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?

The Japan comparison comes from the International Energy Agency. If AI is used to find ways of optimising and reducing energy use, then that's all good, but randomers using it billions of times a day to get recipes widely available in books and ask whether they should go for a walk to improve their mood is just insanely wasteful.

By undermining the social contract I mean its unprecedented capacity to pollute information sources and spread misinformation on a grand international scale.

Wait, so now you're posting on the internet to tell people off for not using books to find recipes?!

And surely "asking whether they should go for a walk to improve their mood" is just a leeettle like posting on Mumsnet to get feedback on something?

Also - using "as much energy as Japan" what? Per day? Per year? Per query? And when/where/how does that supposed info come from? The IEA may not be all over that info, given that it's all estimated.

yet we allow the main stream media to pollute the ideas and knowledge of the population but complain when its apparently Ai ?

plus your missing context : The International Energy Agency, in its 2024 report, projected that global electricity demand from data centres, cryptocurrencies, and AI could double by 2026, potentially consuming 1,000 TWh annually—more than Japan's total electricity consumption, which is roughly 930 TWh per year (as of 2022 data).

so as it included the data centres eg those same ones also used by mumsnet then we better shut down them

It's almost like @ColourlessGreenIdeasSleepFuriously sourced a figure without using any critical thinking at all.

But oh noes! AI will rot our brains!

Here's an article about interesting research at MIT (although the findings are really only stating the obvious for those with critical thinking skills):
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/06/17/using-ai-makes-you-stupid-researchers-find/

The Guardian reports on the impact of AI usage on the water supply in England: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/jun/17/ai-boom-environment-agency-cannot-predict-future-water-shortages-england-data-centres

And actually, though obviously I use calculators, which (let it be said yet again) are a poor analogy for AI, I am glad that I was taught enough maths (traditionally, and much against my will at the time) to realize when I've clearly input the wrong number and got an answer that doesn't make sense. What worries me is people latching straight on to AI without acquiring solid cognitive skills in the first place, something that no AI cheerleader in this discussion has engaged with yet.

There's much more to AI than using ChatGPT to write essays.

I recently used Claude to write a module for a CMS. Did that make me more stupid? No. What it did, was allow me to do something I wouldn't have been able to before. Just like using the internet does.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1DKpUUvKyH9Ql6_ubftYMiZloXizJU38YSjtP5i8MIx0/edit?tab=t.0

and relying on the mass media makes society easily lead too, or watching fictional dramas or films passed off as semi documentary etc all lead people etc, so blaming ai seems a poor reason not to use it, besides if they have critical skills they would backup any ai information with textbooks etc

ill get the volin, just because some dont find it useful there have already been threads on here about how useful its been to some people etc, so as presumed its not a one size fits all model

and the same with the mass media if people soley belive every article they read and take as gospal etc, personlly the media does more harm to society than Ai will

And MIT seems happy enough to recommend AI tools to its faculty and students:

Generative AI tools available at MIT | Information Systems & Technology

excellent and proves my point if Ai was not good then they would avoid any use of it

I'm surprised I managed to find it, as I've been made so stupid by using AI! 😉

food quality would probably be a whole lot better if we still did it that way. In a lot of ways we should be going backwards to go forward.

you and me both, especially the amout of times i use chatgpt and the cake recipies ive made using it etc

You are free to use hand-tilled, organic, homemade food if you like - and if you can afford it.

Tbh I’m not overly worried about the progress and allegedly inevitable march forward of AI because it’s mostly not artificial intelligence but artificial fuckuperry. What’s more worrying is the slavish devotion to it from some quarters despite the fact it veers from being mostly just a bit useless to accidentally dangerous.

www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jun/18/whatsapp-ai-helper-mistakenly-shares-users-number

from using chatgpt if your copying and pasting information and use the custom instructions in the settings it generally stays on topic, eg copy from websites and add extra research or understanding eg finance etc

This for me sums up the real issue with it…..lack of problem solving, evaluation and critical thought. Just waiting to be spoon fed.

Were we more accurate in the past? Do we build buildings now that are as good as the ones we built in the past?

We have lost long term planning. Look at London's Victorian Sewers that are still just about coping with the vastly increased population there. Now we seem to build towns with no doctors, dentists, adequate sewer systems.... etc, etc, etc.

The race forward doesn't seem to actually help with practical day to day needs on a small individual level but is geared more to massive things like blowing up stuff in space.

Plenty of buildings and structures in the past, including Victorian ones, did not work well and were poorly planned. We just think they were all brilliant because only the brilliant ones survived, and the crap ones didn't.

I reckon that Isambard Kingdom Brunel would be using computers these days, don't you?

And if you want to talk about Victorians and computers, you need to mention Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace of course...