right now we're not even in the first inning of AI ... the technology is advancing at a pace that's almost too fast to keep up with, and it doesn't seem to have gone fully mainstream yet (think, the first iPhone or dial up AOL)

I consult for building trades unions and contractors across the US. Some of them are hugely dependent on AI for organizing or specing out jobs. Others are nervous about the prospect of it eventually doing their jobs, understandably.

I find AI gets you to the "red zone" ... it's up to you to polish whatever it gives you back and get across the goal line. I use Gemini Pro Deep Research for the deep dive research reports it returns about the space I'm in or prospective clients, and I've used Gemini Pro 1.5 + 2 to help polish my writing and also create pricing forecast models. The pricing model it built me was eerily accurate to what I would've built myself manually but taken two days to do (after I described what I needed and fed it the data I already have, it spit out a durable forecast model in about 5 minutes that I use regularly)

I'm naturally leery of queries and anything information-laden in Grok, obviously because I work with Unions and there's a (at least perceived) baked in anti-union bias from Grok. BUT Grok has become my go-to for image generation basically just because it returns two images to choose from vs Gemini returning just one. This is just a personal preference thing at this point.


I'm curious how you're using AI if you're using it at all. What's the utility in your professional life? Are you dependent on it in any way personally? I'm sure that through this post we could each glean SOMETHING , even one thing, that we find value in. How are you using AI?

It kills the monotonous stuff I use to do that I relied heavily on forms and precedents to draft. It's perfect for experienced lawyers) and deadly for inexperience lawyers or laypeople trying to pretend they lawyers.

I also use lightweight in creative stuff. I have no fear AI will replace creatives, but AI can be a great tool for creatives. For example, I was trying to think of high end dishes that a fancy french restaurant that only served breakfast cereal. ChatGPT knocked that out the park. I wouldn't have been able to come up with these:

Crème de Corn Flakes au Matin Enchanté - (Creamy Morning Corn Flakes Delight)
Éclats de Frosted Flakes Caramélisés avec Mousse de Lait de Vanille - (Caramelized Frosted Flakes with Vanilla Milk Foam)
Risotto de Rice Krispies aux Fruits des Bois - (Rice Krispies Risotto with Forest Berries)
Flocons d'Avoine Cheerios Grillés à la Truffe Blanche - (Grilled Cheerios Oat Flakes with White Truffle)
Granola de Luxe aux Noix de Macadamia et Miel d'Acacia - (Deluxe Granola with Macadamia Nuts and Acacia Honey)
Soufflé de Wheaties Éclaté à l'Essence d'Amandes - (Popped Wheaties Soufflé with Almond Essence)
Céréales Lucky Charms de l'Aube Infusées au Thé Jasmin - (Dawn Lucky Charms Cereals Infused with Jasmine Tea)
Méli-Mélo de Céréales Fruity Pebbles Exotiques avec Coulis de Mangue - (Exotic Fruity Pebbles Cereal Medley with Mango Coulis)
Pain Perdu aux Flocons d'Erable Cinnamon Toast Crunch et Baies de Goji - (Maple Cinnamon Toast Crunch French Toast with Goji Berries)
Croustillant d'Orge Special K au Caramel Beurre Salé - (Crispy Special K with Salted Caramel)





You said:
these great. Can you give me more names and including a captain crunch dish?
ChatGPT said:
ChatGPT
Absolutely! Here are more names, including a Captain Crunch dish:

Parfait de Cap'n Crunch aux Fruits Tropicaux - (Cap'n Crunch Parfait with Tropical Fruits)
Biscotti au Golden Grahams et Chocolat Noir - (Golden Grahams Biscotti with Dark Chocolate)
Tartelette aux Frosted Mini-Wheats et Coulis de Fraise - (Frosted Mini-Wheats Tartlet with Strawberry Coulis)
Mélange de Muesli au Raisin Bran et Poires Caramélisées - (Raisin Bran Muesli Mix with Caramelized Pears)
Crème Brûlée de Honey Bunches of Oats - (Honey Bunches of Oats Crème Brûlée)
Galette de Cocoa Puffs aux Éclats de Noix de Coco - (Cocoa Puffs Galette with Coconut Flakes)
Clafoutis aux Kashi GoLean Crunch et Cerises Noires - (Kashi GoLean Crunch Clafoutis with Black Cherries)
Soufflé de Life Cereal à l'Orange et Cardamome - (Life Cereal Soufflé with Orange and Cardamom)
Profiteroles de Reese's Puffs au Beurre de Cacahuète - (Reese's Puffs Profiteroles with Peanut Butter)
Mousse de Froot Loops à la Crème de Coco - (Froot Loops Mousse with Coconut Cream)



**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

During the main learning portion of my tech BootCamp, we cloned a pre-existing repository and built off of it for every lesson. Now, creating one from scratch, I need a lil boost.

____________
Bluesky: @rulerofmyself.bsky.social
Snap: rulerofmyself17

it's also helpful when searching for internal information on the company.

I need to use it to help me get this resume together.

Y'all buy those labels, I was born supreme

I've ever met in my life

insist it makes them more productive and smarter

yet none of that shows up in their work

www.engadgethd.com - the other stuff i'm looking at

... are the same people who were constantly asking me to write scripts for them based on "great ideas" they had, because they were too lazy and/or unskilled to put in the work to figure out how to write something good enough to sell.

Now they post songs on Instagram they made with AI and are trying to pass it off as their work because they typed a prompt into some AI song generator.

I won't pretend to know all its potential applications in all the lines of work that exist in the world... but I wouldn't use it for creative writing.

More Christmas movies coming in 2025...

and I'm thinking...yeah it's not any worse than your usual

www.engadgethd.com - the other stuff i'm looking at

https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/celebrities/2025/01/17/darrin-bell-arrested-child-pornography-cartoonist/77771785007/

Darrin Bell, a Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist whose satirical designs have decorated papers for years, was arrested in California Wednesday after authorities said they discovered a cache of child pornography in his home, the Sacramento Country Sheriff's Office reports.

The "Candorville" creator, 49, was arrested by sheriff’s detectives after a months-long investigation that began with a tip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

Authorities reportedly discovered over 100 child pornography videos, some of which were artificial intelligence-generated, in Bell's possession. The discovery came after Bell allegedly had been connected to an online account that shared 134 videos of sexual abuse involving minors.

----

this is not how it should be used.. smh.

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TBH the fact that you're even a mod here fits squarely within Jag's narrative of OK-sanctioned aggression, bullying, and toxicity. *shrug*

Edit: apparently AI CP is a crime: https://www.ic3.gov/PSA/2024/PSA240329

Even *drawing* obscene images of minors is a crime: https://www.justice.gov/criminal/criminal-ceos/obscenity#:~:text=In%20addition%2C%20visual%20representations%2C%20such,also%20illegal%20under%20federal%20law.

but there are also laws going on the books mentioning it explicitly now

www.engadgethd.com - the other stuff i'm looking at

****************
TBH the fact that you're even a mod here fits squarely within Jag's narrative of OK-sanctioned aggression, bullying, and toxicity. *shrug*

I am not even comfortable googling the topic but yeah.


In the United States, the PROTECT Act of 2003 made significant changes to the law regarding virtual child pornography. Any realistic appearing computer generated depiction that is indistinguishable from a depiction of an actual minor in sexual situations or engaging in sexual acts is illegal under 18 U.S.C. § 2252A. The PROTECT Act includes prohibitions against illustrations depicting child pornography, including computer-generated illustrations, that are to be found obscene in a court of law. Previous provisions outlawing virtual child pornography in the Child Pornography Prevention Act of 1996 had been ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in its 2002 decision, Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition. The PROTECT ACT attached an obscenity requirement under the Miller test or a variant obscenity test to overcome this limitation.



**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

His arrest, under an amended California law that bars the possession of computer-generated child sex abuse material, marks a first for Sacramento County. The law was widened to include AI material and went into effect on Jan. 1 of this year.

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TBH the fact that you're even a mod here fits squarely within Jag's narrative of OK-sanctioned aggression, bullying, and toxicity. *shrug*

and so did the FBI?

it always was illegal and people had already been prosecuted



ALSO separately, one thing that could make an AI PC illegal is that a lot of training data sets have CSAM in them, but that's a whole different issue

www.engadgethd.com - the other stuff i'm looking at

****************
TBH the fact that you're even a mod here fits squarely within Jag's narrative of OK-sanctioned aggression, bullying, and toxicity. *shrug*

I manage several teams of consultants, which means I'm in a ton of internal meetings, and my teams are in a ton of meetings with clients. We use Gong and Copilot to give meeting summaries and action items, which means we don't have to be worrying about taking notes during meetings and allows us to be more present. Also if you miss a meeting instead of having to watch a full recording you can check out the AI meeting recap, which lets you click on a bullet point if you want to watch a section of a recording for more context instead of just reading the summary.

I also use Copilot for summarizing what I've missed while out of office or in conflicting engagements - all of my missed emails in Outlook or chats in Teams.

We have an internal sandbox AI which uses LLMs like GPT 4o, Sonnet, Llama, Claude 3.5, Gemini 1.5 that integrates with our company intranet with all sorts of internal research content, and keeps all data/input private to the company sandbox, and that is perfect for uploading documents to get summaries, create reports/dashboards using Power BI/Power Automate, etc.

It's also great for getting quick summaries of things I don't know. For example if joining a client call and that client is in an industry I'm not familiar with, or if someone says an acronym I'm not familiar with, gen AI is great for a quick summary and asking it some follow-up questions. In the past that may have been a google search, but that isn't as quick an easy as it used to be because of sponsored results and just an abundance of information.

I haven't found it to be very useful in terms of creative work - but I also haven't spent much time on that. For example last week I was working on a new go to market service, and tried using LLMs to help brainstorm product names for varied levels of the service, and the names all the LLMs came up with were consistently trash. Just one example, but I see it time and time again when trying to get it to generate something creative. I used to use it for email drafts, but the "gen AI voice" tends to be so identifiable that I end up doing more work rewriting than I'd have done writing myself in the first place. But again - that might be on me and not handling my prompts in a better way.

this part though

>It's also great for getting quick summaries of things I don't know. For example if joining a client call and that client is in an industry I'm not familiar with, or if someone says an acronym I'm not familiar with, gen AI is great for a quick summary and asking it some follow-up questions. In the past that may have been a google search, but that isn't as quick an easy as it used to be because of sponsored results and just an abundance of information.


I just don't see it as true.
the main problem is that when I ask it about things I know well, there are serious problems with the information it returns.

for things I don't know well, it seems good. but only if I don't know enough to know better. where I find it actually beats google, is that using google and getting a bad result makes the user feel stupid and angry, but the chatbot succeeds in always making the user feel like they've gotten something good


www.engadgethd.com - the other stuff i'm looking at

An intelligent user needs to have general awareness of their own areas of expertise and non-expertise, and along with that awareness they need to know that "if I'm having to ask AI what xyz means, that does NOT make me an expert who can then parrot that output as expert knowledge".

So for example - lets say I'm invited to a meeting and there's some random acronym in the meeting agenda I've never heard of. I can give gen AI that acronym along with industry context to define it. A bad user might just take that and then act like they are an expert, and start using that same acronym themselves without context, often incorrectly. I don't do that - I just use it as a kick off to say "oh yeah I know what that is, just hadn't seen it in acronym form" or "I don't know what that is, I need to go to my trusted sources for more context/information". Also, because my company has an internal sandbox AI with all of our trusted content built in - I can do this all in the same place with links to that content in a better way than someone just using public Chat GPT.

I view all of this as very similar to the internet 20-25 years ago - because when that we at a newer point it DID make some people feel knowledgeable about wrong information like you're saying below (still does, just to a lesser extend because of all the years of experience that we've had.) Gen AI is just another tool, and we are early enough in it's lifespan that there are TONS of bad users of that tool.


>I just don't see it as true.
>the main problem is that when I ask it about things I know
>well, there are serious problems with the information it
>returns.
>
>for things I don't know well, it seems good. but only if I
>don't know enough to know better. where I find it actually
>beats google, is that using google and getting a bad result
>makes the user feel stupid and angry, but the chatbot succeeds
>in always making the user feel like they've gotten something
>good