How are people using AI to help with everyday life?

I think it’s a real risk in lots of industries, but we’ve been through plenty of these events before where automation replaces workers, it’s just life. Employment has (thus far) adapted to new conditions. Think of how different the working world is now compared to 40years ago.

I think there’s plenty to be concerned about with AI, but it’s part of a bigger picture where technology comes in, is adopted and changes how we do things. It’s not an anomaly in that sense.

In a general sense, yes, we have to accept that technology develops and our lives change. But in a specific-to-me sense, no. If I was sacked and replaced at work by an AI agent, I wouldn't be so breezy about it! And in my industry that's a real risk.

Have these awful parents all taken time out their day purely to irritate you?
Or are they perhaps seeking answers to missing provisions?
I know an increasing number of mainstream SEND parents using AI to convey the queries they are not getting answered any other way. The fact that many schools have placed barriers to communications with class teachers & SENDCO’s just drives this trend, whilst we all know that teaching teams are limited on free time, this shouldn’t mean that parents are not provided with updates needed.
Just making the point that working with parents is so much easier than the cat & mouse game so many are forced to navigate…
I don’t doubt some communications are to you minor or pointless, but often a little response / info goes a long way…
(I don’t use AI but am sad how easily spotted it becomes in such emails these days)

I have quite a few rare auto immune diseases and it’s more helpful than a doctor and kinder.

And to be fair, they had a point. While the internet has been a brilliant thing in many ways; it’s pretty bad for the planet, and social media and internet porn have both caused very significant problems for humanity.

AI seems likely to cause problems for the environment, and for human intelligence, communication, creativity and resilience. It’s completely valid for people to be extremely concerned about it, and people mocking us/calling us Luddites or whatever doesn’t change that.

Totally the same, lots of these posts remind me of comments people made when the internet was brand new.

Haha I could have written this!

I deal with a lot of people who for various reasons are not very confident writers, and I can completely see that AI would be useful to help them put together a formal email. However, I find I get a lot more useful information and insight out of a badly written massive paragraph someone typed out themselves than the kind of generic legalese that MLMs will come out with for someone who doesn't have the knowledge/experience to know which parts are unnecessary or irrelevant.

I don't. But someone needs to keep having children to keep the species going, so this is an odd argument to me.

How?

You've just regurgitated what the robot told you to say!

Anyone can do that.

I could do that with no knowledge of the job.

You've found a way of creating bland, machine-supplied answers which ultimately are of no use at all to employers because anyone can create them.

So they will have to create new ways to test candidates which actually test candidates' abilities.

That’s depressing. I can see the benefits of using it for data analysis etc (which isn’t part of my job) but I write better than AI does! And I understand my subject better too. The enquiries we get which are written using AI really show that AI doesn’t understand the complexities of research.

I don’t care what other people do. But I’m saying it will destroy any creativity and human interaction with the internet. It just steals and regurgitates.

Also, as someone with ADHD, it's actually really annoying to have the chatbot stuff pop up now in every website and application whether I want it or not.

Yep, AI enquiries are the bane of my life at the moment, as I have to address the points that the LLM threw in that actually have no bearing on any of the issues raised. It's apparently a big issue with people who deal with SAR requests as the AI will request a load of irrelevant information that someone has to take a lot of time to put together.

In terms of my everyday life: I don't have any use for AI so I don't incorporate it into anything.

No.

How would that be better?

What's the point of that?

How would you engage with anyone's actual specific human points if all you've seen is a vague summary?

I remember watching Yuval Harari deliver one of his public lectures back in 2017, predicting the rise of the Useless class - he wanted to provoke a reaction, so his proposed solutions were drugs and gaming. I suspect the solutions will ultimately end up being sterilisation and euthanasia - initially ‘voluntary’ in return for some kind of financial ‘reward’. At least people will have enjoyed devolving their wardrobe, interior design and recipes choices to a machine in the meantime.

I don't know, this is why I'm still using my old laptops. I've heard from people who have bought new ones that the AI assistant stuff is fitted as standard. I've not had to look too closely into it yet so I'm only going on what friends say - and they are saying it is very hard to remove from the laptop, so the AI ghost is always looming there in the distance, and the accusations of AI assisted writing can be brought up.

I use normal Word and I don’t have AI suggestions. Can’t you just turn off those functions?

Because I'm an author I need to avoid ANY suggestion that AI has been used ANYWHERE in my work. So I don't want, for example, my laptop to come up with 'suggestions' for me for words I could use or ways to phrase things to make them easier to understand. I'm currently battling along with a pair of very old laptops, because I've heard that the new ones have AI fitted as standard and it's very hard to disable - and I cannot afford to have even the breath of AI anywhere near my manuscripts. Sometimes I hit a button accidentally and suddenly my screen is full of 'Hi, I'm Rupert, your assistant, what can I help you with?' and I really really don't want that.

If people see the benefits to them they will use it. Nothing you can do about that.

I really hate these AI chat bots. Premier inn is awful. You really struggle to get through to a person even on the phone as they go around in circles with a “virtual receptionist”. I’ve stopped using them. Cost cutting and getting rid of as many people as possible.

Personally I find that if you’re determined enough to source a number and stay on hold, you will get to speak to someone eventually. I also prefer to talk directly to someone when I have a problem.

For day to day things it can easily be avoided for now.

My elderly father has avoided the internet thus far, for example. If he can do that 😂

However in a general sense I do agree, life does move on. That’s true on multiple fronts. Most people don’t like all the various changes they see, but change is inevitable.

It just steals from other websites, ones that likely need advertising revenue etc. In a couple of years there will be no human input into it as people won’t bother with these websites and forums and it will just be AI making all this shit up. So depressing. All because people are too impatient to click on a link and read it.

Because it’s everywhere. When I want to contact a business by phone and speak to a human it’s often impossible to find a phone number. So I try to use the Live Chat but those are almost always bots. I tell the bot I want to communicate with a human and it will eventually find one but it’s quite long-winded. If there had been a phone number and a person at the other end of the line, the problem/query could have been resolved much quicker. AI is being offered as the first solution most of the time, so those of us who don’t want to use it are being discriminated against!

The trouble is that it’s getting harder to avoid @TheKeatingFive