Has anyone actually found AI useful for everyday mum stuff?

[JennaMadeAU]

Feeling like I'm late to the party but I've been playing around with ChatGPT and some of it is genuinely useful. Not the weird sci-fi stuff, just practical things.

The meal planning one has been brilliant - told it what my kids will/won't eat, our budget, and it planned dinners with a shopping list. Saved us money.

Also used it to draft a politely assertive email to DS's school. Would have taken me an hour; solid first draft in 10 seconds.

Anyone else using it? Or am I going to get told I'm being replaced by a robot?

I asked it to come up with a 2 year staged plan for retinol / tret, starting from scratch and moving up to the strongest tret so that I’ll never get peeling skin. It worked!

”please suggest an itinerary for 1 adult and one 14 year old who enjoy x, y and z for a trip to PLACE. We will land at AIRPORT at LOCAL TIME on DATE and are staying at HOTEL. We would particularly like to include a, b and c and avoid q, r and s. We leave from AIRPORT at LOCAL TIME on DATE. Please group activities by location to optimise the time. Happy to walk up to 10 miles per day or to use public transport where beneficial.”

It calculated that there were 6 clear days between 24th November and 30th November………

My grandson loves the iPad and hates tidying up. He took a photo of the playroom and ChatGPT gave a clean up schedule, with times each task should take. Eg. Put away the jigsaw puzzle pieces. 3 minutes. The challenge was on and the playroom was sorted in under 15 minutes!!!

Have done plenty of research, thank you, including into how it actually regurgitates stuff.

Feel free to share something specific that you think evidences the opposite though.

I do that with my ND daughter. No AI needed.

Haha this is the best use of AI so far on this thread!

That's fantastic

If it can only regurgitate, there can't be a single unique sentence that it could ever produce.

I know this isn't true, because I have made my own llm back in 2023 while playing around, had to pay for gpu server space but it was fun even very basic and small. It was trained on data I provided only, so I know it was producing unique text.

I worry that everyone’s going to get dementia from not using their brains enough throughout life.

I used it to do my DF's Attendance Allowance form - 35 pages long. It argued more firmly that I would have done, using the facts that I gave it - and he was awarded the higher level. I think it saved me about 2 days work.

I find it handy for cake recipe conversions if I want to use a different tin size.

AI is like anything. It can be a tool for learning and development like smartphones or the internet or books or writing on cave walls with animal blood. It can also be a means to make people stupider. Some people will use it to outsource thinking, but the extent to which it's capable of advancing human knowledge and capacity is immense.

I use AI all the time. Often several times a day. I fully understand the limitations of AI and find it ridiculous that some people seem incapable of know when it’s important to fact check things and when you need to be cautious of the info given. In the last few weeks AI has come to rescue big time several times. I had a fault on my car and AI was amazingly useful in sorting it out. I ended up doing my own diagnostics (something I’d never have done on my own) and working what was wrong. It gave lots of spot on tips and advice ( which I fact checked) It’s saved me hundreds of pounds.

I think people are wrong when they say AI is making people stupid. I think it can do the opposite. It’s certainly educates me on lots of things. Having information so readily to hand and presented in such a user friendly way means that it’s easier to learn things. I’m confident googling things but AI is so quick and if I want to know where it’s got its information from I just ask for a link.

I’ve got a cleaner who doesn’t speak English very well yet I get lovely eloquent texts from her. They are obviously AI but why is that a problem. It means she is telling me what she wants to in a way I can understand. It helps her and it helps me. I have asked AI to check my texts to her sometimes. I tell AI to check that the text would be clear for someone who doesnt speak English well and it makes some suggestions. They are usually good.

Here are a few of other things I’ve ‘discussed’ with or asked it to do it recently

leaking toilet - I ended up being able to fix it myself
stage some furniture so I could sell it on Facebook market place.
Give me info on how to clean black spot from sandstone and where to buy it.
Descaling my coffee machine
Fixing my wifi. I’m usually quite able to do this but couldn’t work out what was wrong. I took a photo for AI and it instantly pointed out a wire was plugged in incorrectly. My DH had done it and as he never ever does anything to do with our wifi it would have taken me a while to work it out.
Tips for setting up an iPad for my elderly relative - again, I feel very confident doing this type of stuff but AI instantly made some great suggestions.
Identification of a number of plants and animals (seems a regular request)
lots of requests to identify and give info on antique furniture
recipes
Planning holidays and days out.
Help with an ongoing banking issue.

I would love to know which AI people.find best. I found chatgpt good for basic troubleshooting (tech or stains etc) but after a few weeks (free version) it glitches so much its worse than useless. Have started with copilot (re exercises) and so far so good.

Claude on Anthropic. But I use it for coding.

This is more likely possible from the rubbish people are eating daily.

I think a pp said this, but we are definitely headed for a society like in WALL-E. Fat and inactive and now outsourcing thinking. Plus living longer and the unemployment AI will bring, society is fucked

Waiting with baited breath for the people screaming it can't code, too many errors, excess code etc etc. It's getting better and better all the while, embrace it and move forward with it or get left behind!

Think there maybe about four people who have noticed what a huge difference AI makes for people using Meta glasses, but lets just ignore the positives hey.

Another random thought from my apparently diminishing brain (I use AI), it actually takes brain power to communicate with the AI, feed in bollocks and you get bollocks back, but talk to it intelligently, with plenty of information etc it is an amazing tool that is actually making me use my brain more.

So far today I’ve asked it to tell me how many litres to put in my hire car so that the fuel
gauge reads the same as it was when I picked up the car. I just took a photo of the dash and it told me how many litres I needed. Took seconds.

If I had to work that out myself I’d probably just have filled the tank as I wouldn’t have been wanting to faff around working it out.

I also asked about ways to stop a neighbours car encroaching on your driveway (It was on another thread) . I only did this to see what it would
see and it instantly
came up with a really practical and inexpensive suggestion. It’s a long thread but I don’t think anyone else had made the suggestion.

Oh, I've stopped engaging in conversations on here about AI (although I did answer this question 🤦🏽‍♀️).

Mumsnet are very much stuck in 2023 AI Era and have zero idea about it's capability now. They use Chatgpt on free and think that's it.

The coding models are amazing. I haven't written any code myself for months.

Saw this headline today 'Accenture combats AI Luddites by linking promotions to use' https://www.afr.com/world/north-america/accenture-combats-ai-luddites-by-linking-promotions-to-use-20260224-p5o53m