I have begun relying on AI and I don’t know how I feel about it.

[Tusktusk]

So far this month I have used AI to:

Analyse my colours (thanks MN) and suggest outfits

Create a menu of packed lunches around my dietary requirements and preferences, complete with a shopping list

Plan a holiday itinerary

Save me hours and hours of work and stress by suggesting really useful ways to overcome very particular work difficulties, having been thrown into an out of my comfort zone situation. I have used AI for this on a daily basis this week

Tonight, instead of posting my current family dilemma on mumsnet I chatted about it with Claude. The responses were really good. Wise, thoughtful, non judgemental, practical, understanding… like the best mumsnetters.

Am I starting to rely on it too much?

What have you been using it for?

I remember joking years ago when my brother got Alexa and was showing it off that we should kill it at birth. Now it's too late the genie is out of the bottle.

well if you think wikipedia is a reliable source, we have bigger problems than you over trusting AI.

i use it as a base source i never use it as a full accurate source

Once they have instant diagnostics + your medical records they will make superb primary health practicioners

Good thing you live in the UK and are not a woman seeking a termination in the US. And it’s a good thing that you don’t live in the US where in the not so distant future you would be unable to get health care insurance when the AI learns to accurately predict future health issues. Unless you vote Reform here in the UK, a political party that would definitely introduce an insurance based healthcare system?

Then you might be in trouble.

I don’t use it at all. My favourite thing about myself is how my brain quirks, how I love solving problems and thinking outside the box. Why on earth would I give that up? I want my brain to stay pliable and on the ball as long as possible and that’s not going to happen if I stop using it.

plus, surely half of the fun a holiday is researching and planning? Half the fun of eating well is being inspired by travel/ tv/magazines/eating out and then recreating them…. Where is the fun in just getting a faceless machine to do it? For me AI the equivalent of learning by rote. Arguable but boring as hell and certainly not as good as using your own skills to reach the same end result.

I’m using it for my weight loss. It’s an excellent tool. It helps me break down what I’ve eaten that day. Suggest swaps and photos and keeps me motivated. Don’t use it for much else though

You trust wikipedia but not AI? Both should be checked against other sources. Wikipedia has some shocking issues with accuracy and editorial policy.

Its about reducing time spent on the grunt work and less productive time. We used to have to go to the library or bookshop to find travel books to read. Now we access more sources more quickly at home - internet connectivity and the web save the effort of going to the library.

An AI tool can draft a bunch of different itineraries for review, then revise them based on what you like and time constraints, then revise them again. You can spend more of your time looking at the options/data and doing your own planning and less time trawling around to get the base information/timetables.

Nothing stops people doing it all themselves, just as the web hasn’t stopped people choosing to research in their libraries.

Libraries have an excellent carbon footprint, as it happens, and are great for social cohesion. They are one of the few public spaces open to all without expectation of expenditure. The more people turn to AI, the more libraries will close and the worse off we will all be.

Libraries are indeed wonderful places but they are not at all the best places to find answers any more, they have not been for a generation.

“I won’t go near a dishwasher. Half the pleasure of a Sunday roast is scrubbing crusty trays by hand while the gravy sets like concrete. A faceless appliance? That’s basically rote-washing—arguable, but boring as hell—and certainly not as good as using your own skills to reach the same end result.”

“And don’t get me started on sat-nav. Half the adventure of a holiday is wrestling an A-to-Z the size of a duvet in the lay-by. Letting a machine say ‘turn left’ would only dull my keen sense of direction.”

AI Is just another tool

No it is not.

Shame that you don’t understand it is not another calculator but there you go.

Well Justine is already training a LLM on Mumsnet content, in order to use it on the site in future/sell it, so get used to it!

"We used it at Mumsnet to build MumsGPT, which uncovers and summarises what parents are thinking about – everything from beauty trends to supermarkets to politicians – and we licensed OpenAI’s API (application programming interface) to build it"

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/sep/28/mumsnet-ai-google-openai-publishing-copyright

I’m fascinated by the people using it 30-40 times a day, saying they couldn’t go back, they don’t know how they’d live without it. I’ve never used it, wouldn’t know where to begin – is it a website, an app? Don’t enlighten me, I don’t care – and I can’t come up with one use of it I’d need in a day, let alone 40, that isn’t already served by my brain, Google, book-learning (proud library user!), colleagues, friends.

The genie is not out of the bottle yet.

The PP said another tool, not another calculator and they are correct. Tools can be used for good or ill.

Your example of intrusive government practices monitoring women’s menstrual cycle data is nothing to do with AI, its intrusive use of the data, no need for AI - it was happening many years ago. Similarly all those risk projections you worry about are already happening just with standard data analytics.

I’d argue that the biggest negative impact of tech in the last 30 years is 24 hour short format social media one developing brains, which I suspect history will look at just as we look at children exposed to risks in factories during the industrial revolution.

Yes, it is. And you not wanting to learn about a new thing doesn't mean it isn't.

I, personally, am pleased that AI is much better at spotting cancer on scans than humans are. And it will only get better.

If you look at the AI responses from Google searches it's just collating common or top answers to questions. So if the question was eg how many times do I need to ask for my child's data before I get more offical. I know logically it's three times. AI might go and scrape Quora and reddit for previous human responses. So it's a sanity check, much like you might come to mumsnet for. There's no thinking. It's analysis of big data. Of course it's not coming up with anything novel, but it can do that as well. Maybe not so much chat gbt yet. But everytime aastro physicist comes up with a new theory they are just running maths on previously know theories. No one is reinventing the wheel from scratch daily. We learn by building on existing knowledge and extrapolating it out. So science isn't looking at chat forums. It's looking at proven data and therefore getting closer to "thinking".

I'm a programmer and have been for almost two decades. I think about where Watson was ten years ago and what has changed in AI since then. It's not perfect but it's evolution is alarming from my view point. There's a difference in looking a big data which contains possibly a lot of shit data and say asking AI to code where you have the confines set rules of a programming language. Then it's going beyound what a human brain can do.

That is a totally different type of AI.

It’s a tool. Like all tools good and bad. There is a danger that we forget how to do stuff. How many of us could navigate somewhere new without Google Maps? If we rely on AI for healthy recipes how quickly would we lose the knowledge of why those recipes are healthy and what would that mean longer term if AI stopped working? It’s only taken a couple of generations for many of us to no longer know how to fix things, how to cook simple recipes, navigate, and know simple home remedies for minor ailments. We no longer need to write and we are seeing what that means for new generations. It’s scary, and interesting.

I have never knowingly used / interacted with AI, but there's the rub these days - as many somewhat gleefully it seems point out, we're stuck with it whether we like it or not. I already resent our reliance on technology with a passion, because we no longer have any real choice over its intrusion in our lives.

The phrase "there's an app for that" gives me the rage, the replacement of human interaction by "Claude" or whatever terrifies me, and as with all technological progress, whatever we're being allowed to use right now has already been outstripped by at least a decade in the field of innovation.

Governments are falling over themselves to incorporate AI into defence, it's used to gatekeep employment, health services etc already, and there's no scope for accountability. At least if Gladys screws up your bank deposit, you can point her out and sort it, if Ass-Idiot does it, you're in a world of pain.

As others have said, it's surveillance capitalism leading to authoritarianism.

We can no longer trust images or the written word presented on the Internet, and what bothers me alot is the attitude of some which is "why does it matter if things are "real" or not, it's all just a bit of fun and so convenient".

And that's how they got us with the Internet and Smartphones in general. Nice shiny games, instant shopping, and suddenly the market is destabilised, employment depends on being able to keep up with all the new skills which change at a breathtaking rate, and now we have a "tool" that can be used and manipulate alot of us out of existence if the tech bros with some if their weird ideologies get their way.

AIvis already used in the US justice system to help determine recividism, and inform sentencing.

CCTV footage could potentially be manipulated by bad actors. Anything that dystopia Sci fi writers have come up with is now on the table.

Frankly I'm out of "modern" society to a large degree, and if people think well, good riddance, I'm fine with that to be honest.

Okey dokes. I assume you also hate health technology? Vaccines, chemotherapy, scans, and the like?

Let's hope you never find out about CRISPR! Although I'm sure you would turn it down.

Hardly comparable to the valid points being raised.

It wasn't that long ago that two AIs had to be shut down because they invented their own language and their programmers couldn't analyse what they were talking about.

Last time I looked medical equipment didn't do that.