What have you used AI for today?

[whatisheupto]

Just that!

Unless you never turn on a computer, look at a smart phone, or use the internet, everyone is using AI all the time whether you want to or not.

Netflix recommendations or shows you like? AI. Email filtering out spammy messages in your inbox? AI. Taking a selfie on your phone? AI. Finding the fastest route on Google maps? AI. Using the sensors in your car for parking? AI.

I think a lot of people on mumsnet think AI is just for people who need ChatGPT to write their emails.

Today, to summarise a technical 40 page report into one page of bullet points.
Yesterday, I used it to make a draft Email more professional and concise.

I don't use it for the technical parts of my job, more in an 'admin support' role. It's great for helping word tricky & sensitive Emails.

I tried to use Copilot at work and it said it was experiencing a high volume of requests and couldn’t do anything. I doubt the tech bros who say that AI is going to take over the world have this problem.

Thanks to Cypress who pointed out Chat GPT has a specific coding portal ChatGPT Codex, I have been using it all day to improve some scripts I have been developing - thank you @CypressGrove !

I do think we need to be careful with AI adoption, of course, and it clearly need to be transparently used, and regulated. But, it really is just another, much more sophisticated, productivity tool for me, latest iteration of typewriter, word processor etc., rather than impending SkyNet doom (planet-ending? maybe one day but im more convinced it will be humans doing that..)

Same.

I suspect the OP may have been asking about who had actively chosen to use AI as a tool to do something today.

Never used it.

if you use it for work, you’re a cheat. Use your brain, not a bot.

I dislike the term ‘artificial intelligence’ as it implies an intelligent thought process encouraging people to put their trust in something which is essentially elaborate predictive text, which is structurally indifferent to whether something is true or not.

Someone mentioned Google maps - it’s an absolutely sensible use of technology to process data about road lengths and traffic to find the fastest route. Using it to write messages on a dating app or do your homework, or hallucinate references on a research paper is just shite and we shouldn’t lump all this together.

Are calculators or spreadsheets "cheating"? Is Google Translate "cheating"? Are computers instead of manual typewriters "cheating"?

Today, I used AI to help me create a theme for a website.

Latest example of why AI is not ‘intelligent’ that was being shared round today: say you want to wash your car and the car wash is 100m away. Should you walk or drive? The result is several detailed logical paragraphs explaining why you should walk. There’s no intelligence in there, it’s just finding words and sentences that frequently go together in other texts and assembling them in a statistically likely combination.

Oh dear

You have to demonstrate that you know when to judiciously use generative AI at senior (6 figure salary) tech jobs now, so tech companies definitely don't think its cheating.

Kids using AI to answer exam questions would be cheating, which is why they aren't allowed smart watches in exams these days. Students are very much allowed to use AI as part of their research process though, as are people at work, as long as it is explicit.

In many jobs if you aren't using AI you won't keep your job due to your low productivity compared to those that do use it. It would be like having a office based job and refusing to use a computer- you'd be out the door in no time.

There is that MIT study that 95% of ai workplace projects fail and increasing evidence that ai use speeds up work in some parts of the workflow but slows it down elsewhere through more fact-checking, untangling broken code etc. It is also undermining entry-level jobs so expect a burgeoning skills gap in 10 to 15 years time.

I just asked Perplexity and it said “Drive the car to the car wash, because the car itself has to be there to be cleaned.”

Saying that, I don’t disagree that AI is wrong a lot, particularly the summary that comes up with google. That is often garbage. I do worry that people take the answers as gospel without giving it a sense check.

It helped me decide what books to read next based on books I’ve read and loved.

Fucking hell what a waste of precious resources. Why not ask a person like IDK a bookseller or librarian?

Work told me to use it so how am I a cheat? They have integrated AI into our systems.

It IS using your brain to use AI to speed up a process. It’s knowing how and when to use it that’s the important part, not to use it indiscriminately or assume that it is infallible.

Exactly. It takes skill and experience to write a good prompt, or create a good agent.

But hey, let's bow to the opinion of someone who's literally never used AI 😆