Technology

So far, I've only found it really useful for two things. One is generating text, where I've found using an LLM to generate a title based on a given piece of text is more effective than using other summarisation models, especially for a short piece of text.

I've also found it okay for basic, generic scripts, like trying to figure out what the equivalent Powershell commands for a bash script would be to do something quick, rather than try and learn it from scratch.

Currently, mainly just cooking.

In the future, I'm hoping to leverage it to create video content. I've actually been disappointed in its usefulness for writing sci-fi, it tends to want to argue. But based on the surreal images that it can created I am hoping that can be translated into creating 3D scenes that can be used to extract video.

Well "AI" is a broad category. Usually used to refer to GenAI, so:

• Creating quick stand-in art for a game before I've got proper sprites for it (not because "muh art theft", just because the AI art I've generated does not look very good to me)

• Summarising articles, like you said so I can decide if I want to read them in full

• Formatting text I've copied from pdfs

• More complex searches that require comprehension of grammar and natural language syntax. Any answer I get to these I then fact check using search terms a classical search engine can understand.

I read a paper a while back that found that people who used AI assistants for coding, who only used the assistants to generate small functions where the prompt already included the function declaration and the programmer already knew how the function should be written but just wanted to save time, in these cases the use of an AI assistant did not negatively impact the "correctness" of the produced code. So I guess I might one day use an AI coding assistant like that, but thus far I've never felt the need to use AI-generated code.

I use it to ask questions that I can't find search results for or don't have the words to ask. Also for d&d character art I share with my playgroup lol.

I haven't heard any other comments chime in from one of my use cases, so I'll give it a stab. My first use case, I mentioned in another comment which is just adding a specific tone onto emails which I'm bad at doing myself. But my second use case is more controversial and I still don't know how to feel about it. I'm a graphic designer and with most enhancements in design/art technology, if you don't learn what's new, you will fall behind and your usefulness will wane. I've always been very tech savvy and positive about most new tech so I like to stay up to speed both for my job and self interest. So how do I use AI for graphic design? The things I think have the best use case and are least controversial are the AI tools that help you edit photos. In the past, I have spent loads of time editing frizzy curly hair so I can cut out a person. As of a couple years ago, Adobe I touched some tools to make that process easier, and it worked ok but it wasn't a massive time saver. Then they launched the AI assisted version and holy shit it works perfectly every time. Like give me the frizziest hair on a similar color background with texture and it will give you the perfect cutout in a minute tops. That's the kind of shit I want for AI. More tools eliminate tedious processes!! However there is another more controversial use case which is generative AI. I've played with it a lot and the tools work fantastic and get you started with images you can splice together to make what you really envisioned or you can use it to do simple things like seamlessly remove objects or add in a background that didn't exist. I once made a design with an illustrative style by inputting loads of images that fit the part, then vectorizing all the generated options and using pieces from those options to make what I really wanted. I was really proud of it especially since I'm not an illustrator and don't have the skills to illustrate what I envisioned by hand. But that's where things get controversial. I had to input the work of other people to achieve this. At the moment, I can't use anything generative commercially even though Adobe is very nonchalant about it. My company has taken a firm stance on it which is nice, but it means I can really only use that aspect for fun even though it would be very useful in some situations.

TLDR: I use AI to give my writing style the right tone, to save loads of time editing photos, and to create images I don't have the skills to create by hand (only for funzies).

It's really good for generating code snippets based on what I want to do (ex. "How do I play audio in a browser using JavaScript?") and debugging small sections of code.

I use it for little Python projects where it's really really useful.

I've used it for linux problems where it gave me the solution to problems that I had not been able to solve with a Google search alone.

I use it as a kickstarter for writing texts by telling it roughly what my text needs to be, then tweaking the result it gives me. Sometimes I just use the first sentence but it's enough to give me a starting point to make life easer.

I use it when I need to understand texts about a topic I'm not familiar with. It can usually give me an idea of what the terminology means and how things are connected which helps a lot for further research on the topic and ultimately undestanding the text.

I use it for everyday problems like when I needed a new tube for my bike but wasn't sure what size it was so I told it what was written on the tyre and showed it a picture of the tube packaging while I was in the shop and asked it if it was the right one. It could tell my that it is the correct one and why. The explanation was easy to fact-check.

I use Photoshop AI a lot to remove unwanted parts in photos I took or to expand photos where I'm not happy with the crop.

Honestly, I absolutely love the new AI tools and I think people here are way too negative about it in general.

AI is a half cooked baked potato right now. Sure it will keep you fed if you can put up with all the hard lumps in there.

Sometimes it's helpful if I'm having trouble making a specific excel formula

One use-case for me has been converting code from a language I know to a language I don't. Usually, just small snippets. The code is usually full of holes, but I'm good enough with the logic to duct tape those puppies!

Idk if it counts as GenAI but I use Waifu2x to remove jpg artifacts and upscale textures to a useable state.

I needed a simple script to combine jpegs into a pdf. I tried to make a python script but it's been years since I've programmed anything and I was intermediate at best. My script was riddled with errors and would not run. I asked chatgpt to write me the script and the second or third attempt worked great. The first two only failed because my prompts were bad, I had never used chatgpt before.

• Code examples
• taking point form notes and turning into formal paragraphs
• Answering random questions that have static answers and exist in places like Wikipedia

There is one thing I would find genuinely useful that seems within its current capabilities. I’d like to be able to give an AI a summary of my current knowledge on a subject, along with a batch of papers or articles, and have it give me one or more of the following:

• A summary of the papers omitting the stuff I already know

• A summary of any prerequisite background info I don’t already know, but isn’t in the papers

• A summary of all the points on which the papers are in agreement

• A summary of any points where the papers are in contention.

Expanding photos that are badly cropped or have the wrong orientation. It has saved me hours of compositing or having to look for entirely new photos to use, which I hate.

Cooking. So much SEO filler is avoided. You can’t rely on it though, it’s tried to sub sugar for brown sugar. You still need to understand basic flavor concepts.

When I need to make a joke about how inept AI is, I'll use AI to capture an example of it saying the most efficient way to get to the moon is to put a 2 liter bottle of coke in your asshole, wide end first, remove the cap and immediately sit on an opened sleeve of mentos.

I use a lot of AI/DL-based tools in my personal life and hobbies. As a photographer, DL-based denoising means I can get better photos, especially in low light. DL-based deconvolution tools help to sharpen my astrophotos as well. The deep learning based subject tracking on my camera also helps me get more in focus shots of wildlife. As a birder, tools like Merlin BirdID's audio recognition and image classification methods are helpful when I encounter a bird I don't yet know how to identify.

I don't typically use GenAI (LLMs, diffusion models) in my personal life, but Microsoft Copilot does help me write visualization scripts for my research. I can never remember the right methods for visualization libraries in Python, and Copilot/ChatGPT do a pretty good job at that.

Timing traffic lights. They could look down the road and see when nothing is coming, to let the other direction go, like a traffic cop. It would save time and gas.

When troubleshooting, it's nice to be able to ask copilot about the issue in human language and have it actually understand my question (unlike a search engine) and pull from and reference relevant documentation in its answers. Going back and forth with it has saved me several hours of searching for something that I had never even heard of a couple of times.

It's also great for rewriting things in a specific tone. I can give it a bland/terse/matter-of-fact paragraph and get back a more fun or professional or friendly version that would feel ridiculously cringe if I attempted to write it myself, but the AI makes it work somehow.

Local models are really good at tokenizing the text and figuring the intent in the user input. Not perfect, but much better than any possible regexps you can think of. And it's a trivial operation you can run even on a CPU model.