Am I the only one that has NEVER used an AI specific program like ChatGPT, Claude etc. (NOT a Poll)

I pay for GoPilot Pro. It comes with some other google features like extra cloud storage. Otherwise I may not pay for it. I mainly use it to keep the baseball rosters fair, some side hustle work engagements and logic and modeling.


I've built some games for fun as well.


I use CoPilot at work on a daily almost hourly basis.
 
I got an email from my urologist today introducing their new AI program - Jade.

"When you call to schedule, reschedule, cancel, or confirm an appointment, or to transfer to a specific department, Jade will be there to help. She's designed to make things easier and faster for you. Jade is still learning, so be patient with her as she gets to know our practice. A member of our team is always here if you need additional support.

You will experience:
  • No more waiting on hold: Calls are answered immediately
  • Secure & private: Your personal information is protected with top-level security
  • Schedule, reschedule, confirm, or cancel appointments
  • Convenient, immediate response: Our team can focus on providing the best patient care"
I rarely need to contact them since I schedule my follow up at the end of each visit so I don't know when I'll have an opportunity to try it out. Maybe by then it will have been sufficiently trained.
 
I am sure you all realize everyone is claiming they've integrated AI, where it's really nothing more than simple algorithms they've probably had for years. Basic marketing to throw in the latest terms whether they're actually valid or not. The cutting edge of AI, even chatbots, go well beyond the mindless algorithms we've all been subject to in the past.
 
Midpack said:
I am sure you all realize everyone is claiming they've integrated AI, where it's really nothing more than simple algorithms they've probably had for years. Basic marketing to throw in the latest terms whether they're actually valid or not. The cutting edge of AI, even chatbots, go well beyond the mindless algorithms we've all been subject to in the past.
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I figured. As non-tech people, how does one tell if something qualifies as AI, and does it really matter? If the algorithms have gotten better and better, how does that differ from true AI?
 
I am greatly enjoying the AI features in Photoshop that help me remove unwanted elements in my photos. I used older tools for a long time, but they did not work well in all situations.
 
As a retired software analyst, I'm also kind of interested in AI - how it works, what it can do, and the social ramifications.

But I'm wary of anything (search engines, Google products., Meta products. etc.) that accumulates and stores my questions over time. And I realize I won't get the value of training my own personal AI agent if I don't do that. I've used duck.ai (tied to DuckDuckGo search) which in theory allows private, anonymized conversations with 3rd-party AI chat models like Claude and Chat GPT, and doesn't store dialogs over time.

I've also seen where the AI front ends are providing information that they scrape from websites that others have created. Apparently this isn't illegal use of intellectual property. My daughter at one point made a small income from her travel blogging, but she, and others like her, are getting out of the business of creating free resources that are no longer compensated.
 
I think the AI tools available today (and maturing quickly) are likely to be as impactful to changing how we work/research/problem solve as the Internet and the rise of search engines were decades ago. I've used ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Codex, Loveable - they're advancing at a crazy pace and I'm finding that I'm able to do things myself that either 1) would have been impossible years ago or 2) would have required a lot of involvement from other resources.

The downside/risk is that we get lazy/dumber because we have AI do all the easy stuff. Years ago I would have researched how to build a complex nested IF statement for my Excel spreadsheet/Google Sheet - now I just prompt one of the aforementioned tools and get a quick answer I can copy and paste. As the models/tools keep getting better, humans need to be less and less involved.

A related concern - as a parent of 3 younger kids - I worry about what it's going to look like for young kids coming out of college looking for their first jobs. I'm already part of discussions at work where about the implications of how we hire (or don't hire) because of the AI tools we have at our disposal. AI is really good at addressing the rinse & repeat. This rinse & repeat kind of work is often what young college grads need to do to get their feet in the door. What does this look like in 5-10 years? Not sure. Definitely worried about it for my kids.
 
I have not once used AI chatbot.

When I search on Google, it obviously now puts up AI summaries. I do not rely on those summaries. I will still follow links and scan it to find the information I want.

Now the AI summaries have a little chat interface to ask follow-up questions. I've not used it.

I get the appeal, AI will give you a pat answer (often wrong) so that you don't have to look at the underlying sources.

There have been several studies showing that this kind of offloading of mental tasks results in diminished mental capacity, though it's not clear if it's permanent or it's a temporary situation like muscles atrophying from disuse and you can work them back.

For instance, I've never asked AI to make an itinerary for a trip. It's a similar situation to the AI search, rather than have a nice tidy summary, I like to follow the information and process which things would be of interest.

Or every month, I track my budget by entering every credit card transaction in a spreadsheet instead of downloading to Quicken. This is obviously the kind of thing which can be automated but I want to be better aware of transactions. For instance, for a recent trip, I saw a deposit on a car rental had not be credited back so I contacted the rental agency.
 
explanade said:
Or every month, I track my budget by entering every credit card transaction in a spreadsheet instead of downloading to Quicken. This is obviously the kind of thing which can be automated but I want to be better aware of transactions. For instance, for a recent trip, I saw a deposit on a car rental had not be credited back so I contacted the rental agency.
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I do download most of my transactions into Quicken most accounts, but not all. Too tedious otherwise, we have tons of credit card transactions and electronic bill pay transactions.

What I do to review is reconcile every account statement from every financial institution. That is where I verify things are accurate as well as noting the transactions. Reports let me see the big picture. I don’t have a strict budget but I do monitor cash flow, spending and upcoming bills and transfers.
 
explanade said:
I have not once used AI chatbot.

When I search on Google, it obviously now puts up AI summaries. I do not rely on those summaries. I will still follow links and scan it to find the information I want.

Now the AI summaries have a little chat interface to ask follow-up questions. I've not used it.

I get the appeal, AI will give you a pat answer (often wrong) so that you don't have to look at the underlying sources.
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Interesting that you've NOT ONCE used an AI chatbot, yet you assert that AI often gives wrong answers.

Hmmm...?
 
Qs Laptop said:
Interesting that you've NOT ONCE used an AI chatbot, yet you assert that AI often gives wrong answers.

Hmmm...?
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I believe they were referring to the AI summary on a Google search. Those are frequently wrong.
 
ShokWaveRider said:
As usual "some" folks here have drifted from the original question, maybe I should have made it a Poll. I do not know whether it is because of not completely reading the title, a lack of comprehension or simply the joy of not adhering to the object of posts. I know this happens a lot here.
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I recognize that I am replying to this post almost 2 weeks after it was made, and I have not read to the end of thread, so my response might seem a bit out of step with the current direction of the thread. But that's me - regularly out of step with the times :LOL:

As you mention, thread-drift is common here. In real life, in a group of people, this is usually how a conversation goes. It would be quite unusual for a real-life group conversation or discussion to strictly follow the format of answering the specific wording of the first person to speak. Certainly, you can argue that this is a thread in a forum and not a real-life group discussion or conversation. However, quite a few folk here seem to enjoy the more casual conversational style of this forum. I am one of them.
 
COcheesehead said:
What’s funny about that is they are wrong because they just summarize what is already out there. So going to links doesn’t solve the problem of search being wrong. :LOL:
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How did we ever look up information on the Internet before AI?
 
explanade said:
How did we ever look up information on the Internet before AI?
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Err, Google ....... maybe, no differently than today. Funny how some of us manage perfectly well without using an AI chat bot. Yes, we do use google's initial response, that I find surprisingly accurate, before selecting a returned link, but that is not a chat bot. So I stick with my initial statement that I have never used one or felt the need to. My retired life is just not that demanding.
 
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Route246 said:
I'm no longer amazed when people show little or no interest in something that is of great interest to me and others.
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I occasionally wonder what it is that causes us to find some things interesting and other things not. I am very interested to see how AI will affect us all in the years to come. If the changes are as big as those caused by the internet, it will be a fun ride - and I'm led to believe that the changes will be even greater. Now, I just have to stay alive for long enough to enjoy witnessing this transformation!

I was at dinner in a group of 4 recently. Two of us were talking about the potential changes that AI will bring in the future. The other two couldn't have been less interested. To be fair, there are many things I have little or no interest in. I just ignore them and go on my merry way.

explanade said:
How did we ever look up information on the Internet before AI?
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Indeed - and how did we ever find anything out before the internet? I'm regularly quite stunned at the realization that, for much of my life, the mechanisms of finding things out were very different from what they are today. Pre-internet, we had books, journals, encyclopedias, and other people (all of which we still have, of course). Much of what we were curious about could eventually be found out, though the more trivial and obscure questions could take a lot longer to answer. In those cases, I'd store the question in my head until I came across a potential source of information. I'm fairly certain that with the more trivial concerns, many would go unanswered and over time, I'd either lose interest in finding the answer, or forget that I had even wanted to know.
 
I do not specifically subscribe to an AI service, but I notice that it frequently appears as an initial response to a search query. Depending on the query, I look for another source to confirm.
 
COcheesehead said:
What’s funny about that is they are wrong because they just summarize what is already out there. So going to links doesn’t solve the problem of search being wrong. :LOL:
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The problem more and more is people are stopping at the AI answer. They’re ignoring that those answers often are not from reliable sites.

When I do a Google search I only click on the links to sites that I know to be trustworthy and find my answers there.
 
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