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?

So which humans are going to be supervising?

But @Swirlythingy2025 says they won’t be attending school and there will be no bullies.

if they truly want to study then they will learn by themselves or have a virtual tutor to ask questions to if they are not sure and a virtual tutor could manage alot more learners

we share different ideas,

Humans supervising other humans to keep order in order for the worship of AI to continue uninterrupted. Oh, delightful. This will end soooo well. Also, what is the point of humans learning all this stuff if there are fewer and fewer needs for it's application because AI is doing it all on the academic front? I'm getting more baffled by what the purpose of the majority of all the "useless eaters" rendered obsolete (amongst which number is definitely fall) by AI and ever more sophisticated technology......

but thats the main outcome of using more and more tech, at some point in the future there will only need a certain percentage of humans previous generations started all the advancements of tech, the current generation are advancing tech further etc

Well you make a good point. Until now, a falling birth rate has been a bad thing. No longer, because fewer people will be required to support older people.

And that's good for the environment, right?

I'm getting Logans Run and Soylent Green vibes here.....

Oh noes! AI is bad for the environment!

But - AI will lead to lower birth rates being fine. So less impact by humans on the environment.

Oh noes! That is still bad somehow!

I’ve been following this thread since it was created and have wondered how many of the posters here who think AI is brilliant and use it think that the declining birth rate is a massive problem?

How many of them are vegan/vegetarian due to the environmental impacts of eating meat?

https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.08872

"While LLMs offer immediate convenience, our findings highlight potential cognitive costs. Over four months, LLM users consistently underperformed at neural, linguistic, and behavioral levels. These results raise concerns about the long-term educational implications of LLM reliance and underscore the need for deeper inquiry into AI's role in learning"

I'm all about the happy medium. Since the exponential growth and dependence on technology, the world has become more dystopia, not utopian, with rapid and measurable decline in mental health, environmental issues, economic stability, and a race to create more and more inventive ways of killing each other. As I've said before, the risks now far outweigh the benefits.

Either we live symbiotically with the planet and each other, or there is no point to human existence at all. Nihilism is not my favourite philosophy.

@ColourlessGreenIdeasSleepFuriously

What an interesting article! It certainly makes intuitive sense from a "use it or lose it" perspective. One for next semester's syllabuses, for sure!

Can't wait for an AI bot to teach my kids that Jane Austen and Mary Shelley were sisters

Apart from predictive text when Im typing/cookies/algorithms I dont use AI at all. I never have. I wouldnt know how tbh. Maybe that is a negative? That Ive got no clue how to use AI. As Catherine Tates character would say though...... Am I bovvered? Nope.

or people in society saying theres a deep state according to the main stream media, etc the main steam media are hardly the angels of truth or eg daily mail etc yet people expect AI to be perfect but yet people are happy to have their children learn from the main stream media as a truthful source ?

can they do a study on how much misinformation there is in the general media vs chatgpt ?

but then we should not be giving birth to more people just to prop up the system ?

If you are arguing for misinformation training in schools, delivered by properly trained teachers who can teach kids to be discerning in their understanding of sources, I am all for that. It is the exact opposite of what AI does though.

No comment on its proven blunting of cognitive abilities?

based on the works and books john gatto taylor and similar authors the same argument could be made against the whole Victorian style schooling system and its original design and purpose

Are calculators bad? Should we all go back to logarithm books?

Should architects still be tracing on blueprints?

Does anyone remember where the word "computer" comes from - should we go back to rooms full of people working things out?

I worked in a typing pool, once. Should we go back to using carbon paper, because secretaries lost their jobs to word processors?

I would say a calculator that made answers up randomly upwards of 60 % of the time while undermining the social contract and using as much energy as Japan was pretty shit tbf

As a PP said, "Using as much energy as Japan" is such a nonsense statement.

I really don't understand. Could you explain?

For instance - I ask AI a question. Usually about a CMS. It goes off and brings me back a lot of info, organised into headed sections, with sources. Which help me understand the whole issue better. Maybe we then create some code to do some things that the CMS doesn't do naturally.

What I didn't have to do, was visit 10 or more websites. Which all use energy to exist. And it also brought an answer to me that I could use.

Also, what do you mean by "undermining the social contract"?