I really want to use AI like llama, ChatGTP, midjourney etc. for something productive. But over the last year the only thing I found use for it was to propose places to go as a family on our Hokaido Japan journey. There were great proposals for places to go.
But perhaps you guys have some great use cases for AI in your life?
Almost nothing. I sometimes use it to rephrase a question or answer. I refuse to become dependent on AI or contribute to it more than I already unwittingly have.
I’ve only used DuckDuckGo’s implementations of GPT and Claude. I haven’t really found a use case yet. I don’t trust it enough to for queries related to things I don’t understand (gaps in my knowledge) and would rather solve these problems or learn these skills through exisiting sources of information that I know have had at least some level of human refinement/vetting. Personally I enjoy the challenge of problem solving in life, particularly when the solution involves learning a new skill that I can utilise again in the future. I find it interesting that AI is advertised as being able to maximise our capabilities as humans, because it appears to be used for the complete opposite in most cases. People want to use their brains less and just be spoonfed the answers.
Mostly for finding information that for whatever reason can be difficult to find using search engines. For example, I’ve used ChatGPT to ask spoiler-free questions about plot points in books I’m reading, which has worked rather well. It hasn’t spoiled me yet, but rather tells me that giving more information would be a spoiler.
Last time I tried to look something up on Google, carefully, I got a massive spoiler for the end of the entire book series.
I also use it for code-related questions at times, but very rarely, and mostly when using a language I’m not used to. Such as when I wrote an expect script for the first (and perhaps only) time recently.
So many times I wanted to know the name of an actor who played a character after the first episode and the top result was something like “[Character Name] (deceased)” or " Villain: [Character Name]."
I’ve found it helpful at work for things like preparing agendas for meetings, or creating an outline of a presentation or document I need to write.
I’ve also found it helpful when I’m trying to Google something where I need to be pretty specific and then I can’t find exactly what I mean by searching.
I love that the top comments are all “I don’t”, as if that’s helpful in any way.
- General purpose LLMs are starting to replace everyday queries I used to posit to Google. Perplexity can be quite good for this.
- Copilot as enhanced autocomplete when writing code. A particularly good use-case is writing tests: with a few test cases already written, a sufficiently good test name will most often generate a well-written test case.
- LLMs for lazy generation of SQL queries can sometimes be quite nice.
- Writing assistance for things I find myself struggling to get written by myself. A writing unblocking tool, if you will.
It’s reducing the effort and time I have to put into some things, and I appreciate that. It’s far from perfect, but it doesn’t have to be perfect to be useful.
I use it quite a bit. I don’t trust big companies who commercialize AI so I run my AIs locally on my old retired gaming desktop that I’ve turned into a homelab/media server.
I use Kobold.AI to self host an LLM like ChatGPT (Dolphin-Mistral7b if you are curious). I mainly use it for low effort knowledge searches for stuff that is easier typed out long and descriptive (since google struggles with this). Since it’s AI I have to be careful about what I search since I’ve seen it make stuff up but for the majority of what I use it for (Programming syntax, Linux troubleshooting, general questions) it’s pretty good.
I also have Stable Diffusion running as well using the ICBINP model (which is pretty decent for photorealistic images). I use this AI to generate social media display pictures and porn :) it’s fun because it’s a surprise at what you’re going to get but sometimes it generates absolute horrors. Anatomical horrors. Those are genuinely horrific. Other times it’s really good.
How do you set up stable diffusion to run locally? I have been trying out llama.cpp for text and was looking for a similarly easy tool to try image generation.
The linked A1111 is definitely by far the easiest to set up!
AUTOMATIC 1111 with webui
Nothing but have it write stories (not shared or used for anything but just for fun). That, and come up with names for things since I struggle with that.
I’m a bit disappointed to the practical uses, but I still get some value out of AI. I sometimes use chatgpt to tweak existing SQL scripts at work, and as a trouble shooting assistant. Also I use this tool ultimate vocal remover to extract stems from songs, mainly to make myself instrumentals to practice singing over. Those are really only things I do regularly, despite trying different self hosted AI tools. Most are cool but not very useful.
For occasional chatting with Bing and translation help with DeepL.
I find that LLM powered autocomplete when programming makes me more productive.
Occasionally I’ll use a chatbot to help me reword an email or other text, though this is rare.
Naming things in programming is a solved problem now. You can just name it Thingy, and then ask Copilot Chat what it should be called when you’re done implementing it
I find a ton of uses for quick Python scripts hammered out with Bing Chat to get random stuff done.
It’s also super useful when brainstorming and fleshing out stuff for the tabletop roleplaying games I run. Just bounce ideas off it, have it write monologues, etc.
Nope, nothing. There doesn’t honestly seem to be anything I’d use it for, even then I wouldn’t wanna support it as long as it uses Data its gotten by basically stealing. Maybe once that has gotten better I’ll look more into it, but at the current moment I just don’t have the heart to support it
Copying is not stealing. It’s corporate propaganda conflating the two.
They take what we make, be it art or Text without our or anyones consent, to me thats stealing something. And yes, there are AI Tools fully build on public Domain and open source things, but those are at the moment, few and far between.
They use them but they don’t take them. If I steal your bike, you no longer have a bike. If I copy your bike, you still have your bike.
It is stealing lots of potential work and income from professional creatives, though.
Improvements in technology do not guarantee employment for tradespeople of current technology. A whole lot of horses became unemployed when cars became ubiquitous. I’d say the improvement of cars to society is worth the loss of employment to all those who maintained the horse’s infrastructure. Like all those manufacturing jobs lost from the improvement in machines, professional creatives must adapt to the times, or seek other forms of work. No different than any other job in all of history.
But the difference I think is this isn’t just affecting a few niche industries (horses, carts and their associated care). AI is going to replace a huge, huge chunk of the workforce with no new jobs created to replace them. Even in the industrial revolution there were new jobs created - shittier jobs, but jobs. This is different.
Which is exactly the same as how there were no new jobs for horses created. Employment is not a right. You have to either adapt with the changing times, or become unemployed. I agree that it sucks.
Employment is not a right? Well if we continue with a capitalist system and give most people no way to earn a living, we will need something to replace jobs for most people. We should not merely accept that it sucks and let things go to shit. We could pass laws limiting the use of AI or protecting workers, or providing basic income…
Whatever we do we had better figure it out soon, though.
100% agree. Universal Basic Income feels inevitable as a solution. Better and better technology puts machines in place of human labor, with no guarantee that other jobs will come into existence to replace the ones lost. Is it not the ideal goal to have machines do all labor, leaving humans to do what they actually want without fear of homelessness and starvation.
It just kinda sucks right now because these systems don’t exist to support this changing landscape.
I’ve used it to tweak a speech I was writing to make it more appropriate to my intended audience….
One of my favorite things to do is pass my speech into it and have it rewrite with fog index “#”. Really helps with speaking to varied audiences about the same topic.
I’ve used it to make specific images for work proposals that stock sources may not have. Sometimes for fun, I vary it so it’s in the style of a cartoon or a Japanese woodcut.