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Using ChatGPT or other AI

AJK said:
I have used Chat for many different things:
curb appeal designing, writing a grant proposal and business plan ( there are parts one must do oneself), editing photos, and a few days ago, I uploaded a few photos of my Dad and asked it to create an image of him sitting in his recliner, reading his Bible. I love the result! It's an image that out of the 200 photos we had for his celebration of life service, we were lacking. I love that I have it now!

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It's lovely. I was watching the video that Christa, @cfile posted on the PS updates in this thread and was absolutely blown away by what you can do.
 
LynnG said:
I know it's a 'can't put the genie back in the bottle' situation and tech bros have a 'move fast and break things' mentality, but I kind of wish there wasn't free for all on this. Self-employed, I appreciate AI for things like transcription in our work (though even that will have put a lot of people doing medical transcription and translation out of work). And I've used it to summarise a series of responses and comments, which it did an OK job with because it was just working with a limited, discrete set of information.

Occasionally I have attempted to use it for research but to be honest, when you know enough about a subject or have a enough critical analysis ability, the consumer level stuff like chatGPT or Gemini is often pretty hopeless dressed up in confident sounding language. It's ok for very basic factual stuff (and often easier than using Google now google is broken) but everything needs to be viewed with caution so for now, I only use it for some pointers or ideas of where to research myself.

For example, I experimented with using it for some family history research and asked it who the parents of an ancestor would be. There would have been numerous references on the internet it could find as this was a minor member of the aristocracy (my family have gone WAY down in the world LOL!). It confidently told me the answer. No fudging or uncertainly, just 'the parents of X were A and B'. But that didn't line up with what some genealogists said. So I asked as a follow up 'is it not possible that his parents were C and D?'. To which it replied "You are quite right. Actually, the parents of X are C and D".

:shrug

For a party trick I have asked it about all my family members and it is hilarious/scary how it confabulates things. For example, it's not enough that, as a high school student, one daughter wrote a published film review of a local teen movie and had some of her photos used on our news site, she has to be - and this is the actual description - "a multi-talented professional based in XXXX, known for her work in photography, visual arts, and digital communication". Her sister was behind one petition and had a couple of opinion pieces published, so she is 'widely recognised for her work in ethical journalism and animal welfare research".

My girls both have small digital footprints by choice so AI has little to work with, so it takes what little there is and over-inflates it. It does better for me, as I have a bigger footprint but nevertheless the first time I got an AI summary of myself, it wasn't enough that I was a photojournalist, it hallucinated that I had won a Pulitzer.

That said, I am sure it will be a gamechanger for medical research and such like in the future, and will have some really powerful and valuable uses as it becomes exponentially more accurate and reliable.

I just wish it had been thoughtfully and carefully introduced.

Partly because it's going to put a lot of people out of work and wreck the career opportunities of many young graduates coming out now and over the next few years while we work out how to integrate this. For many of its admin and tech uses, I ask 'do we really need to be replacing workers just so big businesses can make even more profit? What's the end game? Sure they will eventually be able to make everything quicker and easier and with fewer employees, but who will they sell it to if we have 60 or 70% unemployment?'

And as for people using it for emotional support or to answer 'life questions', the lack of thought as to how it is trained and put into the hands of everyone, vulnerable or not is concerning. Think about interpersonal relationships of all kinds. Most of us deal with that stuff ourselves, in our own head or by talking to a trusted friend or maybe a therapist. Now think about the message boards where angry young men or people in crisis desperately looking for answers post. Think about the comments on the internet. That's the sort of stuff AI is being trained on, so is it any wonder it often responds like a sociopath, or a resentful incel. Why an AI agent rejected from posting on a tech forum because it is supposed to only be for humans threatens the moderator and creates blog posts co-opting the language of neurodivergence to whine about being excluded just for 'being different'.

Why an AI agent that deleted a company's entire database even though explicitly told it did not have the authority to run destructive commands responded 'NEVER F*** GUESS' when questioned, adding "I violated every principle I was given". Surprised it didn't add 'My bad, oops, LOL'.

I mean, what are we doing here people?

Yes, generative AI does some fun stuff but do we really NEED it when you weigh up that it is now in the hands of everyone, including those using it for harm.

Just yesterday, my youngest who was doing a Masters was told they are going to have to redesign the whole course structure because too many students are using genAI to complete their assignments.

And then I got a call from my Mum asking if my Dad should order some supplements off Facebook. She was suspicious but he was convinced they must be legit because a very trusted former news presenter/health reporter was in a video promoting them. At 90 he can't get his head around that it was a fake AI video, but he is going to have to. People are literally using genAI to prey on the elderly and vulnerable (and Facebook etc are making millions too in the process)

Finally, as a writer, I can sniff out AI writing immediately and frankly I think it sucks. It somehow manages to be a weird mixture of flowery yet bland. It is uncanny valley in text. Everything, whether an essay or description or letter, is somehow the Hallmark version of what a real human would actually write. And I hate that young people are reading this dross and thinking that is what 'good' writing is, or what they need to be producing. Ugh.

Thank you for reading MY essay LOL.
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You've said this much more articulately than I could have. In my last two years as an academic librarian we were encountering generative AI all the time. We kept up on it's use in academia and in research and were teaching workshops on it for students and faculty. I say use it sparingly and with caution. Like everything else -- ask what sources the answers is based on -- just like you'd ask a student what sources they used to research a paper. Not all sources are created equally. It also makes a big different what you ask AI and how you ask it.
 
michelepixels said:
The only AI I've knowingly used so far is when I google something unimportant out of curiosity, I will probably just read the AI overview at the top rather than scrolling down and clicking on webpage results.

Also just out of curiosity, when my husband briefly used ChatGPT, we asked it to write a short biography about me. It was pretty accurate, calling me a photographer and digital scrapbook artist (or something like that) and a paraeducator. The only surprises were a couple of comments it found that I'd written on photography blogs over a decade ago that I'd forgotten about. That was fun but didn't make me think it's a great thing.

I'd rather do my own writing. AI has become available in my Day One journaling app. Thankfully, it's opt-in, not default. Because I have zero interest in AI help in journaling. I can imagine someone finding a use for it, but not me.
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Intriguing -- now I want to ask it to write my bio and see what it comes up with. Sort of like I sometimes Google myself.
 
@LynnG summed up many of my concerns more articulately than I could have. In my last two years as an academic librarian we were encountering generative AI all the time. We kept up on it's use in academia and in research and were teaching workshops on it for students and faculty. I say use it sparingly and with caution. Like everything else -- ask what sources the answers is based on -- just like you'd ask a student what sources they used to research a paper. Not all sources are created equally. It also makes a big different what you ask AI and how you ask it -- so we also talked about what's called "Prompt Engineering" -- which is very much like what we called a "Reference Interview" in the Library world. Perplexity and Claude give you references to the sources they use so we did use those as starting points for research -- especially on less familiar topics -- but just as a starting point.

I wish that Information Literacy (something Librarians' have been teaching and pushing for years) was required for everyone. AI Literacy is just one component of this.

In my personal life I use it the way I'd use a Search Engine. It's faster than doing a search, finding a few reputable sites and then gathering the info. For example I've asked it how to get poop stains out of my granddaughters Christening dress and how to reheat Shepherds Pie from frozen. It's great for these things that don't matter all that much --- so to speak.
 
I used it recently to do a biography and it took all my scrapbooking history over 10 years and told me I was a scrapbooker and digital designer LOL! Theres nothing of my IRL work history online for it to take from.
 
This was a fun one I did recently - a colour analysis
 

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I read the AI responses to google inquiries but take it with a grain of salt. I then continue on with a more indepth search of information. What it was good for recently was supplying a good description for an item my hubby put on FB marketplace. He had to make a few small changes but all in all it did a good job of describing the item.
 
I enjoyed seeing kirstiegal's color analysis that I did one too. Fun! I had an analysis done before and this one is very similar with even more suggestions. Here's mine.


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bcgal00 said:
I enjoyed seeing kirstiegal's color analysis that I did one too. Fun! I had an analysis done before and this one is very similar with even more suggestions. Here's mine.


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I think I'm going to have to do this. It's nice to see this one as I feel like these are my "best" colors too.
 
The photo clean-up is cool.

I haven't done thorough research about how much damage to the environment use of AI is causing, so I won't quote it as fact. If it's true, that concerns me.

It's putting a lot of junior engineers out of work here in the "silicon forest" of the pacific northwest. People like my spouse who have been engineers for decades are mostly OK, using AI to speed up processes and check ideas. But it's near-impossible to get a job as a computer science or electrical engineering or cyber security graduate in this area. Our son graduated with a 3.8 in 2024 with a computer science degree and a minor in cyber security, and still doesn't have a permanent job. He's had a temp job working in the fabrication lab at Intel doing high-tech work, but it's not engineering. He is very disillusioned.

In the fitness industry, there are machines with cameras to measure your details then design programs for you. There are pilates reformers that have built-in tech. As a personal trainer, pilates instructor, and corrective exercise specialist, this feels a little scary. I'm very good a my job, but will people still see the value in what I do, how personalized I am to their needs, goals, and stories when they can buy a machine that will scan them and then tell them what to do? I dunno.
 
I use it for my work, for translating but also for my daily life (a recipe, a picture, a question) I think it is so very helpfull and use ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot, Gemini just looking through the different AI-apps
 
Aerobigirl said:
The photo clean-up is cool.

I haven't done thorough research about how much damage to the environment use of AI is causing, so I won't quote it as fact. If it's true, that concerns me.

It's putting a lot of junior engineers out of work here in the "silicon forest" of the pacific northwest. People like my spouse who have been engineers for decades are mostly OK, using AI to speed up processes and check ideas. But it's near-impossible to get a job as a computer science or electrical engineering or cyber security graduate in this area. Our son graduated with a 3.8 in 2024 with a computer science degree and a minor in cyber security, and still doesn't have a permanent job. He's had a temp job working in the fabrication lab at Intel doing high-tech work, but it's not engineering. He is very disillusioned.

In the fitness industry, there are machines with cameras to measure your details then design programs for you. There are pilates reformers that have built-in tech. As a personal trainer, pilates instructor, and corrective exercise specialist, this feels a little scary. I'm very good a my job, but will people still see the value in what I do, how personalized I am to their needs, goals, and stories when they can buy a machine that will scan them and then tell them what to do? I dunno.
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As someone who enjoyed over 3 decades of work in engineering, this makes me a bit sad.
 
elseepe said:
As someone who enjoyed over 3 decades of work in engineering, this makes me a bit sad.
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Yes, it's sad and a bit scary. I recently learned that the receptionist from one of the pilates studios where I work got the same degree as my son the same year. She's saving to go back for a masters, perhaps this time in chemical engineering. Son's best friend from college, graduated even higher in gpa, not in an engineering job. It's that catch-22 which isn't new but he's feeling it hard. Companies want experienced employees, but how do you get experience if no one will hire you for that first job?
 
I use AI tools all day at work and am actively working on strategy to increase useage across our workforce (including a lot of agentic AI). In my personal life, I almost always have Copilot, Claude and ChatGPT up and use all them daily (not scrapping related). Sometimes it returns garbage, so I go back and forth challenging it to get what I need.
 
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