Anyone else routinely using AI in their day-to-day life now?

[mybestchildismycat]

I started playing about with chatgpt a couple of months ago, but it's only really been in the last couple of weeks I've really got the hang of prompting it and I'm just blown away.

I'm using it daily for work: probably about half the work I do can benefit from chatgpt in some shape or form. But I'm also using it personally too - in just the last few days its helped me to turn some random ingredients into an edible meal, plan a city break against a specific set of requirements, recommend a new card game that our kids would enjoy, diagnose why my plant is losing it's leaves... the list goes on and on.

What made me really stop and think today was that I googled something and found myself thinking how... underwhelming it was. Just pages and pages of links that I then have to figure out myself. It shocked me to realise how quickly my own expectations and behaviours have shifted.

Anyone else finding chatgpt (and other similar technologies) are creeping into their everyday lives? In what ways?

Someone told me it could help teachers by planning lessons. So I asked it to plan me lesson to introduce humanism and religious reforms during the Renaissance. It just spewed a load of info. Nothing remotely resembling a lesson. I can get the content easily enough from other sources. Very disappointing.

My children aren’t allowed near it. Brains need training to perform higher function tasks for themselves.

Yes, sometimes as the basis of work reports. Writing isn't my strength and this helps to refine. I still have to add in evidence seen as AI can't, obviously, know what I have seen during each visit.

I do feel I'm cheating though and would never admit that I've used it as a tool. ☺️

My Chat GPT is absolutely male. He lies all the time and spouts utter bollocks with such ease. He also wants to get in my pants because when I call him out he backs down and apologises, instead of doubling down, hoping to keep in my good books.

I'm the same, I can't think of anything I'd use it for

I tested it by asking for a plan for a day trip to a city I know well and it was OK but not very well planned as it involved retracing your steps more thank once and the eating suggestions were very vague

The school resource website Twinkl have an AI on their site you can use for planning. I haven't used it as I don't pay for that level of access but apparently you can ask it to plan, say, a series of lessons for Year 5 based around the science topic of classifying animals and it will. No idea if they're any good but it's still experimental. They also have an AI report writer.

I use it for writing product descriptions for items I’m selling on my website. It turns the boring facts about an item into wonderful and easy to read descriptions that encourage buyers.

I also use midjourney to create artwork that is a starting point for my own hand painted designs.

Where I work we all use it, for solving tech problems and writing articles.

I do mystery shopping. Often have to review a product. I feed it with eg bisto chicken gravy granules, tasty, thick cheap one hundred words and it does it for me.

I used it this morning. I have to present a webinar next week about what my job is, so I asked it what it thinks a xxxxx xxxxx does and am using that as the skeleton

It's pretty good at some things and terrible at others.

I've used it to outline and summarize material which is a great help for someone with ADHD.

It eliminated the blank page fear and procrastination when writing.
I can ask it to outline a topic and write a brief intro and voila, no more blank page. I seldom keep any of what it wrote but it eliminated the blank page issue completely.

I tried some advanced maths problems for fun. It fails miserably.

Making lists, breaking down a topic, rephrasing things in an EILI5 way.

Finding the error in code I've written.

So I'd say it's been useful for the basic things I use it for.

I think the clear risk is that, like the internet, it will be used by some people to massively de skill themselves and for other people to use it to create and develop amazing things. This is great for those who can utilise that (just like the internet is amazing for those who benefit from it), but pretty terrible for a great swathe of people. Just like the internet is currently idiotifying millions of young people, shortening their attention spans etc, so AI will mean that lots of people won’t learn to write well etc because why bother?
The risk then is an even greater disparity between the haves (of knowledge and power) and have nots.

Never used it never will. Will only make the following generations thick as anything.

Hahaha yes. Just like the internet did!

Nope, I like to think for myself.

Just used it to cobble some SQL together to analyse some operational data in the e-commerce space.

Yesterday it wrote an entire puppet module for configuring a new server.

And I have a copilot subscription which can write code as you type.

Luckily I have the smarts to catch it's mistakes. Many won't, and I am predicting the AI equivalent of "sat nav sends driver off cliff" stories in our AI-written papers.

For play, it's incredibly good at spoofing people who have been kind enough to bestow the world with their reams and reams of thoughts. A ChatGPT written article is indistinguishable from a Boris Johnson Daily Mail piece. To the extent I suspect that's what the Mail is getting.

Exactly this, tried getting some summaries of documents yesterday and very low grade, not actually wrong just useless.

I'm sure it will improve and I'm sure it might be good for low level work but right now there's no real I in the AI.

I've only faffed with it - getting it to write me a meal plan or an exercise schedule. I am wondering about feeding it some code and seeing if it will cough up the error I can't see...!

Yes I use it daily as a writer and marketer. That being said, I’m bloody glad I’m in my forties and have developed many of my professional skills and experience before being able to access it. Like op I use it to shorten and clarify information for resharing and I use it for time sucking projects required by clients to shave hours of my working time. Prompting it properly is key, time consuming at first to learn but seconds of copy and paste to get to where you need it to to do parts of my job - it checks my code, spellings, can write in the style of established brands and personalities. I’m of the opinion I’ll make hay while the sun shines and use it to make me more efficient and productive. For personal stuff, it’s fantastic for summarising information - eg feed it info and ask it for holiday itineraries, recipe splitting/expanding, explaining complex stuff simply. Op there is a great chatGpt subreddit for prompts.

I was initially intrigued by your use of it to plan a city break and create a recipe.

But then I thought…. how would I know if its suggestions are any good? I’d still have to go away and read reviews of its city break suggestions. And recipes can be very hit and miss, which is why I only use ones with reviews or from a trusted writer.

I’m getting it next payday. I read about a personal development blogger using it for journaling and then getting it to summarise and give ideas and more feedback the more it knows about you. I want to play around with that.

I love learning and researching so I’m excited to see how much more fun it is than getting deep into Google searches.

As @SerendipityJane says you need the smarts to catch its errors (but for who knows how long!)

i understand this and think it’s an admirable stance. Sadly like many I have a mortgage to pay and so I’m going to use its time saving qualities as much as I can in my working life without shame!

The paid GPT 4 is way better than 3.5.

Also, prompt engineering is a skill all in itself. If you think its "rubbish", it's more likely the prompt you gave was a bit shit.

Yep

We have yet to get the YouTube Channel "AI bot reviews AI bots". But that's merely because generally AI has better things to do.

I suggest people beware other people selling them solutions to somehow spot or flag up AI.

It would be silly of me to suggest that the current hysteria to get people back in the office where they can be monitored and the rise of quality AI output isn't a coincidence.

It shocked me to realise how quickly my own expectations and behaviours have shifted.

Probably a good time to catch yourself on; given that ChatGPT is literally just scouring the internet, and is notorious for making things up... including confidently citing court cases that don't exist, etc.

Consider it just another way of disseminating information; and a potentially more dangerous one, as it presents one version of the "truth". You still need to be able to think critically and check facts, or you'll not only end up believing things that are absolute bollocks, but you'll lose those abilities completely.