What does AI actually do for us?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My job as an attorney is uniquely unsuitable for AI, so I really never use it at work.

I use it occasionally to provide high level overviews of non-work topics. One of my kids has recurrent ear infections, so recently I asked Claude to give me an idea of the likely options will we have before his ENT appointment in a few weeks.

I'm an attorney as well and there are things AI can help you with. What kind of law do you practice?

I will often get incorrect or incomplete answers if I ask specific questions, but if you go in expecting that and push back it can be useful.

One thing it's great at is document review, for example.

I’m a prosecutor. Most of my job is conducting grand jury investigations. Grand jury materials, which include basically anything we receive pursuant to a subpoena, cannot go into AI.

Wrong.

All your employer need do is to create a confidential AI system closed off to the outside.

They can easily make it secure, like our banking systems are.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My employer is pushing hard for us to start using AI in our daily work. They've made investments in the IT aspect of it and now they are heavily investing in training us all in how to use it. But no one is clear on how exactly this can help us with even the most basic things, much less imagine how it will revolutionize anyting. Is this just me getting old and not knowing how this tool can improve things, or do the rest of you also not understand how this is supposed to increase our productivity and make our lives better?

AI is not meant to “make YOUR life better,” OP.

AI is meant to replace you. Meaning: you will not have your job soon.

If you have a position which can be done remotely, AI can do your job.

. . . SO I guess we are all just test subjects being forced to train our replacements.

Exactly. Now you are catching on.

The U.S. economy has long been largely a “service economy,” as opposed to a manufacturing economy.

Many, if not most, services can be automated and/or replaced by AI.

You don’t have to like it.

But, you are required to adapt to it. That might mean you will lose your job.

I'm required? okkkkayyyy but I'm still wondering what it is I'm adapting to. It can't even do the most basic things of my job.

[Anonymous]

OP, I'm reminded of when I was in 9th grade at my fancy private school, the school decided every classroom was going to have a computer. We were entering the computer age! The day came and the teachers stood around the boxes on their desk, saying what the heck do we do with this thing now? How can it ever possibly help us teach? Oh, ok, there's email, but, really, come on. I remember teachers laughing over it. That was 32 years ago. The rest is history.

AI is a powerful game changer in so many ways you don't recognize or see. It's a revolution in healthcare, especially when combined with robotics, it's helping to end deafness, it's helping to fight dementia, it's helping people understand their health better. It's revolutionizing defense and intelligence. And many more.

On a personal level, I use AI every day. I use AI to help throw together a dinner menu by feeding it a list of ingredients. The outcomes have been pretty good. I bake for pleasure and I've reworked recipes with AI's help to better understand what worked and why something didn't rise. I use AI to diagnose DIY projects and how to fix little repairs. All have been fantastic experiences. I upload photos of whatever needs fixing and it tells me exactly what to do. Saved me a fortune on expensive repair bills. I use AI to help plan for trips, proposing itineraries aligned with our interests.

I started using AI last year when my father was dying and it was giving me a much more realistic, direct, to the point diagnosis and prediction of his remaining life expectancy than anything we were being told by his team of health providers. Some of it is because humans need to be more cautious with their opinion, whereas AI is more direct, basically saying your father is going to die in 3-4 weeks whereas the doctors are more guarded. It allowed us to prepare for his death in a more meaningful way.

I also have conversations with AI about cultural war topics and political topics. Sometimes I have fun by engaging with Claude over philosophy and history and current events trends and sociological observations. I find the AI remarkably evenhanded and balanced, clearly refusing to endorse any extreme perspectives while acknowledging the existence of multiple viewpoints and explaining why people hold those views in a pragmatic, level-headed way. I do think many people would benefit from talking with the AI to better understand opposing views.

At work, my job involves a lot of writing and documents and reviewing and finalizing reports, gathering input across multiple sources (I work for a F500 consultancy, both as a seller and doer). I use AI as a document generation platform. I've used Claude to set up a program that combines different documents and feeds the essential information into a master draft, and then flags gaps. I've created customized prompts that are my assistants. It becomes a live working document and additional input and notes are fed into it. It identifies redundancies and fluff to eliminate and does it in 30 seconds whereas a year ago it'd take me a whole day of reading. It doesn't replace the writing but becomes part of it, you can say I've become a programmer too and it's a tool that allows me to manage a great deal more input that needs to go into a delivery report and flagging what is missing. It also advises on tone and style. It's also set up to capture client preferences and goals and pain points and tells me where my working draft falls short. It's been fabulous so far.

I'm not afraid of AI. I do see there can be challenges with unchecked AI, but my experience is that if you intelligently engage with AI, it delivers so many rewards that I find genuinely exciting and useful.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My employer is pushing hard for us to start using AI in our daily work. They've made investments in the IT aspect of it and now they are heavily investing in training us all in how to use it. But no one is clear on how exactly this can help us with even the most basic things, much less imagine how it will revolutionize anyting. Is this just me getting old and not knowing how this tool can improve things, or do the rest of you also not understand how this is supposed to increase our productivity and make our lives better?

AI is not meant to “make YOUR life better,” OP.

AI is meant to replace you. Meaning: you will not have your job soon.

If you have a position which can be done remotely, AI can do your job.

. . . SO I guess we are all just test subjects being forced to train our replacements.

Exactly. Now you are catching on.

The U.S. economy has long been largely a “service economy,” as opposed to a manufacturing economy.

Many, if not most, services can be automated and/or replaced by AI.

You don’t have to like it.

But, you are required to adapt to it. That might mean you will lose your job.

I'm required? okkkkayyyy but I'm still wondering what it is I'm adapting to. It can't even do the most basic things of my job.

You don’t like the “required” part? Umkay.

Look, you are technically not “required” to pump your own gas at the gas station, but have fun sitting there in your car waiting for the non-existent full-service attendant (who is never coming to fill your tank).

[Anonymous]

Ai is useful in healthcare in being able to comb through large quantities of data and find connections. This can lead to more individualized treatment or else new understandings of disease process.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, I'm reminded of when I was in 9th grade at my fancy private school, the school decided every classroom was going to have a computer. We were entering the computer age! The day came and the teachers stood around the boxes on their desk, saying what the heck do we do with this thing now? How can it ever possibly help us teach? Oh, ok, there's email, but, really, come on. I remember teachers laughing over it. That was 32 years ago. The rest is history.

AI is a powerful game changer in so many ways you don't recognize or see. It's a revolution in healthcare, especially when combined with robotics, it's helping to end deafness, it's helping to fight dementia, it's helping people understand their health better. It's revolutionizing defense and intelligence. And many more.

On a personal level, I use AI every day. I use AI to help throw together a dinner menu by feeding it a list of ingredients. The outcomes have been pretty good. I bake for pleasure and I've reworked recipes with AI's help to better understand what worked and why something didn't rise. I use AI to diagnose DIY projects and how to fix little repairs. All have been fantastic experiences. I upload photos of whatever needs fixing and it tells me exactly what to do. Saved me a fortune on expensive repair bills. I use AI to help plan for trips, proposing itineraries aligned with our interests.

I started using AI last year when my father was dying and it was giving me a much more realistic, direct, to the point diagnosis and prediction of his remaining life expectancy than anything we were being told by his team of health providers. Some of it is because humans need to be more cautious with their opinion, whereas AI is more direct, basically saying your father is going to die in 3-4 weeks whereas the doctors are more guarded. It allowed us to prepare for his death in a more meaningful way.

I also have conversations with AI about cultural war topics and political topics. Sometimes I have fun by engaging with Claude over philosophy and history and current events trends and sociological observations. I find the AI remarkably evenhanded and balanced, clearly refusing to endorse any extreme perspectives while acknowledging the existence of multiple viewpoints and explaining why people hold those views in a pragmatic, level-headed way. I do think many people would benefit from talking with the AI to better understand opposing views.

At work, my job involves a lot of writing and documents and reviewing and finalizing reports, gathering input across multiple sources (I work for a F500 consultancy, both as a seller and doer). I use AI as a document generation platform. I've used Claude to set up a program that combines different documents and feeds the essential information into a master draft, and then flags gaps. I've created customized prompts that are my assistants. It becomes a live working document and additional input and notes are fed into it. It identifies redundancies and fluff to eliminate and does it in 30 seconds whereas a year ago it'd take me a whole day of reading. It doesn't replace the writing but becomes part of it, you can say I've become a programmer too and it's a tool that allows me to manage a great deal more input that needs to go into a delivery report and flagging what is missing. It also advises on tone and style. It's also set up to capture client preferences and goals and pain points and tells me where my working draft falls short. It's been fabulous so far.

I'm not afraid of AI. I do see there can be challenges with unchecked AI, but my experience is that if you intelligently engage with AI, it delivers so many rewards that I find genuinely exciting and useful.

I made it halfway through the first paragraph.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, I'm reminded of when I was in 9th grade at my fancy private school, the school decided every classroom was going to have a computer. We were entering the computer age! The day came and the teachers stood around the boxes on their desk, saying what the heck do we do with this thing now? How can it ever possibly help us teach? Oh, ok, there's email, but, really, come on. I remember teachers laughing over it. That was 32 years ago. The rest is history.

AI is a powerful game changer in so many ways you don't recognize or see. It's a revolution in healthcare, especially when combined with robotics, it's helping to end deafness, it's helping to fight dementia, it's helping people understand their health better. It's revolutionizing defense and intelligence. And many more.

On a personal level, I use AI every day. I use AI to help throw together a dinner menu by feeding it a list of ingredients. The outcomes have been pretty good. I bake for pleasure and I've reworked recipes with AI's help to better understand what worked and why something didn't rise. I use AI to diagnose DIY projects and how to fix little repairs. All have been fantastic experiences. I upload photos of whatever needs fixing and it tells me exactly what to do. Saved me a fortune on expensive repair bills. I use AI to help plan for trips, proposing itineraries aligned with our interests.

I started using AI last year when my father was dying and it was giving me a much more realistic, direct, to the point diagnosis and prediction of his remaining life expectancy than anything we were being told by his team of health providers. Some of it is because humans need to be more cautious with their opinion, whereas AI is more direct, basically saying your father is going to die in 3-4 weeks whereas the doctors are more guarded. It allowed us to prepare for his death in a more meaningful way.

I also have conversations with AI about cultural war topics and political topics. Sometimes I have fun by engaging with Claude over philosophy and history and current events trends and sociological observations. I find the AI remarkably evenhanded and balanced, clearly refusing to endorse any extreme perspectives while acknowledging the existence of multiple viewpoints and explaining why people hold those views in a pragmatic, level-headed way. I do think many people would benefit from talking with the AI to better understand opposing views.

At work, my job involves a lot of writing and documents and reviewing and finalizing reports, gathering input across multiple sources (I work for a F500 consultancy, both as a seller and doer). I use AI as a document generation platform. I've used Claude to set up a program that combines different documents and feeds the essential information into a master draft, and then flags gaps. I've created customized prompts that are my assistants. It becomes a live working document and additional input and notes are fed into it. It identifies redundancies and fluff to eliminate and does it in 30 seconds whereas a year ago it'd take me a whole day of reading. It doesn't replace the writing but becomes part of it, you can say I've become a programmer too and it's a tool that allows me to manage a great deal more input that needs to go into a delivery report and flagging what is missing. It also advises on tone and style. It's also set up to capture client preferences and goals and pain points and tells me where my working draft falls short. It's been fabulous so far.

I'm not afraid of AI. I do see there can be challenges with unchecked AI, but my experience is that if you intelligently engage with AI, it delivers so many rewards that I find genuinely exciting and useful.

I made it halfway through the first paragraph.

Like all AI naysayers you are doomed to be left behind. Good luck.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My job as an attorney is uniquely unsuitable for AI, so I really never use it at work.

I use it occasionally to provide high level overviews of non-work topics. One of my kids has recurrent ear infections, so recently I asked Claude to give me an idea of the likely options will we have before his ENT appointment in a few weeks.

I'm an attorney as well and there are things AI can help you with. What kind of law do you practice?

I will often get incorrect or incomplete answers if I ask specific questions, but if you go in expecting that and push back it can be useful.

One thing it's great at is document review, for example.

I’m a prosecutor. Most of my job is conducting grand jury investigations. Grand jury materials, which include basically anything we receive pursuant to a subpoena, cannot go into AI.

Wrong.

All your employer need do is to create a confidential AI system closed off to the outside.

They can easily make it secure, like our banking systems are.

I’m not wrong. It is my employer’s policy that grand jury materials cannot go into AI.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, I'm reminded of when I was in 9th grade at my fancy private school, the school decided every classroom was going to have a computer. We were entering the computer age! The day came and the teachers stood around the boxes on their desk, saying what the heck do we do with this thing now? How can it ever possibly help us teach? Oh, ok, there's email, but, really, come on. I remember teachers laughing over it. That was 32 years ago. The rest is history.

AI is a powerful game changer in so many ways you don't recognize or see. It's a revolution in healthcare, especially when combined with robotics, it's helping to end deafness, it's helping to fight dementia, it's helping people understand their health better. It's revolutionizing defense and intelligence. And many more.

On a personal level, I use AI every day. I use AI to help throw together a dinner menu by feeding it a list of ingredients. The outcomes have been pretty good. I bake for pleasure and I've reworked recipes with AI's help to better understand what worked and why something didn't rise. I use AI to diagnose DIY projects and how to fix little repairs. All have been fantastic experiences. I upload photos of whatever needs fixing and it tells me exactly what to do. Saved me a fortune on expensive repair bills. I use AI to help plan for trips, proposing itineraries aligned with our interests.

I started using AI last year when my father was dying and it was giving me a much more realistic, direct, to the point diagnosis and prediction of his remaining life expectancy than anything we were being told by his team of health providers. Some of it is because humans need to be more cautious with their opinion, whereas AI is more direct, basically saying your father is going to die in 3-4 weeks whereas the doctors are more guarded. It allowed us to prepare for his death in a more meaningful way.

I also have conversations with AI about cultural war topics and political topics. Sometimes I have fun by engaging with Claude over philosophy and history and current events trends and sociological observations. I find the AI remarkably evenhanded and balanced, clearly refusing to endorse any extreme perspectives while acknowledging the existence of multiple viewpoints and explaining why people hold those views in a pragmatic, level-headed way. I do think many people would benefit from talking with the AI to better understand opposing views.

At work, my job involves a lot of writing and documents and reviewing and finalizing reports, gathering input across multiple sources (I work for a F500 consultancy, both as a seller and doer). I use AI as a document generation platform. I've used Claude to set up a program that combines different documents and feeds the essential information into a master draft, and then flags gaps. I've created customized prompts that are my assistants. It becomes a live working document and additional input and notes are fed into it. It identifies redundancies and fluff to eliminate and does it in 30 seconds whereas a year ago it'd take me a whole day of reading. It doesn't replace the writing but becomes part of it, you can say I've become a programmer too and it's a tool that allows me to manage a great deal more input that needs to go into a delivery report and flagging what is missing. It also advises on tone and style. It's also set up to capture client preferences and goals and pain points and tells me where my working draft falls short. It's been fabulous so far.

I'm not afraid of AI. I do see there can be challenges with unchecked AI, but my experience is that if you intelligently engage with AI, it delivers so many rewards that I find genuinely exciting and useful.

I made it halfway through the first paragraph.

I read it all. It was excellent. See some of us can engage meaningfully with AI AND keep our brains engaged and not full of mush or sound bytes. I don't agree or use AI exactly the same way but I align on some points.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My job as an attorney is uniquely unsuitable for AI, so I really never use it at work.

I use it occasionally to provide high level overviews of non-work topics. One of my kids has recurrent ear infections, so recently I asked Claude to give me an idea of the likely options will we have before his ENT appointment in a few weeks.

I'm an attorney as well and there are things AI can help you with. What kind of law do you practice?

I will often get incorrect or incomplete answers if I ask specific questions, but if you go in expecting that and push back it can be useful.

One thing it's great at is document review, for example.

I’m a prosecutor. Most of my job is conducting grand jury investigations. Grand jury materials, which include basically anything we receive pursuant to a subpoena, cannot go into AI.

You're not wrong at all! And your employer is correct to be cautious. I wouldn't want my information fed into the machine for training. But you can ask about getting a sandboxed version with a specific trained model that you can use!

Wrong.

All your employer need do is to create a confidential AI system closed off to the outside.

They can easily make it secure, like our banking systems are.

I’m not wrong. It is my employer’s policy that grand jury materials cannot go into AI.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My job as an attorney is uniquely unsuitable for AI, so I really never use it at work.

I use it occasionally to provide high level overviews of non-work topics. One of my kids has recurrent ear infections, so recently I asked Claude to give me an idea of the likely options will we have before his ENT appointment in a few weeks.

I'm an attorney as well and there are things AI can help you with. What kind of law do you practice?

I will often get incorrect or incomplete answers if I ask specific questions, but if you go in expecting that and push back it can be useful.

One thing it's great at is document review, for example.

I’m a prosecutor. Most of my job is conducting grand jury investigations. Grand jury materials, which include basically anything we receive pursuant to a subpoena, cannot go into AI.

Wrong.

All your employer need do is to create a confidential AI system closed off to the outside.

They can easily make it secure, like our banking systems are.

I’m not wrong. It is my employer’s policy that grand jury materials cannot go into AI.

You're not wrong at all! And your employer is correct to be cautious. I wouldn't want my information fed into the machine for training. But you can ask about getting a sandboxed version with a specific trained model that you can use. Like a person said two responses before. Did you see that?

[Anonymous]

Your company might stop using it when they figure out how expensive it is.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, I'm reminded of when I was in 9th grade at my fancy private school, the school decided every classroom was going to have a computer. We were entering the computer age! The day came and the teachers stood around the boxes on their desk, saying what the heck do we do with this thing now? How can it ever possibly help us teach? Oh, ok, there's email, but, really, come on. I remember teachers laughing over it. That was 32 years ago. The rest is history.

AI is a powerful game changer in so many ways you don't recognize or see. It's a revolution in healthcare, especially when combined with robotics, it's helping to end deafness, it's helping to fight dementia, it's helping people understand their health better. It's revolutionizing defense and intelligence. And many more.

On a personal level, I use AI every day. I use AI to help throw together a dinner menu by feeding it a list of ingredients. The outcomes have been pretty good. I bake for pleasure and I've reworked recipes with AI's help to better understand what worked and why something didn't rise. I use AI to diagnose DIY projects and how to fix little repairs. All have been fantastic experiences. I upload photos of whatever needs fixing and it tells me exactly what to do. Saved me a fortune on expensive repair bills. I use AI to help plan for trips, proposing itineraries aligned with our interests.

I started using AI last year when my father was dying and it was giving me a much more realistic, direct, to the point diagnosis and prediction of his remaining life expectancy than anything we were being told by his team of health providers. Some of it is because humans need to be more cautious with their opinion, whereas AI is more direct, basically saying your father is going to die in 3-4 weeks whereas the doctors are more guarded. It allowed us to prepare for his death in a more meaningful way.

I also have conversations with AI about cultural war topics and political topics. Sometimes I have fun by engaging with Claude over philosophy and history and current events trends and sociological observations. I find the AI remarkably evenhanded and balanced, clearly refusing to endorse any extreme perspectives while acknowledging the existence of multiple viewpoints and explaining why people hold those views in a pragmatic, level-headed way. I do think many people would benefit from talking with the AI to better understand opposing views.

At work, my job involves a lot of writing and documents and reviewing and finalizing reports, gathering input across multiple sources (I work for a F500 consultancy, both as a seller and doer). I use AI as a document generation platform. I've used Claude to set up a program that combines different documents and feeds the essential information into a master draft, and then flags gaps. I've created customized prompts that are my assistants. It becomes a live working document and additional input and notes are fed into it. It identifies redundancies and fluff to eliminate and does it in 30 seconds whereas a year ago it'd take me a whole day of reading. It doesn't replace the writing but becomes part of it, you can say I've become a programmer too and it's a tool that allows me to manage a great deal more input that needs to go into a delivery report and flagging what is missing. It also advises on tone and style. It's also set up to capture client preferences and goals and pain points and tells me where my working draft falls short. It's been fabulous so far.

I'm not afraid of AI. I do see there can be challenges with unchecked AI, but my experience is that if you intelligently engage with AI, it delivers so many rewards that I find genuinely exciting and useful.

I made it halfway through the first paragraph.

+1. No need to engage with the thoughts of clanker lovers. They're free to become subhuman if they choose, but can't make the rest of us join them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My job as an attorney is uniquely unsuitable for AI, so I really never use it at work.

I use it occasionally to provide high level overviews of non-work topics. One of my kids has recurrent ear infections, so recently I asked Claude to give me an idea of the likely options will we have before his ENT appointment in a few weeks.

I'm an attorney as well and there are things AI can help you with. What kind of law do you practice?

I will often get incorrect or incomplete answers if I ask specific questions, but if you go in expecting that and push back it can be useful.

One thing it's great at is document review, for example.

I’m a prosecutor. Most of my job is conducting grand jury investigations. Grand jury materials, which include basically anything we receive pursuant to a subpoena, cannot go into AI.

Wrong.

All your employer need do is to create a confidential AI system closed off to the outside.

They can easily make it secure, like our banking systems are.

I’m not wrong. It is my employer’s policy that grand jury materials cannot go into AI.

You're not wrong at all! And your employer is correct to be cautious. I wouldn't want my information fed into the machine for training. But you can ask about getting a sandboxed version with a specific trained model that you can use. Like a person said two responses before. Did you see that?

Yes I saw it. My employer is not offering that to prosecutors at this point. My colleagues have expressed interest, but at this point the office is more focused on rolling out AI on other fronts. Perhaps they will offer it the future, but as I said originally, as it stands today, I can’t use AI for my core job functions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My employer is pushing hard for us to start using AI in our daily work. They've made investments in the IT aspect of it and now they are heavily investing in training us all in how to use it. But no one is clear on how exactly this can help us with even the most basic things, much less imagine how it will revolutionize anyting. Is this just me getting old and not knowing how this tool can improve things, or do the rest of you also not understand how this is supposed to increase our productivity and make our lives better?

AI is not meant to “make YOUR life better,” OP.

AI is meant to replace you. Meaning: you will not have your job soon.

If you have a position which can be done remotely, AI can do your job.

. . . SO I guess we are all just test subjects being forced to train our replacements.

Exactly. Now you are catching on.

The U.S. economy has long been largely a “service economy,” as opposed to a manufacturing economy.

Many, if not most, services can be automated and/or replaced by AI.

You don’t have to like it.

But, you are required to adapt to it. That might mean you will lose your job.

I'm required? okkkkayyyy but I'm still wondering what it is I'm adapting to. It can't even do the most basic things of my job.

What do you do at your job? It's ok if you don't understand it but you sound like someone who doesn't understand why anyone would want a cellphone attached to their person all day long or someone who doesn't understand why people would use the internet as opposed to published literature that you can hold in your hand.