How much do you use AI now?

I do not like AI either. It reminds me too much of the film Space Odessy. Also some scary things I heard on Threads. It seems they (billionaires I suppose) are planning to steal all the money in people’s accounts and blame it on AI, (again this will happen in the US). Then to access money you have to have a digital ID, which will be implanted in your head, ‘the mark of the beast’.

Totally with that. .
I do a very rough guesstimate of anything I am using a calculator for. I double check if the answers differ.
When I use Satnav I look at the whole route before I set off. Sometimes it seems to give me an unnecessary diversion, so I find out why. The Satnav is often correct and accounts for a road closure I wasn’t aware of, but I do still check it.

I have set up a rule so that when I start speaking in English with the word translate, it repeats whatever is said in French (and vice versa) It is a bit bit clanky in that you have to speak first then wait until it has repeated what you say in French then when someone replies you have to wait until it replies in English but it helps if you get stuck and it costs nothing.

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I must confess to using AI to record, transcribe and summarise a meeting in Flemish because I wouldn’t understand it well enough to take notes and I knew that no one else would even try to take notes, which would come back to bite them on the backside.

It actually worked really well and I’ve already won one argument because of it :wink:

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I’ve only recently started using it and I’m super impressed with both its speed and breadth of info. It’s definitely a tool I shall continue to use. I would warn folk about its accuracy however. Ime it can be wrong, very wrong. If using it for super important things, I would follow up on and validate anything it offers. But as a starting point, and for expanding your options/questions/horizons, I’m finding it excellent.

I had it compare 2 big devis yesterday, summarise the differences, explain salient features and generate a list of potental questions for the suppllers. It did that in seconds, a task that would have taken me a couple of hours.

I also had it write sections of computer code for me, stuff I’ve had to tweak and fine tune but it got the basic shapes and structure in place in no time at all.

I don’t want to get over dependant on it (and I can see the potential for that) but I will use it where I think it can help.

I’m now actively avoiding using AI. Apart from its increasingly apparent negative environmental impact and probable deleterious impact on individuals’ knowledge and understandings, I’ve seen some of my publications summarised by AI on an academic research site and was very unhappy with the results, which seemed clichéd and inauthentic. These summaries were unauthorised and I refused permission for them to be published on the site.

This morning I read a human’s very interesting reflections on facile AI writing versus the benefits of creative struggle; I’ve copied it into a PDF available at my Dropbox

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I think it so much depends on what it is being used for. Far from having a negative impact, I now know much more about how to set up a wifi network, how routers work, how to manage a livebox and how to manage robot mowers. Only tiny things obviously, but it gives me great satisfaction and it’s an easy way for me to learn more about IT this late in life (in a one to one situation, going at my speed) and to feel I have some control over it.

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After avoiding it like the plague, I’m caving a bit this year to prepare my démission-reconversion. The French will be 100% correct and I’m using it for bits I know anyways (“describe your future job” ) but also some research-heavy or wordy bits like French hiring figures, a breakdown of the training programme, etc.

This is terribly ironic because I’m changing jobs directly due to the AI threat! (Translator). Sliding back down the career ladder in early fifties, just when I got to peak earning power. But preferred to take the initiative rather than wait for the axe to come down. Every month I think I’m getting the call from HR…

(Hmm maybe I should start a new thread for people who have been through the PTP or démission-reconversion process?)

For me it’s unethical to use AI or Cryptocurrency because of the damage data centres do to the environment vastly accelerating our demise due to global warming. I only would use AI if I had a problem I didn’t think I could resolve any other way. Of course we now have no choice because Google gives us a rapid summary when we do any search for websites. It angers me that very rich people have built AI to make themselves even richer with no regard for global warming and the destruction of humanity. We have this thing foisted on us when we managed perfectly well without it. It will put millions of people out of work and just wait…once we are dependent on it they will start charging a fortune to use it to get their investment back. Also it will become the obvious thing to target in any war leaving populations helpless who don’t know how to manage without it. At least now in the USA people are fighting the development of data centres and calling for more regulation of the whole project.

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I’m wondering if I should take my money out of the bank and stash it under the mattress.

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This seems like a good line to take. If all else fails go to AI. It’s the people who can’t manage to tie their own shoelaces or but a stamp without having whole conversations with it that is entirely unnecessary, just as before it going to Google to answer every question under the sun is unnecessary when there are alternative, and at times more accurate, sources.

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I was thinking exactly the same thing this morning after hearing the threats of the potential of AI to disrupt the Internet.

Of course, this could become a self fulliling prophesy if everyone did the same thing. We could bring banks to their knees and blame Ai

You don’t have to choose AI. It chooses you! Everything you look up on Google etcetera is on AI. Scarily.

Can we ask it not to? I try to use duckduckgo for most thing but it flips back to google if i don’t watch out.

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I was surprised to receive an email from ChatGPT saying ‘how did we do’ type of thing. How did it get my email address? It says at the bottom of the email that I can unsubscribe but will that stop me from being able to use ChatGPT again. I have found it very useful so far. :pink_heart:

Was watching a programme on Chernobyl last night. Puts AI into a bit of perspective as that whole disaster was down to human errors. Ai might have prevented it.

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I was thinking earlier I’m not sure human beings are making such a good fist of taking care of the planet. AI may well do it better.

The bad news is that AI spoofs at least as much as us humans here ..and now it will use my sentence to construct an one truth in a totally unrelated area… If you are actually expert in some area , you can use these Chat bots to give you insights into your own area ..you might not have been aware of … If you use your human expert mind on these you should know if they are true or bunkum …it doesn’t ..
So since I am knowledgeable on electrics , I will immediately know if it’s nonsense .and therefore I might trust it. .whereas my knowledge on Bulgarian Law is somewhere below non existent .. I would be a fool to even ask any questions

I used AI this evening to discover how to cook an aubergine. I bought one on the market knowing I was having a veggie evening and it gave several choices. The nearest I could come to what I was doing anyway was to slice it in half and cook it on aircrisp in the airfryer drizzeled in a bit of olive oil. I did that along with some barely ripe tomatoes and the result wasn’t bad but not as good as the tomatoes.

How does anyone else cook aubergines?

Prefer using BBC recipes to generic AI. We eat a lot of aubergines, often curried but also in traybakes and dry roasted. Aubergine parmiagana is one favorite, and with chickpeas and a carton of coconut cream with curry spices is another.