flood or thought they could drive across the ocean because they blindly relied on their satnavs...

there are lots of benefits to chat gpt but it should be a tool to help you, not an option to willingly outsource all thought.

OTOH if you think of how stupid the average person is, 50% of people are stupider than that, so it could be beneficial.

One of my colleagues uses AI to draft reports and briefings. They always need to be redrafted - every single time - because they’re inaccurate, waffling or presented in such a convoluted way they’re unreadable. It makes my job doubly hard and takes me a huge amount of time to fix. Certainly doesn’t improve productivity in my work space.

They ask chatgpt how to! Not that it knows where they put their keys though.

It is useful at work, and at home I use it for recipes when I'm trying to use store cupboard and freezer items, I give it a list and it comes up with ideas I can refine. It's useful for that. But if I found myself asking it how to get my neighbour to pick up a parcel from my house, for example, I'd think I'd lost the plot.