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 think of it as being like satnav.
I’ve got a terrible sense of direction and satnav has been transformative but sometimes you need to check the route it takes you on.

@Bubblesgun I think of chatgpt as a him too. I asked him what I should call him, and he said that many people call him G.

No, my job relies on a really deep understanding of my subject and insight.
It makes me more efficient but isn’t going to replace me.
It always needs checking as it makes mistakes.
I also used it to write a difficult letter of complaint to a large company and it did a great job and suggested some arguments I hadn’t thought of .

It really is making the workplace much more efficient and productive.

And workers much less skilled.

I sent out a press release recently and some of the coverage from it was nonsensical. We looked closer and the byline was “AI reporter”. They’d fed it the release and it had regurgitated it, incorrectly. It would have been quicker and less energy-intensive to just run the release as-is, as a lot of journalists do. It’s like people are using it because it’s shiny and new, not because it works.

I used it this week to write out a list for a GP apt of my symptoms and asked it what was relevent to the problem i wished to discuss, and how to convey this without being dismissed.

I tried the therapy thing, it deleted my post then gaslit me...

I draw as a hobby, so i have been uploading my drawings and asking it to critique them based around realism, shading, and proportions, then give specifics on how i can improve.

Step by step guide on how to draw nosesthat look realistic

A gym routine to target specfics body areas when i can only attend the gym 2 times a week at most

And to help me argue with someone that the fact Louella/Lou lou casting in sunrise on the reaping is appropriate because not all of the district 11 population is PoC, it saved me trying to find specific quotes across 5 books to prove it was never actually said in the books.

Yeah i agree. You have got to spot yhe mistakes and / or the inaccuracies.
i m an interior architect and was drawing a plan yesterday whilst developing a design concept and hit a tricky corner. I love spending time problem solving. After a couple of hours of more drafts, i hit a wall so went to make a cuppa. Then i thought why not asking chat gpt.

result: good ideas as in the direction to take which i hadnt yet reached but very basic design. When I asked to give me a 3D sketch and a 2D plan it was clear that there was flows.

but i used the beginning and it unlocked the solution i found in my brain. I think I gained 1/2 a day.

last night chat gpt wrote tbe backbone of a report for me then I spent 2hrs editing and adding and making my own. I cut my work in half.

i d say if you know your job inside out and you can spot mistakes then go for it but yeah the energy used is frightening so i use very sporadically

There will be massive levels of staff culling if everyone is using it to make decisions . They’re no point in employing that many people to get ai to do it for you.

The environmental issues that article talks about are the environmental issues of data centers, not of AI itself, although the growth of AI has obviously contributed significantly to the growth in numbers of data centers. Data centers are multi use though, there arent dedciated AI training or querying ones, they house 1000s of servers and computer storage for all kinds of things, including banking and hosting mumsnet and all the internet protocols you use to get to mumsnet to worry about data center energy usage. Unless you dont use the internet or a smartphone, or mumsnet, or a have your money in a bank you are already complicit in this and asking ChatGPT to plan a meal for you is no different and no extra to what is already there in a data.center somehwere.

Obviously environmental impact of data centers is a concern and is a big topic, but there are lots of sustainability and green data center initiatives to try and improve their environmental impact (including for AI). For example, I visited Finland recently to see a data hosting company who own and run a lot of data centers there and they use the heat generated to heat much of Helsinki and are using recyled seawater to minimise impact of water cooling.

To single out AI usage is silly, unless you dont use the internet at all. Its all inter mingled now with AI and its data centers that have the inpact, AI is just one (large) customer of data center owners. You not using Chat GPT or Co Pilot or Claude or whichever AI tool wont have anybpositive inpact on the environmental as the data centers are already there, and they're not going anywhere. Much better imo to encourage and lobby for green datacentre initiatives.

Training chatgpt for one hour uses as much energy as 80,000 households in a year.

Scary times.

Have none of you watched I, Robot? Ex Machina? That's next.

That's not true. Ai needs specialist hardware. Look at nvidia gpus. The machines are expensive as well as their running costs

Energy issue?

People will believe and trust anything. On a recent post the op was astounded that ChatGPT told her she was hyper vigilant and couldn’t believe it had taken her so long to realise this. Anything for a bit of flattery. It’s so sad it’s laughable.

i d say if you know your job inside out and you can spot mistakes then go for it

The problem comes when you don’t know what you don’t know and rely on AI rather than doing your own learning and fact checking.

Plus watching endless shite on tik tok is the epitome of wasted time and energy when AI can focus you on more productive and better things. It's not going away. I do worry China as an authoritarian country will leap ahead as they need to keep the country productively employed wheras the capatalist west will just use it to shred jobs like never before - particuarly middle class ones.

But training and using AI uses substantially more energy than even streaming on the Internet, it isn't a case of more people using AI so its having more of an impact; the way AI utilises data is much much more energy intensive.

People should take responsibility for using it sparingly, some sit for hours making AI art and asking inane questions just to see what it says.

On a recent post the op was astounded that ChatGPT told her she was hyper vigilant and couldn’t believe it had taken her so long to realise this.

Not thinking this is a computer system that goes on what I choose to tell it, it only has a scrap of information about me and limited context, also provided by me. But I’ll accept its pre-programmed assessment of my personality. That’s going to end well…

I agree
They feel ... AI generated?

When I know something and I ask AI and I can see how wrong it’s got it - when I ask it something/ask it to polish an email and I think oh wow that’s brilliant then I think wow AI has got it - so that’s made me re-think it now. Because why does it ‘get it’ when I don’t know it, but when I know something I’m questioning its answer. I hope people get that! It’s just to be say don’t be so sure AI is always right,

My nephew is dyslexic and uses ChatGPT for work reports and emails, paid for by his employers. Both are pleased with the professional results.

Please don't be so judgemental.

I'm still a newbie. I mainly use it fix grammar, translate text to another language, turn my notes into an email. I also once downloaded a file and asked it to make lists certain way at work. It was ok-ish. Just didn't recognise the colors but helped a bit with manual work. Trying to learn how to use it.

Thank you, I'm absolutely not a technophobe but I have no idea.

How funny. I changed my name as I am getting pep talks from mine and feel weird about it.

Anyone concerned about the environmental implications, consider switching from Google to ecosia, which runs a tree-planting programme linked to searches.