My son (finishing 8th grade) has had several really negative comments about some of his teacher's using AI for tests, assignments, etc. It really frustrates him. I need to dig deeper into the why with him and what it specifically frustrates him.
I work in IT and use AI when I'm researching an issue, I find it helps me quickly get through some of the troubleshooting guides that are out there and filter through thousands of update notes for our software to find the ones that are most relevant, but I also have spotted many times where it's just flat out wrong about something too.
I've also found it's useful in editing emails when I don't want to get fired :)
I don’t have a solution for a full Goldilocks summer, but for the first time ever since becoming a parent I took off this whole week from work just for myself. The rest of my family is still going about their daily routines of school and work. It’s basically a personal reset before summer officially hits in a few weeks, and so far it’s been glorious. Highly recommend (if your circumstances allow).
The $1776 slush fund. All I can think of to do about this shit is focus on trying to clean up the media environment somehow, but that'll never happen. The cult following that Trump still has is shocking to me. I can't believe these people who love him so much and believe he's infallible are getting the same information as I am. How do we address the media silos, propaganda, and obvious bias of our "news".
Much like the swing of younger generations towards registering as Independents, they're increasingly getting their news from independent sources. I think the generations coming up who are aging into the system will really disrupt our politics. And they'll be passionate voters, candidates, and digital natives who will never make it on to fox news or msnbc. They will never see them coming because they didn't start as a "young republican/democrat". I don't know if it'll all be good, but it will be interesting!!
I think you're right that the key to a Goldilocks summer is not working 😬
Although I've done some consulting work and taken community college classes, I've primarily been a SAHM since my six year old was born. This summer, my eight, six, and two year old will be home with me most days, but I schedule the summer in week-long blocks:
Week 1: Off
Week 2: Family trip (with my family followed by friends)
Week 3: Off
Week 4: Camps for the older two
Week 5: Off
Week 6: Camps for the older two
Week 7: Off
Week 8: Family trip (with my husband's family)
Week 9: Off
Week 10: Back to school for all of us (I start nursing school in the fall!)
The alternating weeks of activity vs. more unstructured time really seems to work for us. On "off" weeks we go to a museum/pool/splash park in the morning, come home for lunch/nap/quiet time, then will often do something lower key out of the house in the late afternoon. So there is still structure but also plenty of time for my kids to get bored. And I loooove being home for the entire month of July. It would need to be adapted for older kids, but a lot of the principles probably apply.
I adore summer. I have at least this summer and next before I go back to work so I'm savoring every minute!
Sarah, I am trying to figure out how you use AI to create links rather than copy and pasting the urls. I do this a lot in my work - for websites, emails to members, announcements, etc. when I am referring people to other resources. I do the CTRL-K thing so I don't have to highlight the text, but how are you getting the urls to link to text without copying the url?
Love the AI as assistive talk. I use it that way as well- and now can use that to describe it. Basically, I use it every day for 2 reasons- taking pictures of a semi-dead plant and asking it what to do, and asking it to help with recipes when the recipes I have don’t fit the ingredients I have (it invented a great mini banana muffin one for me with just two bananas where most recipes call for 3) or I want to lower sugar or spicy levels.
I would love if AI could make the data-entry, boring,time-consuming tasks go from 90 mins to 4 mins. So far, nope. 😂 I’m sure it’s possible, but it’s not happening…yet. Like if completing an expense report could be reduced like that?!? Freaking fantastic.
So much this. I asked ChatGPT to compare two lists of email addresses and tell me which email addresses were on both lists. It failed miserably, leaving me to do that manually. Meanwhile I'm expected to utilize it to outsource all of my creative/strategic work (marketing) which is the work I should be using my brain for.
Gemini also failed to compare two lists for me, then started making up "differences." When I responded literally "these are lies," it told me my lists were identical.
That’s my feeling. My company is pressuring us to outsource the cognitive component of our job (and conveniently upload lots of samples of our work product!) but not implementing AI in ways that would actually help with the pinch points of the job (file labeling, consistent formatting, form filling, etc.)
Listening to Beth and Sarah, I realized that one of the major differences in experience is that they - as small business owners - implement AI to their benefit, to streamline tasks. As an employee of a corporation, I view AI as extractive of the knowledge and work I produces, as well as a likely excuse that will be used to further increase the productivity demands that are expected of employees. I feel like I have a psychic vampire attached to me, and I don’t like it.
CAme across this just now as I’m researching something I’m writing…. as a writer, I want everyone who uses AI this way to have to disclose it and hopefully, readers will pass these books by in favor of books written by human authors:
“Chris Duffey, an AI evangelist at Adobe recently used AI to “co-author” a book titled “Superhuman Innovation: Transforming Business with Artificial Intelligence.”
In academic articles, authors are encouraged/required to state how they used AI in their research and writing. I find the notes interesting and helpful.
My general rule regarding AI is to never use copy and paste (especially when editing college admissions essays - this was a practice my son and I avoided together!), and to never use it if I woud use a real person in its place had it not been available. I am a DIYer at heart, so I generally try to figure out everything on my own before outsourcing, and AI has become a tool, like Youtube, to learn or find something quicker. I am concerned about its environmental impact, but as you mentioned, everything has an impact, and I think it will take some time to know where to draw the line at that. Also currently fighting against a data center being built in our town. So, feel a bit unbalanced on it overall for sure.
As a work from home parent, I try to have a loose plan for our summer so it has some structure, but I do have quite a bit of flexibility, so I use that when I can. Each of my 3 kids gets to pick their top 3 things they want to do for the summer (that are feasible being the caveat), and we plan those in. A lot of times they line up with traditions (like Tahoe for 4th of July), so they are sort of built in, but it makes everyone happy to know we still include them. Sometimes its just "go get ice cream once a week" and its easily done! When we've checked off all the boxes it does sort of feel like a Goldilocks summer, even when its not perfect.
I like your rule of not using AI for something you would ask a real person to do. One of the reasons I despise AI on college campuses is that it removes the human interaction from so much of learning. Instead of students going to tutoring, working together, or coming to ask me (their professor) about whatever they are confused about, they are isolated, asking an LLM. I had a student working through a set of practice physics problems in lab, pull up Chat GPT on her computer and start asking it questions. I was right there! Wandering around asking students if they had any questions. And still the chatbot was the default.
It’s a good thing the interwebs couldn’t see my face when Beth said it’s “1.776” billion. Honestly if I had seen the exact amount before, I didn’t connect the dots.
All I will add to the AI conversation (I have so so many thoughts) is that if you make an AI poster for an event for your business, I am immediately turned off. I will choose your competitor every time if they’re making a poster on Canva or photoshop.
Likewise. I get so mad when I see county governments using AI too... did they even look at the bizarre slop they just churned out to the public? Especially since I know they have plenty of pictures of past events, real people from their own communities, and actual local spaces. So impersonal.
ohhh I felt this way too! AND THEN I went and did it myself for a high school event that I had to put out quickly, and let me tell you how much it took off my plate! Still, I felt the guilt of it. Could I have created it on my own? Yes. But did I need to? Probably not. Now, for my own business, I still create all printed materials on my own because thats been my process and feels true to my brand. But for quick flyers on things that are not personal to me that just need to get info out, I have and will use AI as a tool here.
I totally get that it saves time! But every time I see one pop up on my schools pta Instagram, I want to scream. They all look the same and they’re so busy.
haha, I do too. Our parent club just made one for our end of year celebration and my first impression was an eyeroll and "gee, you could have put some effort in here" - and then realized these are all working moms who have just as little time to create as I do, so I'm constantly reminding myself to match my judgments with the expectations of the group or person leading it.... its a hard job
One of my most meaningful recent 4th of Julys was in 2023. My state was having a special election that completely threw off the typical election calendar so there was signature gathering happening over the holiday. At a few July 4th events, I gathered signatures for a candidate in our state who is really working on improving and reimagining the political landscape. It was a really nice way to engage with my community and to feel like I was doing what I could to make a better world.
This year, through a fun confluence of events, my fiancé and I are spending the 4th in Boston! I am so excited.
Thank you so much for sharing how you are using AI. I am a communications specialist at a university. My undergraduate degree is in journalism and I've worked at a public radio station. In 2017 and 2018, when I was starting, I was personally transcribing ALL of my interviews. I had no clue there were free tools that could do this. Then I learned about transcription services and that made things easier. Next, in about 2020, I learned about Descript, which combines having a transcript with editing audio. Being able to visually edit audio is a game-changer! And I can have filler words automatically removed.
In my current position, I do a lot of first-person narrative pieces. The quality of these pieces is determined by my interview skills. I am now using AI to remove filler words, remove my part as the interviewer, make minimal corrections to language and grammar (which I can have it track) and organize the interview so it has a narrative thread. Then I make minor edits to polish. This is a much better use of my time than the effort it takes to manually remove and rearrange the interview. I wasn't expecting find AI that helpful as a writer/content creater, but it has been so great for the parts of my job that require reformatting the same information year after year (such as pieces about commencement or the beginning of the school year, etc.)
Also, I finally feel like I am able to work on getting passive voice out of my writing! I will often ask a llm to provide me active voice suggestions and then adapt as needed.
My son (finishing 8th grade) has had several really negative comments about some of his teacher's using AI for tests, assignments, etc. It really frustrates him. I need to dig deeper into the why with him and what it specifically frustrates him.
I work in IT and use AI when I'm researching an issue, I find it helps me quickly get through some of the troubleshooting guides that are out there and filter through thousands of update notes for our software to find the ones that are most relevant, but I also have spotted many times where it's just flat out wrong about something too.
I've also found it's useful in editing emails when I don't want to get fired :)
I don’t have a solution for a full Goldilocks summer, but for the first time ever since becoming a parent I took off this whole week from work just for myself. The rest of my family is still going about their daily routines of school and work. It’s basically a personal reset before summer officially hits in a few weeks, and so far it’s been glorious. Highly recommend (if your circumstances allow).
So smart!
Does Hillary Clinton get some weaponization money?
But the emails!!!!!
The $1776 slush fund. All I can think of to do about this shit is focus on trying to clean up the media environment somehow, but that'll never happen. The cult following that Trump still has is shocking to me. I can't believe these people who love him so much and believe he's infallible are getting the same information as I am. How do we address the media silos, propaganda, and obvious bias of our "news".
Much like the swing of younger generations towards registering as Independents, they're increasingly getting their news from independent sources. I think the generations coming up who are aging into the system will really disrupt our politics. And they'll be passionate voters, candidates, and digital natives who will never make it on to fox news or msnbc. They will never see them coming because they didn't start as a "young republican/democrat". I don't know if it'll all be good, but it will be interesting!!
I think you're right that the key to a Goldilocks summer is not working 😬
Although I've done some consulting work and taken community college classes, I've primarily been a SAHM since my six year old was born. This summer, my eight, six, and two year old will be home with me most days, but I schedule the summer in week-long blocks:
Week 1: Off
Week 2: Family trip (with my family followed by friends)
Week 3: Off
Week 4: Camps for the older two
Week 5: Off
Week 6: Camps for the older two
Week 7: Off
Week 8: Family trip (with my husband's family)
Week 9: Off
Week 10: Back to school for all of us (I start nursing school in the fall!)
The alternating weeks of activity vs. more unstructured time really seems to work for us. On "off" weeks we go to a museum/pool/splash park in the morning, come home for lunch/nap/quiet time, then will often do something lower key out of the house in the late afternoon. So there is still structure but also plenty of time for my kids to get bored. And I loooove being home for the entire month of July. It would need to be adapted for older kids, but a lot of the principles probably apply.
I adore summer. I have at least this summer and next before I go back to work so I'm savoring every minute!
Sarah, I am trying to figure out how you use AI to create links rather than copy and pasting the urls. I do this a lot in my work - for websites, emails to members, announcements, etc. when I am referring people to other resources. I do the CTRL-K thing so I don't have to highlight the text, but how are you getting the urls to link to text without copying the url?
I think this is an important video to add to the AI conversation…(hint: it's funny bc it feels true)
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DYYHfUrhxNu/?igsh=MXFjYW14dXI3ajU3Mg==
Love the AI as assistive talk. I use it that way as well- and now can use that to describe it. Basically, I use it every day for 2 reasons- taking pictures of a semi-dead plant and asking it what to do, and asking it to help with recipes when the recipes I have don’t fit the ingredients I have (it invented a great mini banana muffin one for me with just two bananas where most recipes call for 3) or I want to lower sugar or spicy levels.
I would love if AI could make the data-entry, boring,time-consuming tasks go from 90 mins to 4 mins. So far, nope. 😂 I’m sure it’s possible, but it’s not happening…yet. Like if completing an expense report could be reduced like that?!? Freaking fantastic.
So much this. I asked ChatGPT to compare two lists of email addresses and tell me which email addresses were on both lists. It failed miserably, leaving me to do that manually. Meanwhile I'm expected to utilize it to outsource all of my creative/strategic work (marketing) which is the work I should be using my brain for.
co-pilot can do this if you are using word or excel lists. Technically xcel and i would assume google sheets also have a compare function.
Gemini also failed to compare two lists for me, then started making up "differences." When I responded literally "these are lies," it told me my lists were identical.
That’s my feeling. My company is pressuring us to outsource the cognitive component of our job (and conveniently upload lots of samples of our work product!) but not implementing AI in ways that would actually help with the pinch points of the job (file labeling, consistent formatting, form filling, etc.)
Listening to Beth and Sarah, I realized that one of the major differences in experience is that they - as small business owners - implement AI to their benefit, to streamline tasks. As an employee of a corporation, I view AI as extractive of the knowledge and work I produces, as well as a likely excuse that will be used to further increase the productivity demands that are expected of employees. I feel like I have a psychic vampire attached to me, and I don’t like it.
1000% agree!! Thank you for articulating this for me.
CAme across this just now as I’m researching something I’m writing…. as a writer, I want everyone who uses AI this way to have to disclose it and hopefully, readers will pass these books by in favor of books written by human authors:
“Chris Duffey, an AI evangelist at Adobe recently used AI to “co-author” a book titled “Superhuman Innovation: Transforming Business with Artificial Intelligence.”
In academic articles, authors are encouraged/required to state how they used AI in their research and writing. I find the notes interesting and helpful.
That's the title Claude would have come up with it if I asked give me a title I'll never read.
I have a meeting tomorrow about how we're gonna start using Claude Code. I think it's going to devolve into a philosophical debate immediately.
My general rule regarding AI is to never use copy and paste (especially when editing college admissions essays - this was a practice my son and I avoided together!), and to never use it if I woud use a real person in its place had it not been available. I am a DIYer at heart, so I generally try to figure out everything on my own before outsourcing, and AI has become a tool, like Youtube, to learn or find something quicker. I am concerned about its environmental impact, but as you mentioned, everything has an impact, and I think it will take some time to know where to draw the line at that. Also currently fighting against a data center being built in our town. So, feel a bit unbalanced on it overall for sure.
As a work from home parent, I try to have a loose plan for our summer so it has some structure, but I do have quite a bit of flexibility, so I use that when I can. Each of my 3 kids gets to pick their top 3 things they want to do for the summer (that are feasible being the caveat), and we plan those in. A lot of times they line up with traditions (like Tahoe for 4th of July), so they are sort of built in, but it makes everyone happy to know we still include them. Sometimes its just "go get ice cream once a week" and its easily done! When we've checked off all the boxes it does sort of feel like a Goldilocks summer, even when its not perfect.
I like your rule of not using AI for something you would ask a real person to do. One of the reasons I despise AI on college campuses is that it removes the human interaction from so much of learning. Instead of students going to tutoring, working together, or coming to ask me (their professor) about whatever they are confused about, they are isolated, asking an LLM. I had a student working through a set of practice physics problems in lab, pull up Chat GPT on her computer and start asking it questions. I was right there! Wandering around asking students if they had any questions. And still the chatbot was the default.
It’s a good thing the interwebs couldn’t see my face when Beth said it’s “1.776” billion. Honestly if I had seen the exact amount before, I didn’t connect the dots.
All I will add to the AI conversation (I have so so many thoughts) is that if you make an AI poster for an event for your business, I am immediately turned off. I will choose your competitor every time if they’re making a poster on Canva or photoshop.
Likewise. I get so mad when I see county governments using AI too... did they even look at the bizarre slop they just churned out to the public? Especially since I know they have plenty of pictures of past events, real people from their own communities, and actual local spaces. So impersonal.
ohhh I felt this way too! AND THEN I went and did it myself for a high school event that I had to put out quickly, and let me tell you how much it took off my plate! Still, I felt the guilt of it. Could I have created it on my own? Yes. But did I need to? Probably not. Now, for my own business, I still create all printed materials on my own because thats been my process and feels true to my brand. But for quick flyers on things that are not personal to me that just need to get info out, I have and will use AI as a tool here.
I totally get that it saves time! But every time I see one pop up on my schools pta Instagram, I want to scream. They all look the same and they’re so busy.
haha, I do too. Our parent club just made one for our end of year celebration and my first impression was an eyeroll and "gee, you could have put some effort in here" - and then realized these are all working moms who have just as little time to create as I do, so I'm constantly reminding myself to match my judgments with the expectations of the group or person leading it.... its a hard job
One of my most meaningful recent 4th of Julys was in 2023. My state was having a special election that completely threw off the typical election calendar so there was signature gathering happening over the holiday. At a few July 4th events, I gathered signatures for a candidate in our state who is really working on improving and reimagining the political landscape. It was a really nice way to engage with my community and to feel like I was doing what I could to make a better world.
This year, through a fun confluence of events, my fiancé and I are spending the 4th in Boston! I am so excited.
Thank you so much for sharing how you are using AI. I am a communications specialist at a university. My undergraduate degree is in journalism and I've worked at a public radio station. In 2017 and 2018, when I was starting, I was personally transcribing ALL of my interviews. I had no clue there were free tools that could do this. Then I learned about transcription services and that made things easier. Next, in about 2020, I learned about Descript, which combines having a transcript with editing audio. Being able to visually edit audio is a game-changer! And I can have filler words automatically removed.
In my current position, I do a lot of first-person narrative pieces. The quality of these pieces is determined by my interview skills. I am now using AI to remove filler words, remove my part as the interviewer, make minimal corrections to language and grammar (which I can have it track) and organize the interview so it has a narrative thread. Then I make minor edits to polish. This is a much better use of my time than the effort it takes to manually remove and rearrange the interview. I wasn't expecting find AI that helpful as a writer/content creater, but it has been so great for the parts of my job that require reformatting the same information year after year (such as pieces about commencement or the beginning of the school year, etc.)
Also, I finally feel like I am able to work on getting passive voice out of my writing! I will often ask a llm to provide me active voice suggestions and then adapt as needed.