I finally used AI for something

[bjl584]

I've never really done much with AI until the other day

At work, I scanned a handwritten document and gave it to Copilot
It turned it into an Excel Sheet for me.
That definitely saved me hours of hand keying data
It wasn't perfect, and it needed some cleanup and alterations, but it still saved me a ton of work.

My wife also used it at home recently.
She wanted the bathroom remodeled, so she took a few pictures of the old space and told AI what she wanted it to look like when finished.
It definitely helped me to be able to "see" her vision for the room.

[disneysteve]

I think AI does and will have it's uses. I just think it's being used wildly and blindly today by everyone and anyone for things that it just isn't suited for. People are in the "throw it at the wall and see what sticks" phase.

In my reselling world, more and more sellers are getting lazy and using AI to write their item descriptions and titles and using AI-generated images. Great, except it's all crap. The images don't actually match the items. The description are filled with errors and lack critical details about the items. I'm among many who will not buy from anyone who uses AI descriptions. It's making it harder and harder to shop online.

There's a growing backlash against restaurants using AI. Rather than paying a photographer, they are using AI images on their menus and advertising, except the "food" looks awful, not at all realistic.

The speed with which people have abandoned art and creativity and replaced it with AI to save a buck or a little time is really disturbing.

[myrdale]

I helped run a booth at a local college job fair earlier this week. I probably spoke with 200 students, mostly computer science, cyber security, and electrical engineering. Probably 25% of those mentioned AI. It was definitely a buzz word.

My impression of AI is there are two separate flavors of it. There is the ChatGPT / Grock chat bots which for as cool as they may just be are really just glorified google searches. Then there are the AI images and videos. And as cool as it is to see Jesus eating tacos while riding on the back of a raptor, JD Vance climbing a wall like spiderman, or cats destroying houses, none of these really impact my life.

AI in the medical field will have a profound impact in the future though. I can foresee a video of you sitting in a chair being used to diagnose heart issues, a scan discovery cancer a decade early, or personally drugs.

[disneysteve]

Then there are the AI images and videos. And as cool as it is to see Jesus eating tacos while riding on the back of a raptor, JD Vance climbing a wall like spiderman, or cats destroying houses, none of these really impact my life.

AI in the medical field will have a profound impact in the future though. I can foresee a video of you sitting in a chair being used to diagnose heart issues, a scan discovery cancer a decade early, or personally drugs.

You don't need AI to see videos of cats destroying houses LOL.

I agree about AI in medicine. Some of that is already happening. AI is being used to read x-rays like mammograms in addition to human radiologists. The AI is detecting things the humans may miss.

[LivingAlmostLarge]

it's good to use to summarize docs

[kork13]

AI (in its various forms) is a tool. You can use a tool well & have a well-crafted bookcase ... Don't, then you can shoot a line of nails into your foot. Same situation here. Use it well, it can be very valuable & impactful. Use it poorly .... Well, I for one welcome our new AI overlords.

I'm finding myself using it more often over time, using it to research & distill large amounts of information into a more brief or understandable version. It's not going to provide an expert level of knowledge, but it'll provide a quick & dirty baseline to frame your thinking or provide a better understanding.

I've also successfully used AI chatbots as almost like a sparring partner -- you can tell it to take off the complementary, optimistic kid gloves, and use the thing to challenge your thinking, poke holes in your proposals, and help you to refine ideas.

I also use it to help with travel planning ... I'm terrible at knowing/deciding what to do on a trip, but I can tell the AI bot what we enjoy, when we want to go, and it spits out a laundry list of suggestions. Them we can pick & choose the things we want to do, and I can setup the logistics. When we moved this summer from northern to central Japan, we did a 4-day road trip that was planned largely by AI, just with my inputs to frame the general route & places/activities of interest. It was fantastic.