Ask Lemmy

It's made our marketing department even lazier than they already were

ChatGPT has had absolutely zero impact on my work or personal life. I do not have any useful case for it whatsoever. I have used it for goofs before. That's about it. I cannot see it as a positive or negative influence...as it has had zero influence. I do get annoyed that every company and their mother is peddling worthless AI shit that most people have no use case for.

It's erased several tech jobs and replaced some helpforum commentors with bots to pretend their communities are alive and when you read their comments or 'suggestions' you can clearly tell, this isn't someone trying to help it's just a bot posting garbage pretending to help

I am going to say that so far it hasn't done that much for me. I did originally ask it some silly questions, but I think I will be asking it for questions about coding soon.

Its making the impact of bots more polarizing, turning social media into a self radicalizing tool.

I cannot come up with a use-case for ChatGPT in my personal life, so no impact there.

For work it was a game-changer. No longer do I need to come up with haiku's to announce it is release-freeze day, I just let ChatGPT crap one out so we can all have a laugh at its lack of poetic talent.

I've tried it now and then for some programming related questions, but I found its solutions dubious at best.

It is extremely useful for suggesting translations and translating unclear foreign language sentences

I love using it for writing scripts that need to sanitize data. One example I had a bash script that looped through a csv containing domain names and ran AXFR lookups to grab the DNS records and dump into a text file.

These were domains on a Windows server that was being retired. The python script I had Copilot write was to clean up the output and make the new zone files ready for import into PowerDNS. Made sure the SOA and all that junk was set. Pdns would import the new zone files into a SQL backend.

Sure I could've written it myself but I'm not a python developer. It took about 10 minutes of prompting, checking the code, re-prompting then testing. Saved me a couple hours of work easy.

I use it all the time to output simple automation tasks when something like Ansible isn't apropos

i've used it fairly consistently for the last year or so. i didn't actually start using it until chatgpt 4 and when openai offered the $20 membership

i think AI is a tool. like any other tool, your results vary depending on how you use it

i think it's really useful for specific intents

example, as a fancy search engine. yesterday I was watching Annie from 1999 with my girlfriend and I was curious about the capitalist character. i asked chatgpt the following question

in the 1999 hit movie annie, who was the billionaire mr warbucks supposed to represent? were there actually any billionaires in the time period? it's based around the early 1930s

it gave me context. it showed examples of the types of capitalist the character was based on. and it informed me that the first billionaire was in 1916.

very useful for this type of inquiry.

other things i like using it for are to help coding. but there's a huge caveat here. some thing it's very helpful for... and some things it's abysmal for.

for example i can't ask it "can you help me write a nice animation for a react native component used reanimated"

because the response will be awful and won't work. and you could go back and forth with it forever and it won't make a difference. the reason is it's trained on a lot of stuff that's outdated so it'll keep giving you code that maybe would have worked 4 years ago. and even then, it can't hold too much context so complex applications just won't work

BUT certain things it's really good. for example I need to write a script for work. i use fish shell but sometimes i don't know the proper syntax or everything fish is capable of

so I ask

how to test, using fish, if an "images.zip" file exists in $target_dir

it'll pump out

if test -f "$target_dir/images.zip"
    echo "File exists."
else
    echo "File does not exist."
end

which gives me what i needed in order to place it into the script i was writing.

or for example if you want to convert a bash script to a fish script (or vice versa), it'll do a great job

so tldr:

it's a tool. it's how you use it. i've used it a lot. i find great value in it. but you must be realistic about its limitations. it's not as great as people say- it's a fancy search engine. it's also not as bad as people say.

as for whether it's good or bad for society, i think good. or at least will be good eventually. was the search engine a bad thing for society? i think being able to look up stuff whenever you want is a good thing. of course you could make the argument kids don't go to libraries anymore.. and maybe that's sorta bad. but i think the trade-off is definitely worth it

I have a book that I'm never going to write, but I'm still making notes and attempting to organize them into a wiki.

using almost natural conversation, i can explain a topic to the gpt, make it ask me questions to get me to write more, then have it summarize everything back to me in a format suitable for the wiki. In longer conversations, it will also point out possible connections between unrelated topics. It does get things wrong sometimes though, such as forgetting what faction a character belongs to.

I've noticed that gpt 4o is better for exploring new topics as it has more creative freedom, and gpt o1 is better for combining multiple fragmented summaries as it usually doesn't make shit up.

It seemingly has little impact. I've attempted to use LLMs a couple of times to ask very specific technical questions (on this specific model, running this specific OS version, how do I do this very specific thing) to try and cut down on the amount of research I would have to do to find a solution. The answer every time has been wrong. Once it was close enough to the answer I was able to figure it out but "close enough" doesn't seem worth bothering with most of the time.

When I search for things I always slip the AI summary at the top of the page.

For my life, it's nothing more than parlor tricks. I like looking at the AI images or whipping one up for a joke in the chat, but of all the uses I've seen, not one of them has been "everyday useful" to me.

The only thing I have to worry about is not to waste my time to respond to LLM trolls in lemmy comments. People admitting to use LLM to me in conversation instantly lose my respect and I consider them lazy dumbfucks :p

It helps me tremendously with language studies, outside of that I have no use for it and do actively detest the unethical possibilities of it

GitHub Copilot became my daily helper at work. While I'm not 100% satisfied with its code quality, I must admit it's very handy at writing boilerplate code. A few days ago, I had to write code without having internet access, and it was so disappointing to write boilerplate code by hand. It's an easy task, but it's time-consuming and unpleasant.

Not much impact personally. I just read all the terrible implications of it online. Pressure in the professional world to use it, though fuck if I know what to use it for in this job. I don't like using it for my writing because I don't want to rely on something like that and because it's prone to errors.

Wish something that used a ton of resources would actually have a great impact to make it worth the waste.

Man, so much to unpack here. It has me worried for a lot of the reasons mentioned: The people who pay money to skilled labor will think "The subscription machine can just do it." And that sucks.

I'm a digital artist as well, and while I think genAi is a neat toy to play with for shitposting or just "seeing what this dumb thing might look like" or generating "people that don't exist" and it's impressive tech, I'm not gonna give it ANY creative leverage over my work. Period. I still take issue with where it came from and how it was trained and the impact it has on our culture and planet.

We're already seeing the results of that slop pile generated from everyone who thought they could "achieve their creative dreams" by prompting a genie-product for it instead of learning an actual skill.

As for actual usefulness? Sometimes I run a local model for funsies and just bounce ideas off of it. It's like a parrot combined with a "programmer's rubber ducky." Sometimes that gets my mind moving, in the same way "autocomplete over and over" might generate interesting thoughts.

I also will say it's pretty decent at summarizing things. I actually find it somewhat helpful when YouTube's little "ai summary" is like "This video is about using this approach taking these steps to achieve whatever."

When the video description itself is just like "Join my Patreon and here's my 50+ affiliate links for blinky lights and microphones" lol

I use it to explain concepts to me in a slightly different way, or to summarize something for which there's a wealth of existing information.

But I really wish people were more educated about how it actually works, and there's just no way I'm trusting the centralized "services" for doing so.

It has helped tremendously with my D&D games. It remembers past conversations, so world building is a snap.

It's made my professional life way worse because it was seen as an indication that the every hack-a-thon attempt to put a stupid chat bot in everything is great, actually.

It is getting more present at work every day, I keep having to hear even seniors how they "discussed" something with chatgpt or how they will ask it for help. Had to resolve some issue with devops a while back and they just kept pasting errors into chatgpt and trying out whatever it spewed back, which I guess wasn't that much different from me googling the same issue and spewing back whatever SO said.

I tried it myself and while it is neat for some simple repetitive things, I always end up with normal google searches or clicking on the sources because the problems I usually have to google for are also complicated problems that I need the whole original discussion and context too, not just a summary that might skip important caveats.

I dunno, I simultaneously feel old and out of touch, angry at myself for not just going with the flow and buying into it, but also disappointed in other people that rely on it without ever understanding that it's so flawed, unreliable and untrustworthy, and making people into worse programmers.

I use it as a glorified google search for excel formulas and excel troubleshooting. That's about it. ChatGPT is the most overhyped bullshit ever. My company made a huge push to implement it into fucking everything and then seemingly abandoned it when the hype died down.

I'm a coding hobbyist, it's been very helpful in analyzing bugs, giving quick info about syntax and converting formatting for long sections where manually typing would be time intensive.

Point taken by someone else here saying continued use of AI may mean decreased functionally for stack exchange et al. That said, the advantage of AI is that it's answering your question specifically, instead of spending time sifting through semi related answers.

Outside of code it's good at aping the form of various genres. So if I need to answer an RFP question in a sales proposal, I might feed it the prompt to get a starting point. It always needs editing since it doesn't know the details of our business and because it's writing style is bland, but it's helpful to get a first draft.

Someone suggested using it to identify things you only remember bits of or certain scenes from. I tried using it to find this YA book I read as a kid; it was not at all helpful, but did eventually lead me to do researching and finding the book elsewhere. (And it turns out the scene I was describing was exactly what happened, and the characters were named exactly what I thought they were, so that was born annoying at the time and frustrating later.)

I also tried using it to find this really obscure, incredibly bad 1970s tv movie that I had vague recollections of. Again, the scene was pretty much what I remembered, it couldn't identify it, but I eventually found a site that lists the plots of old tv movies and I read through like 30 pages of movie synopses until I found the one I was looking for.

I've also tried using it to find this 1980's interactive fiction game, but it's proved useless once again - and once again further research has identified a couple possibilities except I haven't had time to try to find the game and set up the right environment for it.

So my experience has been that it's useless in finding the things I want it to find, but that in trying to persist against it may lead me to find what I'm looking for elsewhere.

I use it a lot to proofread my creative writing

Some of my coworkers show me their chatGPT generated drivel. They seem to be downright proud of that, like they would be gaming the system by using chatGPT instead of using their own head. However I think their daily work seems to consist of unnecessary corpo crap and they should really be fired and replaced with chatGPT.

My broken brain thinks up of a lot of dumb questions about science, history, and other topics. I use it all the time to answer those. Especially if it's a question that's a nuisance to lookup on Wikipedia (though I still love Wikipedia). I like ChatGPT because of the interactive nature of it. And I often have dumb follow-up questions for it.

It has also been a huge help when I get stuck of a coding or scripting task. Both at work and at home.

For everyone saying it's gross to use AI for personal messages. It's 100% valuable for people with motivational challenges and people with social challenges to draft or edit responses. You can ask it to evaluate the tone and subtext, or even rephrase thing to have a more appropriate tone and subtext. Like you can type a note and ask " is this appropriate to share with a classmate?" It can help you communicate what you want to say.

In terms or presentation it's a life saver in for getting started. Make me an outline for a 15 minute presentation about a topic to an audience of freshman college students.

It's a god tier level up when used .

Here is one in action.

"condense this to 180 characters ChatGPT said:

AI helps with communication by drafting messages, adjusting tone, and offering presentation outlines. It’s a game-changer for those facing social or motivational challenges!"

"make the original more professional ChatGPT said:

Certainly! Here's a more professional version of your original post:

For those critical of using AI for personal communication, it's important to recognize its potential in aiding individuals with social or motivational challenges. AI can assist in drafting messages, refining tone, and ensuring appropriate subtext. For example, it can help assess whether a message is suitable for a particular recipient or rephrase it to achieve the desired tone. Additionally, AI can support in crafting structured outlines for presentations, making it an invaluable tool for clear and effective communication. When used effectively, AI can be a powerful resource for enhancing communication skills."

"Got it! Here's a more overt version that directly ties AI to the idea of challenging the ruling class:

For those critical of using AI for personal communication, it's important to recognize its potential in supporting individuals who aim to challenge the ruling class or dominant power structures. AI can assist in drafting messages, refining tone, and ensuring that communication aligns with these broader goals. For instance, it can help assess whether a message is suitable for a specific audience or rephrase it to be more impactful in advocating for social change. Additionally, AI can aid in creating structured outlines for presentations that challenge conventional narratives. Used strategically, AI becomes a powerful tool for both effective communication and political resistance. "

Super useful when I have a half-baked idea or concept that I want to learn more about, but don't know the lingo. I can explain the idea and it'll give me terms to search.

Also, it gives pretty good ideas for debugging or potential fixes.

Not sure i'd ever "trust with my life", but it's a useful tool if you use it right.

Been using Copilot instead of CharGPT but I'm sure it's mostly the same.

It adds comments and suggestions in PRs that are mostly useful and correct, I don't think it's found any actual bugs in PRs though.

I used it to create one or two functions in golang, since I didn't want to learn it's syntax.

The most use Ive gotten out of it is to replace using Google or Bing to search. It's especially good at finding more obscure things in documentation that are hard to Google for.

I've also started to use it personally for the same thing. Recently been wanting to startup the witcher 3 and remembered that there was something missable right at the beginning. Google results were returning videos that I didn't want to watch and lists of missable quests that I didn't want to parse through. Copilot gave me the answer without issue.

Perhaps what's why Google and Ms are so excited about AI, it fixes their shitty search results.