How are people using AI to help with everyday life?

[Question12458]

How is your household utilising AI to your benefit? Looking for some inspo

I’ve been using ChatGPT (paid) for 2 years, this week I spoke to somebody who’s got a 2nd brain. (Collects all data from multiple sources) and is totally customised to them. Totally opened my eyes to what we can achieve

So you’re not going to primary source? But using information that AI is also using

Is anyone else thinking of asking CHATGPT to read this thread and summarise the posts for them ?

What a PITA some parents are. Everyone thinks they’re an expert in any subject now AI can write drivel for them.

Meal planning, planning trips, understanding blood test results, financial planning, like a search engine if I don’t have time to browse. Work wise, to summarise lengthy documents or simplify complicated legal documents.

In the majority of situations if an email is more than three paragraphs long I assume its been written by AI and that the person who generated it is unlikely to have properly proof read and tailored it to the situation. 99% of the time I'm correct and it makes me so mad they have made me read and respond to the slop. That when they haven't accidently left in the 'here is a firm but friendly email you can use to respond to LDGUK'

I’ve used it recently to draft my representations for my appeal against a parking charge notice.

Aren't many of the things that people are using AI for things that you could just have looked up on the computer previously, if you used the right search terms? I mean, with properly accredited articles where you could see the original research? And AI is basically a machine which is summarising all the information that is already available to you but without the ability to make sure that it is telling you the truth (if it has obtained some of its information from corrupted sources)?

But AI has only been available for a couple of years. What did everyone do before? It is suddenly so irreplaceable and wonderful and yet we managed with basic Google and Wiki and other sources before.

These are genuine questions by the way. I am not a fan of generative AI but can see the uses for it in other applications. I am a little worried about how easily people seem to have turned to AI to solve problems that have other solutions.

Why do people need to look stuff up on the internet when they could use an encyclopaedia?

Not remotely similar

It’s the way you can ask it very specific questions and get immediate answers.

So last week I wanted a recipe, but one that avoided ingredients usually associated with that recipe. It did that immediately rather than me having to trawl through multiple versions to find what I was looking for.

I wanted advice on how to wear a certain style that is tricky for my body shape. It trawled through multiple articles and summarised 4 key points that really helped, which again would have taken me much longer.

Thats where it delivers, for me. That’s not to say we’d fall apart if it ceased to exist, but that’s a genuine benefit above and beyond what Google used to do.

There’s defensiveness coming across from some posters here, but if you don’t want to use AI no one is forcing you to. Just avoid it. I don’t see the issue.

The trouble is that it’s getting harder to avoid @TheKeatingFive

Because it’s everywhere. When I want to contact a business by phone and speak to a human it’s often impossible to find a phone number. So I try to use the Live Chat but those are almost always bots. I tell the bot I want to communicate with a human and it will eventually find one but it’s quite long-winded. If there had been a phone number and a person at the other end of the line, the problem/query could have been resolved much quicker. AI is being offered as the first solution most of the time, so those of us who don’t want to use it are being discriminated against!

It just steals from other websites, ones that likely need advertising revenue etc. In a couple of years there will be no human input into it as people won’t bother with these websites and forums and it will just be AI making all this shit up. So depressing. All because people are too impatient to click on a link and read it.

For day to day things it can easily be avoided for now.

My elderly father has avoided the internet thus far, for example. If he can do that 😂

However in a general sense I do agree, life does move on. That’s true on multiple fronts. Most people don’t like all the various changes they see, but change is inevitable.

Personally I find that if you’re determined enough to source a number and stay on hold, you will get to speak to someone eventually. I also prefer to talk directly to someone when I have a problem.

I really hate these AI chat bots. Premier inn is awful. You really struggle to get through to a person even on the phone as they go around in circles with a “virtual receptionist”. I’ve stopped using them. Cost cutting and getting rid of as many people as possible.

If people see the benefits to them they will use it. Nothing you can do about that.

Because I'm an author I need to avoid ANY suggestion that AI has been used ANYWHERE in my work. So I don't want, for example, my laptop to come up with 'suggestions' for me for words I could use or ways to phrase things to make them easier to understand. I'm currently battling along with a pair of very old laptops, because I've heard that the new ones have AI fitted as standard and it's very hard to disable - and I cannot afford to have even the breath of AI anywhere near my manuscripts. Sometimes I hit a button accidentally and suddenly my screen is full of 'Hi, I'm Rupert, your assistant, what can I help you with?' and I really really don't want that.

I use normal Word and I don’t have AI suggestions. Can’t you just turn off those functions?

I don't know, this is why I'm still using my old laptops. I've heard from people who have bought new ones that the AI assistant stuff is fitted as standard. I've not had to look too closely into it yet so I'm only going on what friends say - and they are saying it is very hard to remove from the laptop, so the AI ghost is always looming there in the distance, and the accusations of AI assisted writing can be brought up.

I remember watching Yuval Harari deliver one of his public lectures back in 2017, predicting the rise of the Useless class - he wanted to provoke a reaction, so his proposed solutions were drugs and gaming. I suspect the solutions will ultimately end up being sterilisation and euthanasia - initially ‘voluntary’ in return for some kind of financial ‘reward’. At least people will have enjoyed devolving their wardrobe, interior design and recipes choices to a machine in the meantime.

No.

How would that be better?

What's the point of that?

How would you engage with anyone's actual specific human points if all you've seen is a vague summary?

Yep, AI enquiries are the bane of my life at the moment, as I have to address the points that the LLM threw in that actually have no bearing on any of the issues raised. It's apparently a big issue with people who deal with SAR requests as the AI will request a load of irrelevant information that someone has to take a lot of time to put together.

In terms of my everyday life: I don't have any use for AI so I don't incorporate it into anything.

Also, as someone with ADHD, it's actually really annoying to have the chatbot stuff pop up now in every website and application whether I want it or not.