Like most progress, it made some things easier ( and some things worse as a result ). What I do find particularly fascinating is that it is doing that even in professions that should know better ( lawyers, doctors ). That my boss uses it is no surprise me though. I always suspected he never really read my emails.
I've definitely been surprised by how it's being used; it's replacing people in places I don't think (even as a closet AI/LLM enthusiast) AI should ever be used: elder care, customer support (even on phone lines), for homework grading. -But I shouldn't have been so surprised, because some were already using robots for these tasks (or maybe not robots explicitly, but making CSRs/similar stick to scripts); my daughter was taking college placement tests recently -- even the essay questions were graded by software, and she's watched by software as she writes it. These things still seem to me like jobs which fundamentally require a human touch -- it's been especially amazing to me teachers are using AI to detect AI; you can't determine whether or not a robot wrote it, but you can assign a grade to it? Huh??
I have a very vocally anti-AI friend, but there is one thing he always goes on about that confuses me to no end: hates AI, strongly wants an AI sexbot, is constantly linking things trying to figure out how to get one, and asking me and the other nerds in our group about how the tech would work. No compromises anywhere except for one of the most human experiences possible. :shrug:
I think to me the weirdest and most unexpected (not so much in retrospect) AI use is that people will use it all day long to navigate chat conversations with their boyfriends/girlfriends, having it suggest romantic replies, etc.
I expect people to be lazy, but that we'd outsource feelings was surprising.
I have a family member who worked in a Hallmark store when they launched a custom card printing service (in-store, select the cover art and write your own message, printed on a card).
She says that about 75% of the custom card customers would ask her what they should write for a message.
She wrote messages of friendship, love, birthdays, graduations, congratulations, sympathy, etc. To support her coworkers on other shifts, she filled an index card box with several dozen canned "custom" messages for Hallmark customers to choose from.
Somewhat separately, she reports that working at Hallmark is a good way to make a misanthrope out of an intelligent teenager. To which I reply that most of the intelligent teenagers I knew were already misanthropes! But the stories she tells, particularly of Christmas ornament hysteria, are hysterical.
Hmm, LLMs have helped me understand the perspective of my girlfriend better, and taught me to be a better listener and how to not act in various scenarios. I do not really use LLMs to write replies to my girlfriend, however. I have used it before to make some corrections, but the essence remained, and it came from me.
It made me chuckle, because I absolutely buy the anecdotal anti-AI friend. On the other hand, if he applied himself, maybe he could figure it out. I honestly can't say I am not intruiged by the possibility.
