I am still writing this entry, for the time being. I say this as the AI revolution continues to take over, and I am not entirely sure what to make of it yet.

I was, and mostly still am, a skeptic. Of course I’ve used various AI apps like Seeing AI and Be My AI to describe photos and read documents for a while now. And especially where it comes to photo description, I’d taken the readings with a grain of salt knowing that AI often hallucinates and just plain makes things up. But it was no worry, as the descriptions weren’t serious and an error would have no real impact on me.

But lately, I’m seeing more and more people use this technology, often called generative AI, to create or edit documents or to help brainstorm when preparing to construct projects. This makes me nervous, because what is that going to do to human creativity long term? What does it do to our ability to learn now? These are deep philosophical questions about which we will no doubt debate for a long time.

But two things happened recently to change my mind a bit. Well for starters, I downloaded the Chat GPT iOS app so I could explore what all the fuss was about. In its suggested things to ask, it offered to play a World Capitals game. This immediately appealed to my nerdy GPS-coordinate, geographical tendencies. I knew the capital of Ethiopia, ADIS Ababba; and Bolivia, La Paz. I found out though that the capital of Bhutan is Thimphu. Hmmm, not likely I would have known that one. Anyway my free time ran out, at least for the next few hours, so I bit the bullet and opted to pay (for at least one month).

And in for a penny, in for a pound, right? So the first of the two things that really got me thinking about the potential power (and perhaps peril) of this and any so-called AI platform was my decision to query it about a project I’m hoping to launch. It’s a revamp of a podcast idea I had back in 2021, where I would explore books featuring characters with disabilities and see if I could land author interviews. Only this time I plan to be much more prepared, thanks in large part to the How to Build a Podcast segments on the Access On podcast. So I also asked GPT for suggestions on content, an author email template, and ideas on show structure, for which it supplied good answers. I guess the good of it is, at least for now, I still have to do a lot of the heavy lifting to really get this thing going. But the AI helped me get it off the ground in a way I may never have done otherwise.

And right on the heels of that, pretty much the day after I made the purchase, a work project surfaced that would also be a good candidate for AI intervention. I had to quickly generate four scripts of sorts, starting that Wednesday afternoon, and if possible have them done by Friday. Again I had GPT create the templates for me and I went in and filled in all of the relevant information, also editing the document so that things would be formatted correctly. It definitely reduced the time it took me to complete that, and I made the deadline.

So I continue to experiment with what all this and other such applications can do. I’ve since asked it for more geography games, and am enjoying guessing countries by three clues it gives me. I do suppose I will also use it for other work and hobby projects as well.

I just completed a work of fiction called Coded Justice, by Stacey Abrams, that explores the role AI could play in medicine. Of course it to some extent goes with the trope of AI gone rogue, but things get deeper than that. It’s the third in her Avery Keene series, and I’ve enjoyed all of them.