USING AI - A CONFESSION OF SORTS
I'm still not sure why everyone is afraid of AI? Instead of working with it, finding new ways to use it, new ways to make our life easier - they ignore, put their head in the sand, and murmur phrases like "there goes my job".
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| When AI turns evil |
Just a small observation, but haven't computers been taking over our jobs for years? They've automated things and do all the crappy jobs that seem mind numbing. Imagine hand calculating a big old accounting spreadsheet? Hell, handwriting all your correspondence and sending it by snail-mail? It's impossible to imagine in today's world.
Now I'm not being an idiot here, I can imagine those extreme dystopian scenarios; AI becoming too smart for our own good and destroying the world as we know it. But, what are the odds of that happening? Probably slim to none. How about we focus on the good things here. How about we get AI to work for us, make us more productive, take away more of those mindless jobs that nobody likes to do?
I know for me, I've been using AI to help me do things I would never have been able to accomplish on my own. I use it to save time and brainpower, which I then apply to more creative and satisfying tasks. Here comes a sales plug: if you don't know, I create notebooks, spreadsheets, and other digital products that I sell on Etsy (see Magnetic North Press). Coming up with product descriptions and SEO keywords is time consuming and really taxes my brain power. But, with a prompt into the old AI chatbot I'm given a head start. The wording may not be perfect, it is typically very generic and repetitive, but the best part is that it is started. Like a first draft. Then I go in there and add the finishing touches. Instead of an hour or two brain draining paragraphs, I can be finished in ten minutes.
Same process for SEO keywords. AI is great at brainstorming. I can get a list of ten, twenty, a thousand (if I want) ideas to use for keywords. Again, they are not perfect, but they are a wonderful starting point. They are the motivation to keep going. Ten minutes later I have a great list of keywords I'm inputting into the sales description. I could have come up with many of the same keywords, but it would have taken time and energy. It's something I do not really enjoy doing either. So, I save time and frustration this way and probably come up with a better selection of keywords than I would have on my own.
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| Using AI to respond to emails - funny meme |
Even after months of using AI to spit out pictures, product descriptions, or responses to emails, I'm still shocked at what it can do.
The other day I asked it to come up with a fake interview with a robot that doesn't like new technology. Then I used that conversation as the background to a picture I was working on. I kind of felt bad when I ended up covering most of the text with pictures and other stuff (it was only a part of the background), because the writing was actually pretty funny.
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| Using AI generated text in a creative work |
There are so many things you can use AI for. It's not going to replace the creative part of life, but only add to it. It's another tool that can be used to speed things along, to give you a leg up on things you might not be good at or things you hate to do. It could turn into some devil machine that takes over humanity, but the odds are almost non-existent. So go take some control back and use it like you'd use a shovel instead of your bare hands.
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| AI - Ain't nobody got time for dat. |
