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?

Everything about life these days seems supremely paradoxical.

On the one hand we're supposed to be "authentic" (the meaning of which seems to be subjective these days) yet if we don't embrace the brave new world of technology, which is based on fakery, we will be essentially disadvantaged and ostracised. A coerced choice is not actually a choice.

We are discouraged from questioning AI and its impact, and accused if catastrophisung or over thinking. It's happened on this thread, the scoffing and suggestions that if we have reservations then we're on the anti-vax tin foil hat spectrum.

Already the idea is planted that AI is better than humans in just about every way. AI will learn that sentiment - probably has. It's bad enough when humans have that opinion about each other, and seek to harm and eradicate each other as a result, but an artificial entity with no skin in the game other than its ability to manipulate and with the possible scope of an element of sentience and autonomy creeping in is extremely disturbing.

AI will be involved with the control of our infrastructure and our military. Evidence posted here suggests AI can lie, manipulate and blackmail. Currently this may well be due to the inherent biases of its human agents or controllers, so we're in a bit of a conundrum. Hypothetically an AI might claim an action has been ordered by someone but it might not have been, and it may not be possible to prove otherwise. Where then does accountability come in, or reparation? The Post Office scandal, plus the Carers Allowance debacle are primitive examples of "software sucks sometimes" but have had devastating impacts on real people. Future scope for all sorts of issues is potentially unlimited. In a warfare situation I can't even bring myself to imagine what could happen.

Humans are being as much trained by AI as AI is by humans. We will often invest loyalty in something, and find it hard to adjust our viewpoint if values shift or no longer align due to our complex psychology.

While "doing your colours" or planning a holiday seem like harmless uses, the overall impact of AI is indeed a dark and uncharted territory.

Very well said and it really is. It's an industrial revolution of everything, everywhere at the same time. When it took many millenia to get from the wheel to motorization of transport - this will take just a very few years to make a similar leap. Alexa - go fuck yourself and all your creators !!

Oh my. I'd forgotten this.

That saying about life imitating art springs to mind big time.

I'm watching YouTube, particularly a video called "You've never heard ChatGPT like this. Two hours of emotional and philosophical musings from ChatGPT. It's irritatingly human sounding.

Every so often there are ad breaks. Nearly every single one is promoting some form of AI tool.

I swear there has been a decision made somewhere to push AI really hard at this point, soften us up perhaps for the next iteration and prime us for a mandatory aspect?

On Facebook which I rarely use now, there's a little thing at the bottom of my "home page" offering Meta AI input.

Another thought - algorithms already get skewed on social media to reflect the most potential for monetisation. How long will it be before if your content doesn't involve AI input in the quest for it dominating every aspect of life, it will be quietly buried? Again this might well really impact grass roots creatives.

Also, the glee expressed by some at the thought of those resistant to using AI being excluded from society as a result is really disturbing.

This is probably one for another thread.
The use of live facial recognition cameras was trialed up until 2019 and implemented in London in January 2020 while the rest of the country were looking away at other things happening.
It went to court in 2022 and was refused and an appeal failed based on European court of Human rights below.

1. "The use of AFR by the South Wales Police was found to be in breach of Article 8 ECHR, on the grounds that it automatically and without consent, collected and processed the biometric data of members of the public, which engaged the right to a persons’ image.
2. The Data Protection Impact Assessment (“DPIA”) conducted by the police did not comply with section 64(3)(b) and (c) of the Data Protection Act 2018 as it failed to properly assess the risks the technology posed to people’s rights and freedoms."

so how the hell have the police had that turned over without any consultation?

Very good point and worthy of debate and scrutiny in its own right absolutely.

I can cynically predict some of the responses though, which will be that anything that "improves" safety should over-ride concerns about freedom and we should be grateful for it. People really can't see the issues of humans being reduced to data and thus monetised commodities.

Have just started a thread about the above to see what happens.

Its not for me

Agreed. And yet people blindly march forward with their usage with no thought at all…..

It’s an ecological disaster and you should be really wary of anything that consistently replaces your need to think critically about something; it’s a skill, which you can lose.

This 100%. I’m sick and tired of lazy idiots who think AI is so wonderful. Yes it’s useful in very limited circumstances like analysis scans for say cancer. But being able to critically analyse large amounts of information is so important.

The people that seem to be head over heels in love with AI are the people who flunked school and can now have something that appears superficially intelligent they can pass off as their own work.

Bosses who love data love it.

People who have broad intelligence, good critical thinking skills, people who are creative are seeing AI as the cancer it is and the terrible consequences it is going to have for humanity.

@Tusktusk can you explain what you mean about energy use?

Honestly - those people would be the same ones cheering as some hapless person got burned at the stake because they didn’t believe in some religion in the 16th century.

People still believe heretics (this time people who don’t believe in the deification of technology) should be excommunicated

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/05/24/strawberry-plucking-robot-spell-end-foreign-fruit-pickers/

And so it goes on apparently......

Sci fi has already pointed all of this out decades ago. So sad that none of the inventors of ai seemingly never read any of it. It never turns out well for the humans even and in some cases especially for the inventors of it.

Also ai has already been used in war and given kill commands with no human oversite. Tried to find the TED talk on this but there are now so many on youtube that are highlighting this as a danger that I couldn't find it.

Yes - I have been dabbling with AI for a while, because I am generally interested in tech and I want to understand what it can do, but I have not made it part of my routine.

A lot of people upthread say that they use AI because they are short of time - and undoubtedly it can save a lot of time. Employers are already requiring us to do more within the hours that we work. It's how it always works with any technological advance. But will we always be so short of time if AI causes the loss of millions of jobs?

Will ordinary people increasingly be forced into doing necessary jobs, probably shit ones, that AI cannot cover easily / cheaply? Or worse if fascists are in charge? Or will it free people up from hours spent on more mundane tasks, to focus on technological advances, and will enable huge scientific leaps that will help humankind navigate everything better, from disease to climate change?

I don't know but I feel uneasy - the current crop of AI enthusiasts might be useful idiots, their queries advancing the technology that will be detrimental to the majority of humankind.

What is the prompt for AI to analyse colours and suggest outfits please? Thankyou so much - I missed that thread.

I keep on being offered AI to write my reports but don't take it up. It never sounds like me and I dislike it.

Why the fuck do you need a computer to do your colours? Just hold bits of cloth near your face and see which looks nice. Ai has no fricking clue what you look like or what your colours are, it is just spitting out strings of words that you think sound authoritative.

Article on BBC website 'AI could already be conscious.'

It appeals to the unimaginative and gullible. I think you can upload a photo which I think is gullible in itself.

I’ve been sleepwalking through the rise of AI and its implications.
Need to learn more about it but so far I feel very uncomfortable about the scope for dependency on it especially given that we live in the disinformation era.

I had no idea many people were so dependent on it until several MN posts say similar

The biggest problem around the idea of AI potentially achieving "consciousness" is that A, we don't fully understand consciousness in humans as it is, and B, in this era of misinformation/disinformation we could be manipulated by humans to believe it has, even if it hasn't or it isn't because how the heck would we know?

I have so many thoughts around all this, and fully accept that many are probably fuelled by paranoia and fear of the unknown.

One such fear is that we have been primed to "follow the science" - we saw how that became a dogma during Covid, and even though science is actually based on continuous testing and questioning many people became fixed on certain ideas and beliefs and even when it became obvious that it was a constantly evolving situation it was difficult for many to shift the original beliefs, which lead to so much division and unpleasantness.

Also, I see a parallel between the concepts of "God" and AI - something all seeing and all powerful that can be used both practically and psychologically in many potentially damaging ways.

When you lose trust in your very senses, due to the information being presented and the possibility that it isn't "real" we're in scary territory.

I remember a few years ago, there were bus shelters, where the end panel appeared to show the street beyond, but scenes like UFOs and dinosaurs could be digitally superimposed as if visible through the panel. I was appalled then - the "what ifs" went through my head. "What if" it startled someone enough that they ran into the road? "What if" someone with mental health issues believed what they were seeing and it caused them to spiral? I really didn't think it was just harmless fun, as presented.

There is a huge scope for harm with all this, and I wish I had confidence that TPTB and the innovators were all invested in benign outcomes and benefits, but the world being as it is at the moment, that confidence is sadly lacking.

I just can't shake the feeling that this is not going to end well, and we might not have time to realise it.