Do you use AI?

[HolidayHappy123]

Thought it might be interesting to chat about how people are using AI….

I am encouraged to use a specific AI programme at work that is specific to my sector, but I find it to be quite inaccurate and I haven’t found a way to use it that I am confident with.

I used Chat GPE to make our holiday itinerary into quite a cool poster and I’ve just asked Claude to build an itinerary for our Xmas holiday - the first attempt is pretty much the same as the itinerary it took me about 2 weeks to come up with.

Interested to know how others are using AI and what works/doesn’t work?

I got it to write out a meal plan for 1 month with no repeat meals, no upfs, no boiled eggs and i added the macros I wanted.

It write out an itinerary for three weeks in Poland including where to stay and suggested places to eat.

It has written out a cycling plan plan for me to build up to 100 miles suggesting which roads by name to use shat days I nedd yo rest and shen to push myself.

It has written out a style and beauty plan for an event im going to in October with the dates when I need to get things done.

I asked it to write out a 6 hour play list with specific music . It came up with suggestions that I hadn't heard of that were great and put the songs in a great order so they flowed well.

I use it at work - Copilot and an enterprise tool called Harvey.

I rarely use it at home. If I use a search engine I get the AI summary but I usually just scroll down to the actual results. If I can't find what I am looking for, I use Copilot to find things for me. Most of the time it works. Sometimes it's good for finding research on things. Search engines have been entshittified to increase ad revenue so using an AI tool is better.

I’ve used it a few times to write sensitive messages so I don’t jump in with two feet or phrase things that can be taken the wrong way , I rewrite to sound more like me though

Holiday itineraries, minor ailments, relationship or parenting quandaries, recipes and meal planning, finding the cheapest version of products, product recommendations, diy questions, gardening questions, weird random questions that pop into my head 😆, interior design, career advice 🤔
kind of hate how it’s becoming my first port of call for pretty much everything but it does save time! Can’t wait to do Christmas admin with AI help!

I just asked it to come up with a 10k route to run on my next holiday. The street names made no sense and it told me to turn right when I was very obviously having to turn left. I'll create my own ;)

I use it sporadically. Currently going through lots of legal issues as executor of a complicated estate and it’s been useful in summarising legal jargon so that I can go back and ask the right questions (I do have a law degree but IHT law is a different language). But my brain is constantly calculating how much plastic I need to recycle to offer my questions, so trying not to use it willy nilly.

I spend 90% of my working time in codex. It drafts my emails, my marketing content, my spreadsheets, my reports, everything. I read everything - nothing goes out as is. I run an AI first company. I wouldn’t employ anyone who wasn’t using it or open to using it for everything.

I have found it very useful at work. You definitely need to keep an eye on it as it occasionally comes out with nonsense but it's great at summarising large amounts of detailed information.

I also use it to create meeting minutes and associated actions and although I would always edit what it comes out and sense check it, I've found it great for getting a starting point. It gave me an entire first draft for a training session I was delivering in under a minute.

At home I tend to use ChatGPT but less regularly than at work. I did use it to mock up a few different designs for our bathroom when we were renovating it and I was deciding between tiles, flooring type and wall colour which was useful for getting a better visual idea of how different combinations would work together.

I've also used it to help me with my pension planning and investments. I'd never make big financial decisions on its say so but it has been helpful at working through scenarios with me such as "if I increased my pension contributions by x% or y% what could my pension pot look like in 10 years and in 20 years." I asked it to model based on three different market returns and it was surprisingly helpful.

I know a lot of people use it for recipe planning and for holiday itineraries but I enjoy doing both of those myself!

Yes, I use it constantly in my legal consultancy work. It's extremely good, and the `hallucinations' (making up law if it couldn't find the answer) are now much rarer than they used to be even just a few months ago - every new version is an improvement on the last one.

But it's not perfect, and I still have to check and correct / edit the output. What really concerns me is that I'm seeing a lot of people relying 100% on AI for legal work, and not realising when it's made a serious error as it's so superficially convincing. This can - and does - have catastrophic results, when AI has told them they have a great case even though they don't, but only discover this when they lose in court and get ordered to pay tens of thousands in legal costs.

I'm sure AI has a place. However, my direct reports (all in their 20s, in case relevant) use AI to write every email and every IM. I ask them questions in meetings, they ask for "time to think about it" and inevitably return with an AI generated (and not proof read) email response a couple of hours later. I am truly concerned about how rapidly people are losing, or just not building, critical thinking skills.

I have the same thing at work with young colleagues.

Makes me wonder about their degree results...

At work I use LLMs to conduct research, write technical requirements, meeting notes and actions, emails. But that's just simple stuff. Using AI to work with data is my goal, eliminating hours of work and potential mistakes pulling and combining reports and making data-led predictions and decisions, communicating huge amount of data back into natural language recommendations.

At home I mainly use openAI (google) to help with gardening and DIY questions. It's helped me build planting schedules and design my bookcases.

I am studying AI and looking at studying a Masters. A big financial commitment but I think it's the only way to future proof my career.

It's odd that the biggest danger of AI is hardly ever discussed. It's not the danger that it will become more intelligent than us - though that's almost inevitable - but that the whole industry is basically modelled on the illegal drug industry.

Most people will have heard of the astronomical amounts of money being invested in AI - trillions of dollars - and somehow that has to be recouped. So what the AI companies are doing is giving it away at present, in order to get people hooked, just like drug dealers will give free samples to children outside schools.

And it's working perfectly, as many of the answers on here demonstrate. Employers are sacking (or not hiring) workers, as AI can do their jobs, and ordinary people are losing the skills they used to have, as AI can now do the tasks for them.

But you'll gradually start finding out that the currently free AI models will become a lot more restricted, and that if you want to carry on using them you'll have to pay. Only a small amount at first, like a Netflix subscription, but - just like a drug dealer - they know they can start charging more and more as the customers can no longer live without it. Eventually, the AI companies will be raking in unimaginable amounts from people who can't afford the payments but can't afford to be deprived of it.

It's a frankly hideous business model, but it's the only one that will enable these companies to recoup their investment.

Remember - you read it here first!

I feel so deflated when I receive yet another ridiculously long, and often not quite correct, AI generated email. I feel even more deflated when they say "What? Copilot? Never used it. That's literally just how I type! Everyone makes fun of me for sounding like AI". Do they also make fun of you for formatting like AI and including "Copilot said..." At the beginning of your email because you didn't even read what you just copied and pasted?! 😭

Absolutely not.

Seriously? You’re using AI to rewrite your students’ dissertation chapters for them? What the fuck is wrong with you???

Very true. Although anyone who listens to Ed Zitron will not actually have read it here first 😁

No, it's shit and unethical and I judge people who use it

I use to meal plan. Give it ingredients etc and it gives recipes.
Home decorating.
Holiday planning.
Healthy lunches and packed lunches to increase my fibre and protein intake.
Exercises to do etc!
I use it as an advice sounding board!

I used it to find out what to do around care and suppprt for my elderly parent after an illness, I would have had zero idea how to start and it was so stressful it took the work out of starting that search.
I do feel uneasy about how it is used without consideration to create and decide things for us, There are obviously great things that it can do, I

We have a rule at work. It must not take more effort for the recipient to read than it took you to produce.

I like the AI Google.mode.
Sometimes I look for something amd want to.specifically adapt the results to my situation.
Just today I was looking for information on my DLA application, we were rejected and are waiting on a mandatory reconsideration but expecting another no.
I found lots of emails.from when my vhild was still.in school and uploaded some screenshot to the ai mode and it explained that they were great evidence and made suggestions of how many to include amd alsorts of helpful information for taking it to a tribunal.

I use it for reviewing items before I make a purchase. It has saved me from wasting my money on quite a few occasions 👍🏻

I do wonder has anyone who uses ‘AI’ regularly actually used it to look into the ethical clusterfuck that is AI (in all its facets).

It’s all been said upthread but no one is actually engaging with any of it - environmental (water, land), ethical (content theft, how LLMs are trained), business model (drug dealer hook is an excellent analogy).

I work in tech and while I do use it, I try to use it as ethically as I can (i.e. for things that would take me days to do myself when I’m pressed for time), and even then it makes me feel like I’m in need of a shower, because really, is me being busy a decent enough excuse?!

So to hear some people are using it to just ‘chat to’ is fucking horrifying. I know it’s being used like that but it’s like watching the start of a disaster movie.

I’m glad some people are posting that millennials and Gen Z are starting to balk against it - they should…the only people who end up better off in this scenario are the tech giants…and they are some scary despots. Ask yourself why you would want to give those guys any more power than they already have to speed up fucking our planet up, and putting entire industries out of business (think that’s far fetched? Look at the graduate job market) We have to collectively wake up…

I usually use emojis when I’m out of words but I don’t even think I have emojis to cover how depressing this thread is.

Yes. I use it all the time . I agree with the many others responding. For me its taken over from St Google! I describe it as' Google on steroids' One of freinds suggested that should concern me ,especially since it is very quickly becoming more accurate. However. Im no Sarah Connor i'm a lazy ,wee kicking 70! It makes getting info. (Example. Cooking times temps ect for my new Ninja ) so simple and you ought to see my roast chicken! My goodness a thing of beauty under AI timings and direction. Hell even my Fitbit Coach is AI ,such great strategies for excercising with chronic illnesses etc. It seems so personalised I can see why some folks get comfused into thinking its a person!