Immediately after I demonstrate a cool way to use Al to research something, someone usually asks "But couldn't you do this without
Al?"
It's a weird question in a way. The most honest answer is that I don't generally choose technologies that make my life harder, and so if I am using Al it's because I am getting some benefit from it. It's making me faster, more accurate, more thorough, or getting me to better answers. It's true that sometimes people delude themselves, but I am not a person with no knowledge of research suggesting these tools might help. This is actually my area of expertise.
I think about someone explaining the advantages of WordPerfect for DOS back in the day to someone who had never used it. So what can you do with it that you couldn't do with a typewriter? In a way, nothing. The end result is a sheet of paper with words on it. If anything the dot matrix copy looks worse. But you can edit! Sure, says the person, I can do that with an 89 cent bit of white-out. I can print multiple copies! Sure, says the person, ever heard of a photocopier? Maybe you convince the person to use WordPerfect. They try it and complain it takes them 10 times longer to get a simple memo typed. They joke they have to type a bunch of things that are going on a page on a screen and then have to go to a different machine to put them on a page. Efficiency!
And so on. My point here isn't so much whether Al is useful or not, it's more that with any technology, good or bad, there's a point where talking isn't going to help. The people who find it useful will use it, some people won't,
AI can walk through all the doors at once - Mike Caulfield mikecaulfield.substack.com/p/ai-can-walk-through-al... (& a fun Letterman clip) #AI #usefulness
