Highlight of the day:
- Feeling 99% recovered from disrupted sleep last week, from belly ache. All of us were pain-free.
- Tackling one to-do list off my plate that I had for weeks.
- Confirming that Lizzy can attend the concert. When I bought the ticket there was no disclaimer about the age requirement. Then after I got the confirmation email it says kids 10 years and below are not allowed. I asked around and then emailed the ticket officer and confirmed that as long as the kid stays with the guardian, it’s okay. What a relief.
Workout: 9 miles easy. I took my camel bag because 2 small bottles of 8 oz. water is really not enough when humidity is >90% and a heavy sweater like myself. Sometimes I stress out at the end of the run because I run out of water. Okay. no more. I’ll carry camel for all runs more than an hour.
Media for the run: Sarah’s reflection episode, putting me on the mood to think about the upcoming celebration season; Race against the machine
Reading: none as I spent 20 min in bed chatting with the girls.
Best meal of the day: I made chicken quesadillas for the girls and they loved it.
Thoughts about AI
Funny (sad) example of AI use from someone in the office: I use AI for conversation prompts at dinner table with my wife.
My reaction: really? You need help to have conversation with your wife?
My general thought about AI is tilted to the negative sides. Yes, AI can make simple task fast. AI could serve as a trainee. AI can prepare travel itinerary fast and for free. All true. Yet, I’m afraid that AI will atrophy our mind. A simple example of how my mind absorb information. If I read a report of 100 pages, it will take me hours and by the end of it, I get a good sense of the subject. If I give it to ChatGPT to summarize it in one page, it may give me the exact same takeaways that I would have gathered, but it is unlikely I will remember it. My mind requires processing time, slowly absorbing the information, chew it, many times, to digest. With AI, the information hit my face and my mind can’t absorb it. Relying on AI also atrophy our critical thinking. It would be super dangerous for young people to skip through the process of try and error, to go straight to the solution.
I use AI to improve the flow of my work writing (not my blog post), ask quick questions about something I am working on, like what’s the Romania’s population size, but I don’t use it to its fullest extent, by choice.
Someone shared the example of asking AI to review and comment a document instead of reviewing themselves; ask AI to tailor their CV to the job ads. All good, but really? I think those are thoughtful things to do oneself. Can AI tell me what’s my biggest strength and weakness? I’m not even sure I know.
What’s your take on AI?
Our New Journey 
AI is extremely helpful low value, high frequency corporate tasks, there is a lot of them in any corporate environment on a day to day basis. We mostly use it with power point, because it is a time saver. AI is not a replacement for cognitively demanding, deep work genre work nor obviously for human interactions. It is also mostly used for low code software engineering. Law firms use it for document tracking for example. Because it is a tedious and time consuming, low value job for a human to do, it can be a relief to outsource it. Against all the hype, it didn’t replace humans, yet and most people don’t really know what to do with it other than make cleaner power point presentations and entertain themselves with random prompts. I use it for book recommendations with my kids sometimes. But I also take them to the library three times a week. It complements not replaces.
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I have honestly never used AI as awful as that sounds. I am fairly certain it is blocked at work and I don’t feel like I need it in my day to day life. I am admittedly not great at embracing new technologies, though! I should be more open minded about it, though.
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I feel like AI can’t really replace a human being, plus writing yourself generally helps you think through your ideas. Well, that’s what I find anyway. If I used AI to summarise sometihng I think I’d need to read through anyway because what if it didn’t pick up on what I thought were the most important points and then that would defeat the purpose of using it.
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I am a big fan of not doing repetitive things over and over that you can make a tool to do quicker or without as much waste of time. This used to mean me creating an Excel sheet that would cut the time it took us to do things in half or even less at times. Sometimes it took me weeks to create these shortcuts, so if I can get AI to give me a hand, therefore giving me more time to do more important things, I am willing to see what it can do.
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Great examples. As an artist & creative I am very worried too, for the work of our future: illustrator’s, blogger’s & photographer’s online work being used to “train” AI, ie stolen and repurposed for free for companies to use everywhere without anyone getting paid.:(
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I don’t use AI. It’s not pertinent to my job. My kids use it all the time though. I think it can be useful, but also could take the place of deep thinking and learning. But that’s sadly the way our world is moving anyway. No one wants to read an article when AI can just summarize it for them.? It’s concerning.
Yes, lots of water for the run! I used to plan my runs around water fountains- now I carry water (if it’s longer than an hour) and I’m much happier.
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I think AI will great for process efficiency, and I see promising things in the area of research and discovery (I work in biotech). It’s here to stay, I hope we don’t let it get the better of us. My daughter who is in university can spot AI use a mile away in her discussion groups- she finds some of her classmates incredibly lazy and will not learn that way. I am so glad she gets it!
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I very much agree with you on your thoughts on AI. Sure, it can be helpful for some menial, automated tasks but I also think that it shouldn’t be used for EVERYTHING… it really is a good exercise for the brain to read, learn, process and absorb information and not everything can be condensed into a one-pager.
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