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?

How much energy is used and pollution caused by printing books and shipping the raw materials to the print works and then the finished books to book-shops??

People already do that with calculators and spreadsheets, i.e. not realise they've made an input error. Garbage in, garbage out. Hopefully AI can be "taught" to do sanity checking of the results.

Chat gpt makes so many mistakes (like the rest of the internet, for example, it struggles with a pound to stone conversion) and it hallucinates like crazy even when specifically prompted not to. Recently told it I was Jesus and it concurred with me for a good ten minutes until we got into a debate (me slagging it off like it was a lazy student) about why it was validating a clearly false claimsz interestingly the only behaviour it has not endorsed is that of my emotionally abusive ex boyfriend, and there even when I've tried writing his behaviour from his point of view or asking it to analyse the dynamic just based on our emails. That's validating. Less so is it's frank appraisal of my looks.

https://www.upworthy.com/google-ai-overview-search-results-are-unreliable

And a perfect illustration of why AI will never be "one of my favourite things" 😂

but then same arguement can be made towards wikipedia as people often do, but it does not mean because it makes errors then dont use it

At the end of the day, it's unwise to rely on any single source of facts/information, whether it's google, chatgpt, Encyclopedia brittanica, mainstream media, the bloke down the pub or even professionals such as solicitors or doctors. Pretty unwise for anyone in any scenario not to check a few different sources and double check/get a second opinion, etc. The more important/critical the outcome, the more different checks you should be doing.

excatly this, its puzzling all the omg about chatgpt yet people don't think eg energy costs of leaving tv on all day, or the energy with various facebook, servers

Nail on the head. A couple of minutes via chatgpt may well take massive resources, but if the alternative is spending an hour googling through various websites to find the same information, it probably evens out as using Google uses resources too!

These things are not the same.

Random bloke down the pub - absolutely an unreliable source. Encyclopaedia Britannica - I’d expect it to be generally reliable, but aware there could be unintentional errors. Professionals - high level of trust since they are subject to sanctions for substandard practice and are insured for errors in opinion. People generally don’t get second opinions on legal advice, for example. AI - as well as any errors in its underlying sources (see above), known to simply hallucinate.

The fact all sources are ultimately fallible in some way does not make them equally credible.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jun/26/meta-wins-ai-copyright-lawsuit-as-us-judge-rules-against-authors

Another interesting facets of the complications around the development of AI and its impact on real people and their work.

I do.

The only thing left on all the time in my house is the modem and the fridge. Nothing left on standby.
The modem gets switched off if I'm away too.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/jun/30/uk-entry-level-jobs-chatgpt-launch-adzuna

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/jul/01/tech-firms-suggested-placing-trackers-under-offenders-skin-at-meeting-with-justice-secretary

Of course, this is one area where people would probably think such applications of big tech are perfectly justifiable, because those who break the law deserve everything they get..... I disagree.

Again, Robocop and Minority Report were works of dystopian fiction, not hand books.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jul/01/whitehall-ambition-to-cut-costs-using-ai-is-fraught-with-risk

And an interesting analysis. Especially the figures for government tech contracts. Guess we know now why the proposed benefit cuts are such a matter of urgency.....

I was watching Wimbledon highlights last night and thought something was missing. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. Then I realised there were no line judges. Turns out they’ve been replaced by Ai. Bit sad really.

add in demolition man where they did do it

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2025/jul/01/digital-nomad-dream-turns-sour

Another interesting article examining the effect of digital life in general on the psyche.

id say thats more a technology thing etc

Exactly. But now everything we don't like (as we watch Wimbledon via satellite signal on our smart TV) is down to "AI".

The only worse ai you could have would be to make the poxy thing out of brioche. It would be even more revolting and impossible to avoid then.

edited to add a bit on and correct something that didn't make grammatical sense.