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 laziness of using AI for such trivial things is a bit like throwing plastic in the general waste rather than recycling, when no one's watching, because you can't be bothered to rinse it out.

Loads of people do it. Maybe they'll feel a little twinge of guilt about it. But it's just too easy and convenient, and if there are no consequences, there's only your own conscience to worry you.

All those little twinges of guilt are going to build up to a problem, though.

I think they should make ChatGPT a pay per search service. It's a great tool but it's very open to abuse and the environmental consequences are too big to ignore.

Then I saw this thread, so I am glad I am not the only one

We are all going to have the brain power of slugs if we rely on AI for everything that requires a thought. Surely we want to model thinking and analytical skills to our younger people? I think AI can be really positive, it is going to be groundbreaking in health and medicine. I do worry about where it is heading though and it generates at an alarming rate, picking the worst of humanity up along the way.

A Google search uses much less energy than AI - it's not the same thing at all.

Data centers are full of GPUs anyway, is my point, and they are also intensively used for online gaming and betting platforms, as well as the trading platforms that run country's economies. GPU (graphics processing unit) just means a computer chip specilaised for high parallel processing needs of eg computer graphics and were used mainly for gaming and graphics, until recently. Its a side effect of graphics processors having more parallel processing power that meant they were useful for AI model training (and anyone with NVIDIA shares was laughing). They also aren't going anywhere. Kids aren't gping to stop playing Fortnite, or whatever the latest game is. People aren't going to stop using banks or watching Netflix. Countries aren't going to stop trading with each other and stock markets arent going to stop running countries economies.

Short of the apocalypse data centers arent going anywhere, is my point. So we should focus on making them as sustainable as possible by doing clever things like energy exchnage for heating. Using them.for everything apart from AI is silly, and impossible anyway as its all already there. Do you put the central hearing on in the winter or are you happy to live in an unheated home? No, well lets drive proper initiatives to reuse data center heati then like they do in Finland. We are crap on this front, of course. Lobby our useless government is a better startegy than 'I am using Mumsnet over the internet on a smartphone to say I wont use AI tools becuase of their environment inpact"

And worry about the social impact of AI and the effects on the brain development of the next generation, as that is the pertinent issue. Data centers are already part of environmental concerns and initiatives.

I find it really useful for some work tasks, but since having the environmental impact explained to me I’ve stopped using it for frivolous reasons and am minimising my use.

I use it at work to refine my emails ...omg it's brilliant. I'm dyslexic and really struggle with stringing a sentence together that sounds professional. Absolute game changer

I don't use it intentionally at all. That new AI overview that appears at the top of all Google searches, whether you want it or not, is so unreliable. It reads like a Wikipedia summary but it's an entirely unverified regurgitation of all it can trawl from the net, unfiltered by fact checks. Last week it said two different people with similar names were the same person, and more worryingly gave an entirely inaccurate interpretation of blood test results, which makes me not trust it so I have never actively tried to engage with it. I don't actually know how!

A ChatGPT AI 'answer' to the OP - without an explicit statement from MN what's to stop them using it to thread start and pepper with answers just to keep the site humming and the advertisng dosh rolling in.

EggsAndAnchovies · Today 07:41

I completely get where you’re coming from, OP. Your examples sound really practical (and honestly, quite impressive!). AI can be so helpful when you're juggling work, kids, life admin, and the never-ending mental load of being the default everything for everyone.

BUT… I do share some of your unease. I’ve caught myself asking ChatGPT for things I’d normally talk through with DH, a friend, or yes, the wise hive mind of MN. It’s so quick, non-judgy and always available, which makes it very easy to lean on. But I do wonder if it's slowly replacing some of the human connection and shared wisdom we rely on to stay sane.

Another thing that’s started to weigh on me a bit is the environmental impact. I read somewhere that a single AI query can use many times more energy than a Google search—and that adds up when you're chatting away about lunchboxes and work dilemmas. It’s easy to forget it’s all powered by huge data centres running 24/7.

Don’t get me wrong—I’m not anti-AI at all. I’ve used it to help with DD’s revision planning, and it’s been amazing for brainstorming work projects. But I do think it’s worth being mindful of how much we’re using it, both for our own sense of independence and for the bigger picture.

So yes, you’re definitely not alone in wondering if it's “too much.” I think lots of us are quietly asking ourselves the same questions.

Would love to hear how others are balancing it too.

I know. But google is implementing AI searches, which I despise. Ecosia does the same job without ai and plants nice trees for me.

So do online betting and trading.platforms, people should use them sparingly and not dabble.on the stock market or have a flutter on the Grand National. But they won"t though. AI is no different and is already embedded in all of the above, as well as search engines. Singling out Chat GPT is pointless. Computing and datc centers need to be contruucted to be as sustainable as possible. That is what will help, not not using AI and models which are already trained.

I have been "playing" with AI for about 3 years.
As with other areas of life, you need to ask it the right questions to get the right answers.
I find the newer versions too American and too patronising. Linguistically they are "lower middle class" (based on Peter Trudgill's Sociolinguistics) and abound in euphemisms. Although they apologise profusely, when you pull them up on use of language, I do not think they assimilate your suggestions or requests into their language collective!
In addition, they now just trawl the internet (admittedly very speedily) for things that I could find myself, albeit slightly more slowly.
I have also had arguments with earlier versions of ChatGPT, when it just did not tell me the truth or admit it did not know something.
So a useful "tool" but you have to keep your wits about you and have a reasonable idea of the "right" answer, much like using Excel or a calculator to do maths.
Interestingly, none of the AI bots I have investigated, were able to tell me how much energy they were using. If I were a cynic, I would say they had been programmed to avoid such questions!

Go to chat gtp and type in your issue or need

Id say on a population level use betting sites far less than they use AI. People should still use it responsibility, that doesn't mean never using it but not for pointless shit; people are selfish though so we will be seeing crappy AI for a long time.

And these (so common) threads are absolutely littered with answers that read exactly like this.

It's making people's already woeful research skills worse. I can spot people who use it to answer stuff at work and when I've asked it stuff myself to experiment, it's no good for complex questions, it just tells me the basic stuff I know already. Not sure what's so great about replacing humanity with bots tbh and I fully expect many businesses will get rid of many employees to save cash. This is not a future I'm looking forward to.

I try to not to use it too much. I used it to run through a dilemma I had. I'd already asked my friends in a group chat. Who all ignored me. So that I asked what it thought about that as well. Both replies just confirmed my gut feelings.

It's a bit sad I guess in my situation but it can spare me five minutes for a few sentences when eight of my friends couldn't. Do think since covid we have got less socailable so it fills a void whereas you normally talk it out with various people to get a balanced view.

Can someone explain the AI colours thing? What do people mean when they say they use AI for their colours?

I don’t use it for environmental reasons. My husband played with it for a while and the number of times it was plain wrong but very convincing was terrifying. I worry about what it will do to our political discourse.

I also don’t drive, only fly when I can’t take the train instead, don’t run air con or fans, recycle all I can and buy in person whenever I can.

Your cynical whataboutism is shit.

So we're all going to stop using banks then, or Mumsnet, or the internet? All run out of data centers packed full of GPUs and all using AI as part of their operation. Can't put the genie back in the bottle. Make data centers more sustainable/less environmental imapct is all we can realistically do now.

Its like saying airplanes are bad for the environment, people should stop flying. They're not going to. Better imo to focus on developing less damaging aviation fuel etc. than bringing up a narrow minded generation that have never travelled outside of their home town.

I never had research skills in the first place 😆 so it’s a tool for me, not depleting my skills. I am 35 and somehow missed the ‘how to research’ part of school. I just don’t get it and can’t process the written word that way. And then what do you do with the info once you have managed to understand it??

I recently completed a qualification which involved 4 essays, my supervisor had no time to help me so I used chat gpt to make sure my essays were answering the actual question - got it to give me a skeleton of points to write about. I answer a 2000 word essay (short I know) in about 500 words generally and I just don’t understand why/how to waffle on more than that. So it was very helpful with that.

It (ChatGPT at least) tells you it’s unethical to get AI to write your essay and you will only cheat yourself and probably get picked up on it etc. But I don’t see the problem with it helping you plan out your thoughts and make sure you’re hitting all the points, the same way another human would help.

It's a bit sad I guess in my situation but it can spare me five minutes for a few sentences when eight of my friends couldn't.

It’s not “sparing you 5 minutes” though, it’s not making a conscious choice to be available to you. It didn’t think your situation through and tailor a reply, it regurgitated previous responses to similar questions. It doesn’t have any wisdom other than what has been programmed in to it. It’s ever available, which people can’t be, but it’s not making a choice in any sense of the word.

'only fly when.... ' come on!

You're on Mumsnet which is using AI as we speak.

The social issues and, as you say, political ramifications of AI usage are what we should be comcerned about, not it contribution to energy usage in data centers which are alreadybtehre and already part of environmental discourse.

Is your company OK with you giving sensitive information to an unknown third party? We are warned heavily against using AI or even Grammarly etc for anything that has any personal/sensitive information in it as that information is then outwith the companies control.

I worry about the environmental impact. I should use it more carefully, and only when necessary. That being said, I don't have all the facts - how much energy/water does a complex query use vs me googling for hours (not only the power used for googling but the snacks, cups of tea, heating, lighting, etc used to sustain me over several hours!).

I hope over time it will optimise and have less of an environmental footprint?

It's a great tool for linking various aspects, which would not be possible without huge amounts of work / time - eg 'Recommend 10 drought tolerant plants that can take full sun, clay soil, have a max width of 50cm, pink flowers that are good for cut flowers, bloom May-Sept. List in order of how easy they are to grow, and recommend AGM varieties. Oh and slug proof'.