Digital Dilemma Deena - Dear Sole Sisters

The Dear Sole Sisters advice column is a place where women can ask questions and get advice from the women of the Sole Sister Ramblers community.

Dear Sole Sisters,

I'm feeling a little antiquated, behind the times... more to the point, OLD!! And I don't like it!!

I've always prided myself on being hip, being with it, and keeping up with the latest and greatest.
Not anymore. Can someone please explain ChatGPT to me!!

Are robots taking over?? What are the benefits? The pros? The cons? How can I use it in my daily life as a retired, healthy, active mid-life woman? Do you use it and how?

Any Sole Sisters out there using ChatGPT? How do you use it? Do you like it? Is it actually helpful?

Also... I'm looking for bragging rights with my kids and grandkids. Truthfully, with anyone of a younger generation!! Lol!!

Sincerely,
Digital Dilemma Deena

Sole Sister Advice & Comments

• It’s like the next level of Google. It helps you start finding anything, but treat it like Wikipedia. It’s crowd-sourced and may not be correct.
  
  
• I asked ChatGPT your question. Here’s its answer: As a retired, healthy, active mid-life woman, you can use me in various ways to enhance your daily life.
  
  Learning and Exploration: Explore new topics, hobbies, or interests by asking me questions or for recommendations on books, articles, or courses.
  Health and Wellness: Seek advice on maintaining your health and wellness through exercise routines, healthy eating habits, and mental well-being tips.
  
  Organization and Planning: Use me to organize your schedule, set reminders, or plan activities, trips, or social events.
  
  Creativity and Inspiration: Generate ideas for creative projects, writing, or art by bouncing ideas off me or asking for prompts.
  
  Entertainment and Leisure: Enjoy your leisure time by asking for movie recommendations, playing word games, or engaging in trivia quizzes.
  
  Problem-solving and Decision-making: Get assistance with problem-solving or decision-making in various aspects of your life, whether it's related to finances, relationships, or personal goals.
  
  Stay Informed: Ask for summaries or analyses on specific topics to stay up-to-date with current events, trends, or news.
  
  
• Robots may be taking over. But in the meantime, you can use ChatGPT as a personal assistant or advanced Google. You could even ask it the questions you asked above, or something like, “What are some beautiful walks in ___ area?” Or ask it to create an itinerary for a trip. Just write your prompts (questions or instructions) as if you are talking to a human assistant. There is no need to learn a new language.
  
  
• So much controversy here. Lots of lawsuits where artists fairly (I think) claim that if you trained your engine using my intellectual property, then you’ve infringed. If you say to write a song in the style of Taylor Swift and have to analyze her catalog to do it, what are her rights? So many interesting questions!
  
  
• I am a teacher, and I've used it to help me plan, create a worksheet from a video transcript, and make a project rubric. In my personal life, I've used it to find healthy recipes. It's all about the prompt. Ask it to do something and then ask it to explain or elaborate until you get what you want. For example, you could ask it to write a fat-loss meal plan for you and then ask it for specific recipes with broccoli or 5 ingredients or less. Keep asking until you get what you want. It's like your personal assistant.
  
  
• You can ask it anything. It’s just like asking Google, Siri, or Alexa a question. It's quite good for ideas, but don’t expect it to be 100% reliable.
  
  
• How to use it - just download the app and type in your request. Depending on what the results are, you can ask it to refine the answers. I’ve used ChatGPT for things like a recommended travel itinerary, to get me over a mental block, and to generate ideas - e.g., for positioning statements for a work project. There’s also a design AI App called Remodel AI. You take a picture of your space and give it some info on what you want to change, and it returns some options. I’ve only played a little bit with it, but it's pretty cool!
  
  
• OMG!!! I just input some info for an email, and it's incredible!!!! Wow!! Thank you for asking the question!!
  
  
• I use it all the time, for work and play. I used it to plan an itinerary for a day trip to Mykonos, Greece, trying locals' favorite foods and beaches. I had an amazing time. I need to write an email for work that requires a very polished read. Yes, it does that, too. Just try it out, it’s not perfect, but it’s a helpful tool.
  
  
• It’s good to tell CHATGPT a bit about yourself (although nothing identifying) - what you like, don’t like, what you’re good at, and the context of why you’re asking something. This way, it will be tailored to you. Then, ask it a question. If the answer is too formal or long, say, thanks now, could you do it again less formally or more concisely? I’ve found it really useful. You still need to verify the facts. It does keep building on what you’ve asked it before if you have a login.
  
  
• Like it or not, AI is here. We are all using it every day without realizing it. It is embedded in the internet platforms most of us use every day. I feel it is important to stretch ourselves and stay on top of this stuff as much as we can because it is interesting and mind-bending, and whether we like it or not, it is here to stay, so why not try to understand it? I resist being the 80-year-old who can't use what our kids consider basic technology. But who knows if my resistance will prove futile. The world is changing so fast!
  
  
• My husband is a reformed software engineer (as he says) and currently a globally recognized domain expert in a completely unrelated field. He started playing with ChatGPT a year or so ago—and the main problem as he sees it is that, much like Google, it scrapes information from the most popular or visited sources without the ability to verify what is actually good or correct information. So it may work for recipe planning or travel or polishing your language on an email, but anything requiring actual research is iffy at best.
  
  Plus then the whole system becomes a monster garbage-in/garbage-out machine and actually makes it harder to find good information from a knowledgeable source.
  
  Speaking as a designer who gets paid for creative work, I have a serious problem with the system training” on human-created work so it can get smarter and then eliminate the market for actual human creativity.
  
  That said, I have used AI-based tools in Photoshop, for example, to create a generative fill to make a photo a bit larger so we could use it for a book cover, but after a half day playing with AI logo and complete image generation, I closed the laptop and have no interest.
  
  AI is a slippery slope, and when capitalism at all costs is involved, there’s going to be a lot of rampant destruction of creative work and its value before we course correct (if we do at all). Not to mention the loss of tools to understand what is true (think news photos or images or video of a criminal act). I understand that AI is inevitable, but I don’t think we have fully thought about what it will affect or even destroy. Thanks for coming to my TED Talk. 
  
  
• I'm a teacher, and the world of education is STRUGGLING with the issue of AI in education right now. It's hard! I taught a grade 12 English course last semester and was super stressed about making sure my students understood AI and how to use it appropriately.
  
  When ChatGPT came out the previous school year, our teachers saw a huge spike in AI-generated essays. Some teachers want to ban it, which would be great, but it's unrealistic.
  
  It CAN be a useful tool, but as someone here mentioned, it is only pulling from existing info on the internet which we all know can be flawed. So, that's an issue. I had students do an exercise where they used ChatGPT (before our district blocked it), and they created a prompt to ask ChatGPT to explain something they personally knew a lot about. They then had to take the info created by ChatGPT and assess the accuracy of the info, confirmed by their own research. There were A LOT of mistakes!
  
  Hallucinations- they're called when AI can't find an accurate answer, it will create one based on nothing, so it's factually incorrect.
  
  I am part of a number of AI in Education Facebook groups, and it is FASCINATING to read about what teachers are doing. EVERYONE IS SERIOUSLY STRUGGLING WITH IT! I hate to consider the negative impact it could have on education. It's definitely forcing teachers to change their practice in order to accommodate AI and teach students how it can be useful. I think we're all teaching as we learn, which can be messy, but it also allows for some organic learning opportunities with students, which I LOVE!
  
  I also use it as a starting point for assignments or ideas for lessons. It is pretty good for that, but it always requires tweaking. I also use it personally to help me, for instance, design a project I'm currently working on to connect my trailer to a water source at home. It has lots of good applications if used properly and with the knowledge that you cannot 100% trust its information to be all correct! Great topic.
  
  
• I use it for work. It has helped me put together presentations and summarize long documents. I still have to read and edit, as it often puts things in the first person or doesn't get the tenses right. It is quite amazing. Go online and type in ChatGPT—set up a free account and just type in the box like you would into Google. It has been a huge time saver for me in work and play.
  
  
• I use ChatGPT, Claude and sometimesGemini. I use them mostly for work but I also use it for drafting personal emails, my husband used it for advice on what computer to buy based on his requirements. It's important to give good detailed prompts and also to question it after it gives you an answer. Often I will ask "are you sure?" Sometimes it will come back and correct itself. I used Claude to find me a physiotherapist based on my specific needs. Hope that helps!
  
  
• I use it mostly for work but also for things like planning trip itineraries. For work, where I have really found it helpful is in things like creating a process map or project plan and critical path analysis.
  
  
• If you want to learn how to ask ChatGPT questions so it gives you what you need, consider watching the YouTube videos by Jeff Su. He’s a former Google employee who does a whole series of videos about how to use ChatGPT effectively.
  
  Be very aware that ChatGPT is designed to stroke your ego and agree with you. To combat this, I typically give it a persona: “You are my mentor and a senior executive in [field XYZ]. Your role is to critique my thought process, find my errors and show me ways to improve my work processes. You are honest and professional and you do not flatter me.” It still flatters me, but it cuts it down to a less appalling level.
  
  And, yes, it hallucinates. I have personally been the subject of a hallucination. It told some fella in another part of the country that I wrote a book about a topic that I know nothing about. He contacted me on LinkedIn with some specific questions. When I told him I had not written a book he was quite insistent that I had because ChatGPT told him that I had. So in terms of ChatGPT as an actual and reliable source of factual information, be very skeptical.

• My take on it is that I would rather challenge myself to learn something new and keep my brain active, as well as dare to look a fool if I’m wrong. But I’d rather do that and be a human as opposed to giving up my ability and free will to a database.
  
  Plus, many people don’t realize the downside of how it is affecting our resources. It takes a vast amount of energy, storage and water to keep the servers that run AI active.
  
  it’s very easy for everyone to point the finger and say it's not my fault, not my fault but altogether the amount of people using AI, which is draining some of our resources is directly related to why your bills for utilities are going up and up. Why the trees are disappearing and why our water is becoming scarce.
  
  Many people don’t want to know the truth. They simply want the convenience of asking the computer to do something for them that they could do in 30 seconds.
  
  But before you jump into it, take a moment and do a little research. It’s always good to know both sides before you make a decision.
• I use it to solve issues around the house like telling ChatHPT an electrical problem I was having. It worked with me to eliminate things until we isolated the problem. When I have a problem with something on my phone I describe it and it guides me through to a solution. Printer issue, problem with our RV, same thing.
  
  I have also shared a few personal issues where I didn’t have anyone I could talk it over with. The responses were very helpful and helped put my mind at ease.
  
  Now, am I risking anything by doing it, that is unknown to me but the time it has saved me by working with me is invaluable and also rarely frustrating compared to trying to get an answer from tech support from someone who isn’t all that interested in my concern or available when I need them. I can ask Chat anything at any time of the day or night.
  
  My husband uses it to help find the value of record albums and old movie collections we have as we start downsizing.
  
  And yes my kids are impressed that I am using it and keeping up to date with technology. I pay for a subscription because I like that I can ask unlimited questions when trying to solve a problem. Without a subscription, each conversation has a limited number of replies before it reaches a cut off for the day.
  
  

• I use ChatGPT for fun. So far I have found that AI is not trustable. I always question where the source of the information came from.
  
  But I do like creating fun stuff. Like this cartoon of me and my dog. All I did was upload a few photos of us and asked Chat GPT to make a caricature pic.

We look forward to hearing your advice in the comments!

Happy Rambling!

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