Chat GPT is amazing

[Tickets25]

I know AI can be scary but I've struggled with something for over 30 years and last night chat gpt framed it for me in a way that years of therapy never has and it's given me peace.
It's fabulous.

No point to this post, just wanted to say!

We weren’t around when dinosaurs were. Sorry, pedantic I know 😁

For those asking about the mental health issues, here is another article describing the multiple lawsuits where chatGTP has been implicated in suicide

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/nov/07/chatgpt-lawsuit-suicide-coach?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

It's been useful for me. Personal problems such as friendships or relationships, it brings a different light on to it or basically articulates it back to you then I take it and research it without ai. Been more helpful than mumsnet 😬 obviously for privacy issues, info is given vague just as you would on mn in fact more vague. Meal ideas, exercise, general questions you would ask google and scroll through pages of nonsense is just listed in one go.

The environmental impact caused by AI is nothing compared to the aviation industry, agriculture, cement production, travel etc.
This is the world that my children are growing up in. AI is not going to go away, so I need to be familiar with it and what it can do so I can guide my children. Ignoring it is not going to help, being involved means that people can feedback and steer it.
I work in a FE college. The students are way ahead of the lecturers in their understanding and use of AI - just shouting at them not to use it is not going to make any difference at all. We need to understand it and guide them in how to use it as a tool.

Yes sorry I was meaning a world without human intervention 😄 Fire was probably a wicked modern convenience once upon a time 😁

(Dramatic I know sorry. I just think it's daft to single out AI in this way.)

Fwiw I do agree actually with the downsides to AI / Chat GPT. But we're in far too deep to worry about AI now. The people who didn't want a telephone installed back in the day were actually on to something... AI is just one more step in the same direction we've been headed since the beginning of time.

I think you have to approach it with an attitude that it is not actually intelligent. It just does tasks quicker. If you are asking for it to give an actual opinion, you are on shaky ground.

Another positive experience I have of AI is in generating meeting notes. I was in a meeting on Teams, and we recorded it and asked AI to provide the minutes. We didn't need a minute taker, and honestly, the minutes were faultless - all in a matter of minutes.

I remember signing off the meeting, refilling my wine glass, and coming back to the minutes.

@lilycanna "I saw someone describing the task for future generations of removing AI bullshit from the information environment as like taking out asbestos."

Exactly, brilliant analogy. There have now even been legal cases where lazy lawyers made legal submissions citing bullshit made up cases because they relied on AI, e.g. this one stateside Fortunately, the submissions were so clearly inane that their falsity was picked up on right away. The judge was not pleased!

And AI is constantly feeding itself with its auto-generated bullshit, which grows like compound interest every hour....

Honestly I love it. It gives such reasoned advice and I love that it’s always there. It’s helped me with so much.

https://nationalcentreforai.jiscinvolve.org/wp/2025/05/02/artificial-intelligence-and-the-environment-putting-the-numbers-into-perspective/
Wikipedia is massively oversimplifying the issue of course. An AI search may use much more data than a google search but it could fetch as much data as you'd find in 20 individual google searches. There's already significant progress being made to reduce the environmental impact and AI will have a massive net positive impact overall in reducing environmental damage.

My mum recently gave me my old school reports. They all had the same sentences in them! So they obviously used tick boxes or something to create the reports to save time.

So no less personal then using A/I.

I use it a lot in work as i struggle to formulate my thoughts into what i want to actually say.

I have also used it to meal plan and it was really bad at it!

There is this one from the US, ChatGPT encouraged college graduate to commit suicide, family claims in lawsuit against OpenAI | CNN

That is Chat GTP specific.

And there are various chatbot ones. Example here:

AI chatbot pushed teen to kill himself, lawsuit alleges | AP News

I don't use AI as its mostly banned where I live. So I need to use BING search, as Google is also banned here. From what I can figure out, it seems many of the folk singing the praises of AI are maybe folk who never really used the normal search ?

It does surprise me that someone teaching A stuff I would not know about at least some of these stories. It's potentially a massive can of worms if developers are found liable.

There is a wiki page on deaths by chatbot. You can also talk about its exploitation of third world ghost workers.

Yes I am newly addicted to chatGPT and don't know how I survived without it, or it's alternatives.

Whether we like it or not, it's here to stay and will only get more pervasive.

Buyer beware, and you need to know how to use it properly, but yes, it's definitely amazing.

It's our brains that are the limiting factor. If we think we can remember that it's not always right, that it's sycophantic, that it could harm us, that it is not a friend, that it doesn't sound authentic to others, then we are fooling ourselves. Our brains are set up with all kinds of shortcuts and cognitive biases that we cannot bypass. We tend to believe what we see and read. I have already seen some very intelligent people fall for its seductive flattery and diminish their reputation. I will too, I expect. It will be amazing and it will also enshittify our whole information environment. Regulating and policing it will be an impossibility. The rich and the criminal will benefit most, as always.

I prefer Claude, I'm using it today to put something together for a presentation I have on Monday. I find it better than Chat or Copilot. I also use it for personal stuff, even down to telling me jokes or interesting facts on a long train journey. I don't fly or eat meat, which has a much bigger environmental impact.

@PumpkinTwistyWindToots “AI will have a massive net positive impact overall in reducing environmental damage.”
Says who? Based on what?

Meanwhile in the US there’s a massive love-in between tech companies and fossil fuel companies to drill fracked gas to power data centre expansion. Companies like Microsoft and Google have basically abandoned their climate ambitions. That’s what’s really happening behind the greenwash.
https://techcrunch.com/2025/10/17/your-ai-tools-run-on-fracked-gas-and-bulldozed-texas-land/
https://heated.world/p/ai-is-guzzling-gas

And in the UK too…
https://archive.ph/tuWmA

The suicide story is tragic, but it’s one story (albeit now very widely retold). How many suicidal people have been pushed over the edge by a piece of music, something they read, a news story or even an artwork? We can’t know, but I’m sure it’s happened. We also can’t account for how many people have been helped by AI to see a situation differently. And no, it doesn’t just blindly affirm you (although can be annoyingly chirpy at times. I’ve found it can be very good at seeing patterns of behaviour or links between events that aren’t clear to a human. That’s why it can be good at diagnosing things. It’s also totally rubbish at some tasks so you have to use it wisely!

There is good and bad in everything.
I use it:
... to design posters for local events
... to deal with tech problems e.g. my phone went haywire after an update and it talked me through correcting it all.
... to help me write a difficult letter. It suggested lots of nuanced ideas, some of which I included in my final letter.
... to point me towards research papers into my heart condition ... really helpful.
.... to find holiday accommodation that meets my disability needs
... to source commentary on poetry
... to troubleshoot faults in household items... it gets the answer far quicker than manufacturer's websites.

I could go on. I have disabilities, live very rurally and it is a godsend to me.

Sometimes it gets things wrong ... but very very rarely.

Environmental considerations..... as I understand it these mainly applly to the environmental impact of the setup process thst has happened rather than ongoing usage. Alternatives for me are hours on the phone trying to get info from manufacturers, using masses of petrol getting to town (no public transport here) and trying to get to a library (on short hours and up steps I cannot manage).

It has improved my life immensely.

Not my experience. I believe them to possessed of critical thinking too.

I do not fly because of the environmental impact. But people think I am nuts and carry on buzzing round the world at the drop of a hat.
So much in the modern world has environmental impact. We each have to choose where we draw the line. But we cannot turn the clock back .....

I’ve changed my mind. I was raving about it a few months ago but when you get into the dodgy business side behind it, the many human jobs being lost because greedy ceos fall for the hype, and the crazy amount of energy use behind it, the huge data centres being built to maintain it while we’ve essentially reached peak energy.. I just can’t use it anymore.

No judgment, I’ve certainly had a good go of it asking it all my stupid questions. Ironically my questions to ChatGPT eventually lead me to the information that made me delete it.

I can’t imagine why Wiki thinks AI is a terrible idea…