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?

You can opt out of the google AI on a per search basis by adding '-ai' to your search term

YANBU. I use it for everything.

That post was about using it dozens of times a day. And the op was about reliance. Is it going to be a thing in society? Are we probably going to be obliged to use it for work? Is it going to be powering all sorts of processes we engage with day-to-day? Yes. But the idea we’re all going to get compulsively drawn into it for things we can do perfectly well using our own minds or lower powered tech - no. I have zero interest in creating prompts for recipes or holiday plans or in chatting to it. And I sure as hell won’t be using it to structure academic essays or to avoid having to develop research skills as a pp described.

I imagine discretionary use is going to be much as it is with social media, where you have excessively online types who can’t believe anyone else doesn’t rely on the socials through to people who avoid all SM like the plague. With most of somewhere in between.

You still can.

I look at it like this. In every post complaining about people's actual/potential reliance on AI, substitute the word "computers". Moaning about people relying on Excel, or Google, or email, or streaming TV, seems ridiculous.

AI is the new computers, the new internet. It's a paradigm shift and it's not just about getting our colours done or choosing a recipe. The interraction will be different.

If I can't make you see, then I can't make you see 😂But just as with every big technology shift - the industrial revolution, computers, the internet - jobs will change. Life will change. AI and AGI is here now.

ETA: I mean, you're literally discussing AI on social media 😆

Sadly, I agree. I am a regular library user, but these days, it's more to borrow fiction rather than for research. Our libraries just don't have the same kind of resources that they used to do. Entire areas have had their racks taken away and replaced by soft seating areas, play areas, desks with computers, racks of DVDs, coffee machine, etc. They're really nothing like they used to be and it's non-fiction, historic records, research records, journals, etc that have been sacrificed. Our nearby city library used to have three distinct areas in different parts of the building, one was the "reference" section, the biggest section, where you could read many different sets of encyclopedia, general and specialist, virtually every specialist professional/scientific journal you'd ever need going back decades, huge numbers of reference/factual/text books covering every subject imaginable. I could (and did) spend hours in there. All gone now! Heaven knows what they did with it all - I'd only hope it's all being used somewhere and hasn't been destroyed. Now that entire area is used by groups for play, music, etc - all worthy, but not as useful as the old reference library. I went into our village library to see what local history/reference books they had relating to our village - they had nothing, zilch, nothing at all, which I found ridiculous that they didn't have a single resource about the village they were located in- the girl behind the counter just vaguely pointed to a rack of tourist information leaflets - completely missed the point of what I was looking for! I eventually bought a few local history books from ebay, 2 of which were specific about the history of the village!

The way that AI can make up things is very worrying and is why people need to use it as a tool and not a definitive resource. There was a tax case last year where someone presented some "precedents" to the court, i.e. previous court cases to try to argue her point, with case names, dates, judge names, all laid out just like normal court records. Trouble was they were all AI generated fakes. Luckily the opposing lawyers quickly checked them out and realised they weren't genuine and she lost her court case. What isn't clear is whether the woman was genuinely conned by AI and genuinely believed them to be real binding precedent cases, or whether she knowingly created false documents and thought she'd get away with it.

Everything still needs to be checked out by someone who knows what they're doing. Whether that's a student double checking using other resources, or a professional such as a lawyer or accountant double checking, etc. etc. People need to realise that you can't just "rely" on AI being correct. Sadly, I think a lot of people are going to get caught out by relying on it as a sole source and not checking other resources.

If I can't make you see, then I can't make you see 😂But just as with every big technology shift - the industrial revolution, computers, the internet - jobs will change. Life will change. AI and AGI is here now.
ETA: I mean, you're literally discussing AI on social media 😆

Not sure what’s so amusing - I’ve never claimed not to use SM. Or AI for that matter! And I don’t deny it’s changing society either.

But I won’t be using it for trivial stuff or where I can see value in using my own mind. I won’t be using it uncritically.

I agree with you. I actually have a creative business. So I emphasise and I collaborate with creatives where I can, but budgets are squeezed so much that I just can’t afford to.

This debate is a double edged sword for those of us with limited resource where AI has helped us feed our families. Vs AI making industries smaller as less people are needed.

I have had bad luck though.
I paid an illustrator 2 years ago to help me with a booklet and she took 2 years to do it, I paid her over £1k, and she didn’t finish the job. I was absolutely gutted and the project hasn’t lifted off.

A graphic designer tried to sue me at the end of last year, I paid them and they didn’t complete the work - didn’t follow a clear brief and we missed our print deadline.

It’s so much easier to be a big business and pay for talent. But us small businesses struggle and the talent pool isn’t as reliable as it used to be.

I have worked with amazing creatives too - and I wish there was more investment.

Did anyone on here cry for the hand animators when computers took over?
Are we decrying the lack of typing pools? Should we go back to logarithm booklets? And I bet nobody on here uses Wix or Wordpress, thus putting a website designer out of a job!

@changedusernameforthis1 It actually massively helped today when my card got declined at Tesco checkout. Money was in there, but it just wasn't working and everyone was staring. I asked the staff to keep my trolley aside as I tried to fix it and asked AI for advice.
Was told to buy an online gift card instead. Literally saved my day

Oh my! How genius lol. Would never have thought of this! The paradoxical thing though is it’s precisely these kind of critical thinking skills that will be eroded if we continue to become overly reliant on AI. Also everyone saying it’s getting harder to spot AI written stuff, I’m not sure. So my employer is pretty huge and during a presentation n AI, we were told how a stack of applications had come in for a sift and several applicants answered the Qs almost exactly the same so big clue there. Also, some interviews for logistical reasons are over video and they swore that one guy used AI to answer an interview Q (think he had voice activated AI app open to the side) and he just parroted the answer looking very confused himself as he did so! 😬 Also I think people forget it is plagiarism to use AI for certain works including creating things for work and you’re meant to declare it though I know people don’t. Would be interesting if they amended employment contract laws perhaps to cover the use of AI.

Yes, using AI needs a degree of critical thinking and skepticism. Those of us who came to intellectual maturity before it generally have that skill, but what happens if you are much younger and have never developed it. By analogy, of course I use calculators because it is quicker than doing everything in my head, but what I was taught in maths classes before they were commonly allowed has given me the ability to know when I must have put something wrong in the calculator because the answer doesn't make sense. Not sure I would have that if I'd only ever used calculators.

It's rather concerning that resistance to AI and raising legitimate concerns brings comparisons to being anti-vax and the like.

AI is an unprecedented development with limitless potential, particularly for nefarious purposes. Legislation barely exists that regulates Internet crime as it is, and the data gathered on us is fair game and for sale, it's now one of the most valuable resources in the world.

When we all bought into the convenience of computers, they were primitive tools in comparison to where we are today. Yes, there are some benefits to various programmes and applications, but this new phase in history is basically an experiment.

There is much handwringng about the potential negative impacts of screen time on children, but future generations will have to be "plugged in" so limiting exposure may work in terms of content, but actual use is virtually (ha) mandatory.

Some see it as evolution, but it also brings the danger of regression and exploitation.

The exhortation to "get with the programme" will be driven by those with the most to gain, in terms of money and power.

It's ironic that the environmental impact is being "waved away" when every day we are faced with the doom surrounding climate change.

At the very least, caution should be exercised in all areas of impact; some pioneers on the field are sounding alarms as everything progresses at a speed that a good number of us find bewildering.

Strange and interesting times doesn't begin to cover it.

I just downloaded ChatGPT from the Google play store, after reading about it on mumsnet. It's great for very fast answers to things, and worked out a financial question I had today btilliantly

I just downloaded ChatGPT from the Google play store, after reading about it on mumsnet. It's great for very fast answers to things

But are the answers accurate?

You also need to use common sense and make is your own. If you just copy and paste, then yes, it's recognisable.

I work at a university and have seen many stats - google ‘digital decarbonisation’. One ChatGP request can use 5ltrs of water (used to cool energy systems) and use enough energy to power 14 lightbulbs for an hour.

Yes exactly. I’m 52, and lived quite a life to survive abusive parents and toxic partners, whilst navigating a life in uni with no internet/mobile phone and travelling around the country with no sat nav. Managing to buy a home alone and all the things that come with it with minimal reliance on anyone but myself, I can say that I use AI sparingly and ti enhance the later part of my life but if I had kids I would be worried about them always turning to a quick access AI app on their phone to navigate all life’s issues. Even many MN with I imagine some life experience behind the, are finding AI including the counselling element quite addictive so yes how will kids manage I wonder? What sort of adults will they be? How resilient etc. Many interesting Qs.

I asked Chat to write a poem in the style of Philip Larkin about this thread; if you know Aubade it has mimiced that - scarily good and bad at the same time.

Submission
I work before the world begins to stir.
The screen already waits. It always does.
Its glow, a kind of kindness — too exact
To be refused, too empty to be love.
What once was doubt becomes a form of peace,
So easy now, the answers come too clean.
I do not grow. I only learn to lean.
This is the age: not rage, but giving in.
A soft eclipse of effort, one by one.
Why wring the mind, why wait, why suffer thought
When it can spill for you, without a cost?
It isn't wrong — not quite — just subtly less,
A thinning of the will beneath the gloss,
A trade: attention, drained, for what is lost.
And now the fear begins — not that it lies,
But that it doesn’t. That it’s always right.
That everything I might have been alone
Was never worth the friction or the time.
It doesn’t sleep. I do. It keeps the score.
And when I speak, it speaks a little more —
Until I watch, and wonder who is sure.
Yet still I leave it. Still, I turn away.
Walk out into the weather. Feel the day.
The wind is blunt, the sky a stubborn grey —
But no one tells me what I mean to say.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/the-digital-self/202312/should-artificial-intelligence-have-rights

And another potential can of worms......

AI can do a better job of persuading people than we do
OpenAI’s GPT-4 is much better at getting people to accept its point of view during an argument than humans are—but there’s a catch.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/05/19/1116779/ai-can-do-a-better-job-of-persuading-people-than-we-do/
May 19, 2025

If they have information about their opponents, AI bots become significantly better than humans at winning arguments and converting opponents to their point of view.

(If they don't have that information about opponents, AI bots are about as good as humans at converting their opponents.)

So actors who can get their AI bots onto Facebook, Xwitter, etc now have significantly more influence over public discourse across the world than they had before – and they had lots before.

Use it daily, get advice to solve a problem with DD, Help with kids school homework, so I can understand it and then explain it to them. Help with writing documents, presentations, management reports etc, capturing and summarising calls, writing linked in posts, emails etc

The logic of it is: you'll need to use it or be left behind. The only way to escape its pernicious spread will be to live off-grid, somewhere remote maybe deep in Wales and reconnect with the real world. And honestly, that sounds like a great idea.

Interestingly tonight’s homework for ds was to write a 100 word story. He wrote it in notes on his iPad so wanted to double check the word count. Co pilot was out by 26 words! I even asked it to double check and it said it was confident but (helpfully) directed me to an online word counter!

Some of us don't have, and don't want, dishwashers and don't use sat nav.

Shock, horror!!!