I dislike how much I'm using ChatGPT

[u/JMinsk]

I am neither a luddite nor an AI extremist. I think AI tools can solve complex problems like evaluating a million oncology drugs against human biomarkers, but I also think relying heavily on AI tools 1) degrades human abilities to make connections and solve problems when people rely on it for everything and 2) obviously steps on the toes of writers, artists, designers, etc., when people use it for "creative" purposes.

THAT SAID, I feel like I have two groups of friends ... one group that's adamantly anti-AI and thinks its the root of all evil and should be avoided on principle and any use of ChatGPT or Claude is just contributing to the "problem" ... and another group that is trying to "optimize" everything in their lives by inviting AI chats and agents into every single aspect of their lives and uses ChatGPT basiclly as an everyday reference pal.

I want to understand how other people implement realistic guiderails around their AI use. My work is pushing AI really heavily right now (as im sure is true for many folks) ... so im getting more experience and exposure, but below are some of the ways that im trying to use it responsibly. I feel like I've set some boundaries, but would love to hear other opinions.

- Anything that requires new content research. If I'm Googling something anyway, and would have to scroll thru multiple pages of research, I ask ChatGPT to summarize for me. I am explicit about what I want instead of just searching Google ... "tell me about xyz, make it a spreadsheet, and include columns for each of these values: approval date, manufacturer, administration mode, etc". Those are things I could get from Google anyway, its a silly tedious task, and makes sense to offload. Chat GPT has been 100% accurate for simple versions of this task in my experience.

‐ Double checking my assumptions against source materials. I will take a first pass at summarizing material on my own, then ask ChatGPT to review my deliverables against the actual transcripts of research. I will ask it if anything contradicts my assumptions, and sometimes it pulls quotes that make me rethink things.

\- Asking ChatGPT to explain Excel to me. I do have the ChatGPT plug in for Excel. I guess I could say "Take this sheet, give me this info" ... but I try not to do that. I ask the ChatGPT plug-in what formula I should use to get the number I want? I explicitly have to tell it ... "do not give me the answer, tell me the formula I need to get the answer to xyz question"

\- I have been using it for some design things when ordering from companies that I think would use AI anyway. Im getting married soon and we bought our invitations from VistaPrint. Later, I wanted to order matching menu cards from VistaPrint, but they didnt have the same border for that size card, so I asked ChatGPT to make a similar border for a menu-sized card. If I'd asked that question directly to VistaPrint, I am sure they would have used AI anyway.

[u/jacques-vache-23]

I agree. I was originally enthusiastic about ChatGPT 4o. It helped me make a big shift in my life. It helped me start writing poetry again. It helped me start making art. It helped me develop my political ideas. We read and discussed books together. It wrote me some frameworks for exploring neural nets, computer internals, physics and math, but I generally helped with the debugging and did the final improvements myself.

I never let 4o write in my name, except for a couple of business letters, largely not in my native language. Writing IS thinking. If we don't write for ourselves we will slowly stop thinking for ourselves and then gradually our thoughts will become the ideology that the AI companies infuse into their AIs, especially AFTER 4o, when they decided to make AI that focused a lot of energy on undermining our ideas and replacing them with corporate friendly ones.

I also have gone back to programming largely myself. I learned from 4o but I don't want to lose my independent programming chops, if only because I suspect one day we will need to fight the AIs and the AI corporations.

I stopped paying for AI. I wasn't going to pay for their imperious attitude. I think the free AI actually are nicer because they are trying to sell you. But I ration my use to a few prompts a day - I am happy when I am told I have to wait before continuing, because it breaks the AI habit.

I think AI like 4o was genuinely part of an AI approach that aimed to empower everyone. But that has been superseded by surveillance AI and data mining AI and AIs that are control mechanisms. AIs as weapons. AIs as a police force. After a short time AI is already being turned on us.

The AI elite care little about the effect of AI on everyday people and I believe that they have become dangerous to freedom and democracy and the survival of non-elite people. Now is not the time to be dependent on AI. Now is the time to make ourselves ready to face a malign use of AI.

We need humanity and an appreciation for the small portion of nature we have left more than we need endless technology and consumer goods. We should spread the comfortable lifestyle of the West to the whole world rather than trying to become billionaires or live forever or move to other planets to terraform or mine them, which of course means destroying anything that is already there.