This month I spent more money on AI than on food
I forced myself to sign up for all sorts of premium subscriptions which I don’t usually do, because I’m so likely to forget to cancel the subscription before the trial ends. Of course, AI can remind me to cancel the trial, but AI can’t stop my habit of saying, “Oh yeah. Okay I’ll do that as soon as I finish what I’m doing.”
So anyway, here is the list of AI I paid for in the last month and how I used it.
ChatGPT – The best way to learn totally new technology is to see how other people use it. This is how I learned to use the Internet in 1993. For example, I saw someone talking to a boyfriend asynchronously and I wanted to do that too. So I learned prompts before there were browsers. After using new technology for a while, we’re more likely to dream up our own uses. For example, I learned HTML to publish stories I wanted people to read out of sequence. With ChatGPT I told myself to trust this process, and try something new every day.
Claude – My brother at [fancy university] told me professors there are using Claude for writing and ChatGPT for research. So I tried to divide up my tasks that way. My friend at [fancy law firm] said when they receive a motion they ask ChatGPT to write a response, and they often just make small edits. I hear this and I have AI FOMO: I need to learn faster. I discovered that the less I know about what I am trying to write, the more likely it is that ChatGPT will do better than Claude.
Beautiful.ai – I tried this one because I love making slide presentations, but I got scared I was nurturing a skill that AI could do better. I tried some ideas with Beautiful.ai and the operative word here is beautiful. The slides look really good, but when I uploaded the text for the slides, the AI rewrote it. Not helpful to me. So I haven’t found a good way to use this one: comforting, in a way.
Canva – I’m good at using this software, and I noticed that when I get good at using a piece of software I don’t even realize when I’m using AI because it’s baked into how my brain is leveraging the tool. With Canva I have a good sense when I’ve hit a wall with ideas and I need to ask for help. For example if I can’t figure out how to lay out information on a slide, Canva gives a bunch of suggestions. And, even if they are not what I ultimately use, I learn a little bit more about thinking visually.
Grammarly – If you think of yourself as the manager and AI as your employee, then it’s not surprising that the easiest AI to manage is the type that’s great at what you’re great at – you know when they’re doing a good job and when they need help. I love Grammarly because I love grammar. Sure, Grammarly makes some annoying stylistic suggestions. And it hates if you start a sentence with and. But every time I ask Grammarly to proofread I learn a new way to write more clearly.
Dall-e – When I asked Dall-e to fix the lighting in my photo of my dog, I got the photo above with the explanation: “I highlighted the tail.” Except my dog doesn’t have a tail. Using Dall-e reminds me of managing a rock star at work; they can do great stuff but it’s difficult to get them to follow directions that would make them useful, so you mostly just wait for them to surprise you.
Copilot – I read that Copilot does the work of a manager for developers. So I thought, what would I do better if someone were managing me? (And I thought: probably everything since I’m so erratic.) I tried a book proposal. I have 50% done but I need to finish the rest. I gave the job of managing my output to Copilot and I got a project plan based on the numbers I plugged in. When I gave the job to Claude I got back a less detailed plan, but Claude initiated a discussion to fill in more details based on my particular concept.
My conclusion? I need to push myself to think in terms of the highest common denominator. Claude taught me that before I ask AI to manage my book project, I should ask AI to help me figure out what the book project is. But wait. Can AI write the whole book? I don’t know. I’m not alone in my cognitive dissonance about asking AI to do something I feel especially good at. Doctors, for example, ask AI for help thinking about how to diagnose (e.g. what are some avenues to investigate for x symptom?). But AI is better than doctors for diagnosis itself (e.g. here are the symptoms x, y, z what is the diagnosis?)
This whole process reminds me of a classmate telling me the most important part of college is learning how to ask better questions. If colleges want to be relevant again, they should really lean into the idea that they can teach kids how to ask better questions for AI. Because that’s going to be everyone’s job in the future.
At least you play around with them and use them. I had premium Grammarly ,used on Medium for awhile and then stopped. I paid for a Medium subscription as I used to live reading the articles. Now I hardly read it. Canvas premium I used to help me make a funnel for a business I didn’t launch. It was fun. I may use the funnel yet.
I hadn’t heard of some of these. Thanks for sharing your experiences using them.
I wonder whether it’s hypocritical, or bad discipline, for professors to write with AI when they want their students to write for real.
My quote of the month is from Leslie Lamport on web-essayist Paul Graham’s latest piece titled “Writers and write-nots” about how writing by yourself is better than talking something over with a fellow nerd.
QUOTE “If you’re thinking without writing, you only think you’re thinking.”
Professors today expect kids to use AI to complete assignments. Good teachers realize they don’t need to teach kids to do things that AI can do. It’s similar to how kids used to memorize dates but now they don’t because we all have the internet.
My daughter was doing a college project ,not entirely sure if she was right. Went over word count. I suggested ChatGPT to help shorten it. She dismissed it, even though she said all students use it now for anything text based.
She used it in the end. She won’t use it exclusively though as she feels it’s cheating. I feel she will change her mind. She gets too anxious Anything that alleviates it.
She is probably AuDH anyway so whatever works
What autistic girls need more than anything is empathy from their mothers. There are lots of studies that show that (besides family income) the thing that determines a girl’s feeling of wellbeing is the amount of empathy her mother gives her. Of course this is difficult because autistic girls have autistic moms, but knowing what’s important helps us to do better.
Telling a girl she is autaitic when she’s young is really important. This means the mother has to understand the mother is autistic as well. If moms cannot understand themselves, it’s impossible for them to help their daughters understand themselves. But at any stage of life, it’s clear that mothers who undrstand their own autism use more empathetic language to talk about their daughters.
Penelope
Thanks for your reply. We do have empathy. She knows about my diagnosis, that it’s genetic, not a fault but maladaptive in most modern societies. We do get frustrated with eachother ,that we can’t just do the thing ,but it swings back to understanding. Usually she wants to vent no suggestions ,this time she did ask for suggestions but was overwhelmed. Everything was wrong until she had space to think about after. She knows we need help but doesn’t really want to ask for outside assistance right now. It’s our fear of being perceived, being found out .
I’m not good at communication so maybe I do come across as lacking empathy. There’s no ‘I told you sons ‘ etc but maybe I unintentionally imply it.
This post reminds me of maps. Maps whether they be paper maps (that can be used with a compass) or electronic maps whether it be on a dedicated GPS device or electronic device such as a phone or laptop. My preference is to have the ability to use all of the above. Use all of them at different times depending on the situation or use all of them at different stages and for different reasons for a situation. In fact, I like paper maps as I can see at a glance where I’ve been and where I’m going. And where would one be if an electronic device were to run out of power or fail for some reason?
Now here is what really inspired me to post this comment. It’s a post published this morning by Dan Ariely titled ‘Writing, Trauma, and AI Insights’ at https://danariely.substack.com/p/writing-trauma-and-ai-insights He has a different perspective and came to a different conclusion than what you’ve written here.
Mark, this is such an intereseting comment frmo you, because I always think of you as having an excellent map of my website — probably better than I do. Also, thanks for the link. I feel like those are my pet topics right now: writing, trauma and AI. You hit them all!
Penelope
“I don’t know. I’m not alone in my cognitive dissonance about asking AI to do something I feel especially good at.”
You definitely aren’t alone, but I’m excited for a cultural era in which creative authorship is no longer a status symbol. I want to see a culture where people are not esteemed for their creative iterations and products but for the creative processes their communities adopt.
For instance, I arrange a lot of the music for my youth symphony. But most of these arrangements are mash-ups of arrangements others freely share and allow to be manipulated rather than ones I write from scratch. A colleague recently got upset with me for this. How can I take others’ work and claim it as my own? Without getting into the copyright weeds (non-profit educational use of freely shared materials), this mindset of “if I can’t claim creative ownership, what’s the point of creating?” speaks to a strong institutional and individualistic ambition bias and is antithetical to intrinsic creativity. When self-identity is taken out of the equation, creativity can serve bigger purposes.
I love this comment because it makes me think of the value judgements we make about art both as artist and consumer. Is this art more or less valuable because 1) I like it 2) the person who created it is a human 3) the amount of time invested in its creation?
Are we allowed to enjoy the convenience of AI generated content? It reminds me too about a generation ago, value judgements about music sampling, using word processors (maybe that’s two generations ago now) as shortcuts to writing on typewriters and longhand, projected images on canvases as painting foundations, etc and so on. With every new productivity or time saving advancement in tech, there is a wave of people who believe that taking the shortcut makes the end result less valuable. Even WFH is having that moment right now. Having no connection to creativity at all, in the divide between WFH/OW factions there are grumblings about it being a lazy shortcut, that in the old days people had to drive to work and drive home and be distracted and they put out premium deliverables just fine. 25 years ago, web designers were bickering over using Dreamweaver and WYSIWYG editors vs notepad to write their code.
That’s what this feels like to me. Sure there’s a “lost art” of just about everything. But what if we didn’t think one way was better or worse than another?
So true! Every time there’s a “lost art” conversation, there’s an ancillary conversation about something new that’s emerging. I have seen over and over again that we have a choice to focus on the things we lose or the opportunities we have to gain something new. The latter gets harder and harder to keep up with the older I get, but I know focusing on what’s going away is a dead end.
Penelope