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 DO worry about the deskilling/critical thinking erosion of the younger generations that will be using it from birth.

I dont worry about ADDITIONAL energy use, I think thats bollocks, training LLMs etc for AI required normal servers and storage arrays in existing datacentes with GPUs and the running costs are no more than the huge amount of kit that runs public cloud or your bank. And once the models are trained the querying is quite light weight, no more intensive than googling.

I don't worry AS MUCH about AI hallucinations and it making up bollocks as the AI companies are already getting a handle on that with RAG and other false positive optimisations.

That being said I only really use it at the moment to record, transcribe and summarise meetings as its way less tedious than doiing it myself. I also enjoy a bit of prompt hacking of web chats, just for a laugh. Getting Santander to tell me its internal model and what it is allowed to say ro customers etc.

I used it earlier today to write an essay plan. I already had the bare bones of it but it helped me clarify my themes and whether the sources I had picked were relevant for what I wanted to say. It sometimes tries to actually write the essay if I haven’t been prescriptive enough about the structure but overall it saves me time. I can sit down tomorrow and have all of my points and evidence listed ready to go.

It is also helping me with a long term strategy to change careers. It has generated a 12 month plan and helped me dig down into what I actually want to do for this last phase of my working life.

I find it to be a useful tool but not an replacement for independent thought.

How do you do the hair thing? I have my skepticism but I might actually try that!

Oh and I rarely use it to literally complete a stage of work.I once and once only used it as a shortcut at one stage in acrestice project. the ideas were good but crucially not my own - so I found it hard to build on them as I didn't own them,

I use it more and more too. Mainly because it saves me massive amounts of time which I can then use to read books. I do use it at work but as a helper, so I may use it to start me off on something or when I have finished writing something I get it to check if there's anything else I could add. I use it for meal planning and get it to make a shopping list and have used it to help me update my CV, I ask it to plan days out and it pulled together a nifty exercise schedule which is great. I even asked it what I should do when my car failed it's MOT 🙂

https://news.mit.edu/2025/explained-generative-ai-environmental-impact-0117#:~:text=Rapid%20development%20and%20deployment%20of,electricity%20demand%20and%20water%20consumption.

I enjoy my brain. AI is too stupid to delete itself and many people have reported asking it to do that from their devices.

It’s absolutely fine to use it for whatever you want. You wouldn’t do complicated and repetitive maths in your head when you have Excel.

Literally nothing.

It doesnt provide verified facts, it simply repeats verbatim the bullshit pedalled by the loudest.

I also do not have "smart" devices and have done all I can to stop my phone listening to me.

Skynet is so close....

Interesting.....just put " AI is Skynet" into google and AI didnt answer......says it all really.

I used it once out of curiosity. Most people who post seem to be over relying on it- using it for your job is a pretty bad move imo.
No doubt AI will take over most jobs, a lot of our admin jobs are now automated with one person checking it, who is fiercely protective of what they do. Scary stuff.

AI is likely to cause a lot of jobs to be lost, but refusing to use it isn't going to help. A better approach is to use it to make yourself more efficient and demonstrate how you can deliver value in other ways that AI can't. And then advocate for policies such as a universal basic income because not everyone is going to be able to deliver enough value to keep their jobs.

I tried it out. I’m going on holiday to the Dordogne area next week so I asked it for recommendations and fed in our ages and interests and limitations. It came up with a list that I know is good because I’ve been there before, years ago (DH hasn’t and one of the reasons for going is to acquaint him with it) and recommended some restaurants. Yes I could have got all of that from a travel guide but this was compact and handy.

We’ll be put out of business!
I don’t want bloody Claude adjudicating AIBU

I worked with AI to create a ten page excel workbook. It’s a think of beauty. Wonderful conditional formatting. All perfect formulae links through the pages. A fabulous dashboard.
A number of iterations, but still one hour instead of 8 (at least).
I’ve got new policies written and handbooks.
AI is like my best team member but 100 times better. Love. It.

Yes I feel bad about the energy requirements, but we’ve passed the tipping point anyway now according to scientists and w ware all fucked.

The real question for me is why do we need to use it so much? For some people it is because our lives are so busy working to make ends meet we would welcome any time saving tools to help us manage them. Lives are tougher in some ways compared to the past with both partners/ parents working and we need shortcuts. If someone invented a robot who could do all our housework, we would jump at that chance too. I love cooking and would really enjoy putting a meal plan together but because of work and being a single parent I don't have the luxury of time so it easier to ask AI.

If the government introduced policies that gave me better quality of life there is no way I would be using AI.

The school kids using AI for homework are going to grow up being either really clever or thick as shit. They won’t be able to think for themselves if they rely on AI. Same with college / uni students etc. Sane in workplaces.

Lots of things use up energy. It’s not the most worrying thing here.

This! I let DS use it to let it write his homework just in order to point out errors it made. I hope it will make him cautious in the future so he double checks facts.

I told Chat GPT at the weekend my mum’s symptoms. Chat GPT told me straight away that it could be an aortic dissection.

It didn’t cross my mum’s GPs’ minds. It didn’t cross emergency services’ minds either. They actually refused to come until she had stopped breathing.

I will never ever go to the GP without asking Chat GPT first.

In my profession I can always tell when my junior colleagues have used AI to produce what I’ve tasked them to do, as often it’s either not to the point or just plain wrong. If I used AI, it would just be a tool like any other e.g spelling and grammar check which speeds things up but can also get it wrong by not understanding nuances between professional grammar/spelling, US/UK etc. I still need to ultimately have that knowledge so I can know when my tools are wrong. Problem is that many people are trying to take a shortcut and replace AI with their actual knowledge, actual skills, actual ability and it leaves me worried about where this will all lead to.

I think AI can be a useful starting point for motivation but we’ve recently banned junior colleagues from using it for client work as they don’t seem to know its limitations. I also won’t let my children use it so they learn how to source information and research without relying on artificial intelligence to tell them where to look and how to weigh up the evidence. Those are truly important skills which I imagine will soon be lost to all but a very few professions (I.e. investigators, lawyers, forensic analysts etc)/

I’d love to know how you did this!

See this is the only area where I think AI is better and smarter to use- for objective analysis and input - I.e, excel workbooks where the data and inputs are all your own, coding to fix or spot poor bits of code or errors, mathematical equations. But I wouldn’t ask AI to interpret the excel workbook and present findings from that.

Anything subjective, artistic is just dystopian as we are then relying on an a computer to replace our actual mind - the subjectivity, critical thinking is what makes us human and what we should all be able to bring to the table.

New technology has always been disruptive. From the industrial revolution (and probably before) and onwards, many old jobs have become redundant. But new ones and new opportunities have always arisen.

I use it in my business all the time, every day.

I used to do a bunch of data crunching daily. Now I just drop each new daily file into it and seconds later I have my daily data crunched. Saves me time.

I use it to reword emails. It's great for marketing. I use it to check my logic from time to time.

I've been having some interesting conversations with AI about... the ethics and morality of AI. It's quite fascinating.

It's so much faster than google. It's great for organising directions.

I'm using it to write a book. I write the words, then it checks my grammar and organises my writing into the chapter outline I've given it. Saves me so much time.

It's getting better every day.

I think it's going to be very helpful as a counsellor because it's completely non judgemental in a way humans can never be. So for individual talk therapy, I think it has a use.

The biggest danger I foresee is in child care. When we have AI + robots in homes, that's going to be very dangerous. Parents are going to use AI robots to perform childcare, reducing the amount of human face to face time their kids get. When this happens at specific developmental stages, children going to have reduced ability to read body language and emotional regulation. Their development is going to be very stunted.

Too many people already use screens as a distraction, a "third parent". I can't see that trend suddenly reversing. We know social media and too much screen time for kids reduces attention spans and inhibits normal social development. Now imagine that on steroids. That's what's coming.

I think we're going to have a whole generation with stunted development. Coming soon.

Is the at a serious comment?
Typed on a device.
Can you still write with a pen?
Or do you find that you’ve become over dependant on technology and electronic communication such that your ability to use a pen and paper has diminished?

Claude used to (6 months ago) be the most efficient and effective AI. It’s now changed. It’s all changing so fast.
I had a subscription, but managed to cancel it by clicking a button. No problem at all. Not sure why the issues.