How are people using AI to help with everyday life?

AI has made my job (supporting people with work-related problems) much harder, not easier.

People write things like ‘I asked ChatGPT to explain this for me because they are so much better at explaining than I am’

or ’because I’m too distressed’ etc.

Instead they produce lengthy generic ‘rightsy’ twaddle I have to wade through and then explain that it doesn’t help them because of some uniquely human reason relating unsurprisingly to their own lived experience.

Nowadays we have to actively ask people to set out their own account - although lots don’t and think we can’t tell.

There is a reason why the Acas early conciliation service, for example, has completely seized up under the weight of all this activity and is now defunct. You won’t even have a conciliator appointed nowadays until week 11 out of 12 and that’s if you are lucky. Everyone is drowning under reams of AI generated rubbish.

Thing is though there is a growing body of evidence that use of AI impacts critical thinking ability. Your brain won't become defunct, as you say, and there's definitely a role for it: sometimes it actually enhances thinking but I think it's reasonable to avoid over-reliance on it to think for you.

I certainly think we need to think about how we train the AI native generation to maintain a cordon sanitaire between their own brain and AI.

And is this use of it for your degree allowed within your university regulations, or are you basically cheating, as well as wasting your opportunity to learn?

I use Claude rather than ChatGPT for most of my “doing”. In this case it’s really simple - just a text prompt. Tell it what to check for, when, for what, and how to report back.

I asked it to monitor the internet for the next interrail sale and it cracked on and pushed a notification back to me each morning to say it had checked and if it had found anything.

I use it for work (lawyer), mostly for drafting responses or reports and checking for errors. It can be useful at summarising the law for example. You have to check the sources though if it is a new area.

i use it for planning holidays, timings, places to eat, best route etc.

i use it to discuss my diet and weight and to get suggestions, recipes and work out macros etc,

I use it to plan room decor, and to do things like make sure I have the right bulbs for the lamp, correct lumens, fittings, colours, the right dimmer switch etc.

Yesterday it was helping me look at Broadband options and explained about symmetrical and asymmetrical broadband, something which isn’t obvious on the providers websites.

I use it at work but generally avoid it at home.

@therockingbird and how does it alert you to an important one?

Can’t help laughing at the posters who smugly assert that they ‘use their brain.’ Don’t worry, your brain won’t become defunct. You still use it to do just about everything every day. AI is a tool, not a replacement for your very complex brain, which ultimately has to make the vast majority of decisions all by itself.

I agree with pp that AI is not always accurate, so it’s probably best to use your brain (or a search engine😅) to further research and verify the information it spews out. The internet is head staggeringly vast. A system that sifts through all the data and summarises what you’re looking for is, in my view, pretty useful.

I’m not.

It’s a lazy way of researching, is unreliable and damaging to the environment.

My rule for AI is never to use it for stuff I am good at or interested in. It can happily take the boring stuff.

Theres already evidence that not using those neural pathways damages cognition. I like writing and I am quite good at it (and do it professionally), so I am not going to outsource this to AI.

I also want to set an example to my DD to not grow up thinking it will substitute for work and research. I am fucked if I am letting a computer diagnose me or give me counselling. That’s the last thing we have control over; I can’t understand why anyone, knowing what we know about AI, would share intimate thoughts with it.

But I am a shit planner and list maker. I hate organising things in general (making timetables and plans). So AI can very happily do excel or route planning.

Is there a reason why you can’t use your own actual brain for things?
I assume you are adult, and have gone to school?

Any you know the environmental impacts ?
And the increasing existential threats?

I don’t understand why people feel it’s such a flex.

I use it to help me with my weight loss and now maintenance. I also use it to help with my degree. I write the assignment, give it the marking criteria and what I’ve written then it gives feedback and suggests what parts to improve. I go off, do more research and ask again until I’m happy I’ve achieved what’s required

Funny how we were bright enough to do a lot of these things for ourselves before AI suddenly got pushed on us, isn't it?

I hate the bloody thing and won't use ANY form of generative AI. I can see the use for it in some applications and I'd never object to its use in faster processing things like medical applications, but when people are using it to answer questions or for financial advice - well. I've seen some of the 'hilarious' mistakes AI has made and I wouldn't trust it with anything vital.

Yes, I have often found it inaccurate so if you have to check you may as well just research yourself.

I also asked it for an alternative to my favourite discontinued perfume, the suggestions were the same that Google gave me years ago and one of them was also discontinued.

I work in graphic design. AI is seriously harming us as an industry at the moment. My five colleagues and I were replaced with Claude in June.

So far I have found it pretty useless, I’ve asked for recipes and meal plans and found them pretty generic and nothing inspirational. I asked for an itinerary for a recent city break and it didn’t include some of the stuff we really enjoyed and the suggested eateries were just the popular/chain spots.

I did use it to help with calculating mortgage overpayments.

I use it type emails I can’t be bothered with and for decided what to wear as I’m terrible at putting outfits together

I was looking for a heatpump washer dryer, ChatGPT recommended one based on my requirements. Some online sellers did say it was a heatpump others said it was a condenser model. I checked with the manufacturer and it wasn’t heatpump, so I informed ChatGPT, so dont rely on everything it says

The internet itself is not AI generated 🙄

Those saying you use it to fill in forms. What sort of forms? The standard name, address, DoB etc aren't known(i hope!) by the data centre, and other stuff is surely from info you already know about yourself - skills relating to you, how illness/disability is affecting you personally. Or am I thinking about the wrong sort of forms?!

they are automatically tagged in categories in my work one given priority from certain senders and subject matter - this creates the briefing list. Same for personal stuff - school emails requiring a response are flagged as priority etc. it took some initial work setting it up but it’s been worth it.

I found it useful for booking a hotel for my son and his friend in Dublin. I found the list of hotels myself, then AI was useful in helping to get one in a location that was not too far from either the train station or the concert venue. It also threw in various bits of info about one day travel passes and how long it would take to walk to the city centre etc. That’s mostly the sort of thing I use it for. I get very flustered (ADHD) when there are too many steps to getting information or getting something done, so AI has been helpful in that respect.

Edited for typo.

So how does it remind you & does it read all your emails?

How does AI know about the personal lives of people buried with your uncles?

I use it at work for admin tasks. It’s brilliant I wish we had it before. I feed it documents to consolidate and make chronologies stuff like that. We use it for meeting minutes through teams and it’s a huge admin weight off . Also done most staff now use that method out work out looks much more uniform and neat. We have a huge staff shortage it’s not taking anyone’s jobs it just helps with boring things.