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 have tried it out every so often and found the results to be pretty rubbish. The emails it writes are far too verbose, and full of unnecessary extra words, phrase and sentences. They also don't read anything like something I'd write, so the recipient would likely think I had lost my mind and was being really pretentious.

I've just asked it for suggestions for venues for a casual date night - it suggested 2 cinemas in my city which no longer exist and haven't done for at least 4 years. It didn't suggest the cinemas which do exist. I would never trust it to give me accurate information.

https://gizmodo.com/microsoft-study-finds-relying-on-ai-kills-your-critical-thinking-skills-2000561788

How did they need to do a study to figure that out - or was it cos they'd already killed their critical thinking skills?

https://bsrlm.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/BSRLM-CP-45-1-10.pdf

'All sizzle, no steak: AI tools are not able to act as credible knowledge brokers by summarising evidence in mathematics education'

https://bigthink.com/the-future/what-happens-the-day-after-humans-create-agi/

A thoughtful piece.

Goes back to my belief that we are engineering our own obsolescence far more totally than we want to think.

I'm absolutely not going to touch the damn thing with a barge pole, at least not consciously. And there's the rub. I may have no choice because everything online will have a flavour of it, and one cannot avoid being online entirely.

Now if they could perfect time travel, that might actually be useful.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jun/10/billion-dollar-ai-puzzle-break-down

Also interesting. The zealots should read and absorb the very last line.

ChatGPT is down it’s affecting my ability to get on today. I have one ND child, one going through other health issues and I have a million and one admin things to get done for our house/life but also work. And I can’t do it all without AI. I need its speed.

https://www.energymonitor.ai/news/international-telecommunication-union-operational-emissions/

This is ridiculous.

https://tvpworld.com/87198634/auschwitz-museum-warns-of-ai-fabricated-holocaust-stories

Seriously?

I feel bad for this poster who clearly has a lot on her plate, but the answer cannot be using AI to keep running faster and faster on the treadmill instead of fixing the social safety net.

What are you using it for?

Good lord, the Holicaust fabrication angle is terrifying. I'm beginning to think the concept of the Mandeka effect is a psy op of massive proportions. Yikes.

Just to clarify, I mean real stories are vitally important in history, especially in this area, because the real victims should be honoured and remembered, not overwritten by AI. And what's to stop agenda driven types getting AI to start going the route of denial, in an age where people already distrust official narratives and will spread disinformation in a heartbeat without verifying?

I really, really want to unplug myself.

@MistressoftheDarkSide It’s impossible, isn’t it? I don’t use it directly and actively avoid it, but it’s there on the periphery: colleagues editing their bits of a report with Grammarly AI, all the work tools popping up going “Do you want to use the AI assistant?”, someone else sends in data crunched with AI, you’re asked to farm the translation work out to AI, after a meeting about it up pops the AI transcript.

And none of it is actually reducing workloads; I’m not suddenly twiddling my thumbs or able to leave early and enjoy some life because other people have engaged AI (largely because I have to re-research and rewrite the shite other people have made with it) – it’s just making bosses go “Ooh, look how much more we can make them do in a day”.

but even without Ai people have always wrote history, then rewrote history etc Ai does not change that.

is no different than using a washing machine, vs a bowl and wash by hand etc why use older methods ?

but humans have been writing books that challenge different views etc long before Ai

but thats like saying a person makes a mistake , then replace them etc, programs are not always fully accurate and neither are humans,

At the end of the day, lots of self employed people rely on "the bloke down the pub", who may know ask AI instead, so it's likely to be more reliable, but still prone to mistakes. But as everyone knows, you HAVE to check your facts and sources. AI is no different. You're a fool if you blindly rely on AI for important things, just like you'd be a fool if you relied on Fred down the Nag's Head or a random poster on Facebook. All these "sources" can give you ideas/options, etc but you really still have to check things out yourself. In fact AI is better because once it gives you answer, you can ask it for sources/citations to find out why it's given the answer it has. That means you can check the sources quickly and simply which is a lot quicker and more reliable than scratting around trying to find your own sources.

Given that the High Court has recently had a conniption and put a stop to use of AI because it was making up citations, I still think it's too high a risk at this stage. Once a made up citation hits the Internet, repetition and reproduction makes the likelihood if verification far more difficult, especially if actual libraries and such resources are being made less accessible.

I agree humans aren't always reliable, but the sources of information available to them should be as far as possible, not the product of some algorithmic fever dream programmed to "be helpful". Such as the ChatGPT therapist who advised a client struggling with addiction issues to have a little bump to alleviate stress.

As for perception and the re-writing of history, I take your point. But if we are psychologically being programmed to accept that AI output is a Holy Grail of some sort, we're in deep unchartered territory. If most learning resources are online, it's not just re-writing history, potentially it could be fabricating it entirely and claiming that living witnesses that things didn't happen are wrong. That's gas-lighting by technological means and the psychological impact is going to be awful.

Human memory as it is can be an unreliable and fragile thing, but some core truths and remembrance exist and should not be tinkered with for political or financial gain, or potentially just experimentally. We are not lab rats to be experimented on in this way without explicit consent.

i can understand your points, but thats a fault of humans if they take ai as gospel, plus with reguards to Ai thats only as good as the sources it uses so the websites that humans make need to be better content if the ai is using them etc
even humans rewrite history and yes should not does not mean it wont

I agree that we humans should indeed approach AI with scepticism, but it's being pushed and introduced into the mainstream at break neck speed with those walking against it being accused of paranoia and being Luddites and being told if we don't get with the programme (ha) we'll be marginalised, jobless and on very short rations.

People's lives are busy - AI is being touted as a time saver. In that case the idea of going through it's output with a fine tooth comb kind of negates is usefulness.