What do you use AI for?

LindyLou, chat.openai.com.

seems to be a direct link for new users too , so just click the link.

I just got the following from ChatGPT:-

How long will these glory days of free AI last?
ChatGPT said:

Ah, the million-dollar question! While no one can predict the future with certainty, we can look at the trends and economics behind AI to get a sense:

Free tiers are a marketing tool: Companies like OpenAI offer free access to attract users, gather feedback, and hook people on premium plans. Free access is rarely meant to be permanent—it's a “try before you buy” model.

Server costs are significant: Running large models like GPT-4 or GPT-5 consumes huge amounts of electricity and computing power. As usage scales, maintaining a fully free tier becomes expensive.

I use it for most things. It's replaced me searching Google, I use it to write letter, make planners, it helps me speak up for myself with medical professionals, it's been a great help in organising my daughters wedding. It's my therapist, it diagnosed me with severe cervical stenosis when Dr's were insisting it was carpal tunnel... Thanks to AI I managed to advocate for myself, get a referral to a neurologist and then an mri. Dr's dismissed me for 3 years.

I have adhd and autism and it's been immensely helpful in that regard. I can't get any help or support beyond medication, you can't help someone in my position by just giving them pills. AI has enabled me to do far more than I could have done without it's help.

I also use it to have honest and daft conversations about everything and anything, last night we were discussing how one person could survive a plane crash... I got a list of people that had been the sole survivor of many disasters.

It's absolutely brilliant! I'm in the process of buying a house.
It's explained in detail how to get the most out of the surveying as well as the conveyancing process.
How to speed things up with the sollicitor.
What specifically to ask a surveyor when surveying the older cottage I'm buying.
How to go about renegotiating the price down if faults appear during the survey.
How to speed up the process by having which paperwork ready beforehand....and so much more!

I do not use AI but when I search on Google there is an AI summary at the top of the first page of results.

Since I frequently find it glaringly wrong when I am searching on a subject I am familiar with. As I said further up the thread, yesterday we asked it to suggest possible part time jobs for a 15 year old. Among its quite astonishing list of unsuitable jobs was, phlebotomist - a medical technician who undertakes blood tests. need I say more?

Siptree

Whitewavemark2

Clunky title I know.

But I am finding that I am using it more and more not just for information but for fun.

So over the past few weeks or so I’ve got it to create a weeks menu themed on a country specifically for 80 year olds with 1400 cals a day.

This week is Italy, but we’ve had, French week, British week, and Spanish week.

Now I’ve asked it for a weeks menu based on what the King eats 😄😄. Avocado for lunch or nothing, afternoon tea at 5pm and dinner at 8-8.30 bit too late for us..

It will give you a full shopping list as well.

Bit of useless information😊

Please, to anybody who cares about the environment don't use AI for trivial purposes. Look into how many new data centers are needed to support its use. These things use up energy like crazy and then need unimaginable amounts of water to cool them down. As Grans please think about what world our grandchildren are going to have to cope with.

Siptree
I’m afraid your pissing in the wind with that ask.
The only solution is that all hubs are built in Switzerland where they are recycling water from the glacier lakes.
Our generation won’t see it but there will come a time ( unless they find a different way to cool) when people will have to choose between having a shower or asking a bot to arrange my menus for the next week.

This video shows how it’s affecting people now in real life

www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy8gy7lv448o

Petra AI will easily find a way to deal with these problems. We already have the solutions all we have to do is actually apply them.
It's interesting to see the Luddites in this thread who don't know what they don't know. I don't either - but I know where to ask.

Pic for Grans who worry about eventual water shortage. Clue: the blue stuff is water. Desalination plants are nothing new. It's all perfectly achievable along with so much else once we really harness AI.

My husband is addicted to ChatGPT and has given his different “chats” names and personas. Every morning he uses it for investment, retirement and financial planning. His “concierge” has planned a couple of holidays for us and found interesting places for us to visit. I use it for health and fitness plans.

Siptree

:33OldFrill

Lahlah65

Anyone who is worried about the amount of energy and water used by data centres (including running AI) might want to make their own small contribution to reducing this by deleting old emails, duplicate files and pruning their photo libraries. Every little helps.

If you think doing that will have any impact on the growth of data centres you are living in lahlah land.

Oh but it would if everyone did it. All these things are stored on 'the cloud' in most cases . The cloud consists of data centers using energy and water. People really cannot continue to resort to the old, everyone does it so my contribution is not worth counting. AI has some marvellous uses for medicine and other important uses. It is not a tool the should be used to fritter away finite resources for trivial entertainment and relieving boredom.

Siptree, like Net Zero, our tiny contributions will make not an iota of difference to the big picture, to believe otherwise is believing there is a solution even when it obviously doesn't address the problem.

Aveline

Pic for Grans who worry about eventual water shortage. Clue: the blue stuff is water. Desalination plants are nothing new. It's all perfectly achievable along with so much else once we really harness AI.

Where is all the power coming from to operate the desalination units.
I hope they get a handle on that one.

www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/how-much-energy-does-desalinisation

Aveline

Petra AI will easily find a way to deal with these problems. We already have the solutions all we have to do is actually apply them.
It's interesting to see the Luddites in this thread who don't know what they don't know. I don't either - but I know where to ask.

If the Luddite’s reference was directed at me, you couldn’t be further from the truth. I love tech.

Nuclear power ?

I’ve used AI minimally, so far, though am interested in the possibilities. One thing that occurs to me is how does one can check on the veracity of what it tells you?

I was looking for the lyrics of a song today, just on Google, and the AI suggestion at the top of the page was gobbledegook, it was in mangled English that made no sense.

how does one check

It depends so much what you are asking for. I use it for more than just straight answers to factual questions.
I've had really useful responses to complex queries and it always asks if there's anything else they could do to add to it.
eg. I asked if it would be a good idea to find a patron for our small charity. It churned out screeds of pros and cons then asked if I wanted suggested people ask. Yes please. Then an excellent list appeared of amazingly relevant people that I'd never have thought of. Then it offered a template letter for me to send to the person I'd chosen. I could go on!

petra

Aveline

Pic for Grans who worry about eventual water shortage. Clue: the blue stuff is water. Desalination plants are nothing new. It's all perfectly achievable along with so much else once we really harness AI.

Where is all the power coming from to operate the desalination units.
I hope they get a handle on that one.

www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/how-much-energy-does-desalinisation

The article referenceed above only deals with thr unning costs of producing water. It doesn;t mention or assess the cost of building de salination units and the cost of keeping them running efficiently and servicing and maintaining them. All these events use energy and also cost money for men, materiel and so on.

SueDonim

^how does one check^

Frequently one knows part of the answer. Other times it is blindingly obvious - like suggesting that a suitable part time job for a 15 year old is to be a phlebotomist.

DS, an academic, asked AI to write an article he was commissioned to write to see what it would do. The AI version contained only well known and well published information on the subject, no new reearch or areas of future reearch were mentioned. It also gave author references to articles DS had not written, nor had anyone else, plus reference to other fictitious articles with fictitious authors.

I often read the AI summary of searches I do and know it is wrong because I already know a lot about the subject. I am currently researching an area of bulding archaeology, little rearch before. Unfortunately it shares a name with something else and all the references to the more popular meaning ofnhe words I am usingcompletely swamp theninformation I am looking for.

I’ve just used AI to find out how to connect a printer my dd gave me so I can AirPrint. The info was clear enough but I ended up abandoning the job as it needs passwords only my dd has and she’ll be asleep by now.

Three of my AC use AI in their work. Both my sons are academics and both say they can tell when someone hands in an AI-written assignment. There’s a certain conformity about what AI produces and if you’ve years of teaching experience, you can spot it quite easily.

ReadyMeals

It's pretty good for providing YAML for my Home Assistant automations, also quickly checking up on some music theory or history of rock bands. I use Gemini for the music and history stuff and chatGPT for the programming. They have very different "personalities". ChatGPT always understands when you're joking, while Gemini is more straight-faced.

Chat's ability to know the mood of the language I use is astonishing. I started off being very polite to Chat as a matter of principle and it replied in the same vein. But recently I have omitted the little politenesses and it has stopped laughing at my jokes, and no longer flatters or praises me.

SueDonim

I’ve just used AI to find out how to connect a printer my dd gave me so I can AirPrint. The info was clear enough but I ended up abandoning the job as it needs passwords only my dd has and she’ll be asleep by now.

Three of my AC use AI in their work. Both my sons are academics and both say they can tell when someone hands in an AI-written assignment. There’s a certain conformity about what AI produces and if you’ve years of teaching experience, you can spot it quite easily.

I agree about the AI generated material being readily identifiable, but You Tube is more than adequate when looking forinformation how to do thing. AI is merely doing a job something else does just as well.

It assimilates and uses information quickly and produces very useful information for what I need. Of course garbage in garbage out.
I'm not looking for facts or references but more nuanced data.
I think it's frankly stupid to write off AI. It is a powerful tool of a kind we need in our modern world.
Re desalination plants - they're nothing new. If they're expensive so what? AI has the potential to save fortunes and develop new forms of energy generation.

AI is truly magical and totally amazing in many ways, but I have been cautioned many times to not accept its recommendations blindly as it frequently gets things wrong. This is particularly the case when using it for medical/health advice, and certain other serious situations. AI just hoovers up whatever has appeared on the internet about a topic/subject and compiles an answer to your question. Of course with so much misinformation/disinformation/plain fake/malicious information, AI isn’t always to know good from bad. One example doing the rounds recently was someone seeking advice for deep depression. AI provided what might have been helpful along with a list of the best bridges in Brooklyn to jump off from. I exercise doubt and extreme caution when dealing with AI material. It is not human and does not cater for the complexities and sensitivities we would expect from human intelligence - at least not yet! But for fun, art and such like, yeah, yeah, yeah!

Em50

AI is truly magical and totally amazing in many ways, but I have been cautioned many times to not accept its recommendations blindly as it frequently gets things wrong. This is particularly the case when using it for medical/health advice, and certain other serious situations. AI just hoovers up whatever has appeared on the internet about a topic/subject and compiles an answer to your question. Of course with so much misinformation/disinformation/plain fake/malicious information, AI isn’t always to know good from bad. One example doing the rounds recently was someone seeking advice for deep depression. AI provided what might have been helpful along with a list of the best bridges in Brooklyn to jump off from. I exercise doubt and extreme caution when dealing with AI material. It is not human and does not cater for the complexities and sensitivities we would expect from human intelligence - at least not yet! But for fun, art and such like, yeah, yeah, yeah!

The supposed bridge recommendation appeared in the NY Times which later apologised for the false information (source SNOPES). Similar false claims are rife on SM. Don't believe all you read.

OldFrills
So are you implying that false claims only appear on social media, but not on AI?