You Can’t Escape AI
Artificial Intelligence is everywhere, now. People are talking about it, internet platforms are integrating with it, and its becoming a tool that people use in their everyday life. I even talked to a girl who said she was using it to plan her entire wedding! AI bots like Chat GPT and Claude are available in a snap for anybody to use at any time, completely for free. But with that, also comes the fear of AI “taking over”. Perhaps we watched too many movies about robots taking over the world, or we hear about the crazy stories where people end relationships to be with their Chat GPT personas. Maybe some of us even have had very real fears that it could take over our livelihoods. Whatever the fear with AI is, it can create a real hesitancy to use it as the useful tool that it was designed for, and a lot of people wonder if there is a way we can use it ethically.
In its nature, artificial intelligence cannot create anything. This may seem inaccurate, knowing that we have seen hundreds of pictures and videos generated by AI. However, AI simply takes images, information, and data that already exists and presents it in a cohesive way that will best fit your prompt. If you type in “write a romance novel that is set in a fantasy world” it cannot create a new novel for you, it will only take words, phrases, characters, and settings that are already created and combine them in a way that it thinks you would like to see it. When generating images, AI already has access to the components that you want your image to have, and it will generate an image by putting the components in your prompt together. This is why search platforms like Google are seeing less and less clicks into websites, because now when you Google a question, it can scour the internet in an instant for the information you are looking for and gives you an answer in a concise way.
The example I gave above, with the romance novel, is an example of a non-ethical way to use AI, and we want to be clear that we do not encourage using artificial intelligence to write a novel for you. In fact, if your intention is for publicly publishing, we encourage you to forgo artificial intelligence all together. As one of my favorite authors, Rachel Gillig, said, “Humans make art…. Write it yourself, babe!”
With all this said, there are ways you can use AI in your day to day, using it as the tool as it was designed to be! Here are 5 different ways you can use it ethically, with examples of prompts you can use and screenshots of answers generated!
5 things AI can help you with in your day-to-day life
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“What should I make for dinner?”
This is probably the prompt that I use AI for the most. The frustration of coming up with a different dinner idea every single evening can be so overwhelming, with every family member craving something different and you only have certain ingredients to use.
Sometimes, after a long day, I will sit down, open up Chat GPT, list out some ingredients that I have, and ask it to generate some meals that are kid friendly and easy to make. You can even take a picture of your pantry and your fridge, and it can identify some of the ingredients that you have and come up with a meal plan for you! This would be great, if your fridge isn’t like mine with Tupperware and take-out boxes stacked everywhere.
On top of this, if you have a kid who is particularly picky, AI can be a great tool in figuring out meals that they may be willing to eat, or even ways of hiding veggies into the foods that you know they will eat.
In this example, I tried it by using Chat GPT and putting in this prompt: “What should I make for dinner? I have fresh red and green peppers, fresh mushrooms, canned corn and canned tomatoes, and frozen mixed veggies. I also have rice, yellow potatoes, and a variety of pasta options. I could also maybe use some chicken broth or cream of chicken soup. For meat I have a few rolls of 1lb ground beef and some chicken thighs. I would like to keep dinner simple and easy, maybe something that will only take about 30-45 minutes to put together. Please also keep in mind that I have a family of 5 to feed, and some of my kids tend to be picky.”
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“What season should I wear?”
This is one you may have already figured out on your own, but if you have a big event coming up, or you are thinking about making a change to your hair, new glasses, or even just to see if there is a different color pallet you haven’t tried on yourself yet, this can be a fun new way to bring out your inner fashionista!
I was looking in my closet recently and felt like I needed some fresh new outfits, but I always struggle with what to buy that will match other things that I own that aren’t black or denim. So I pulled out Claude and I uploaded some recent selfies that I took, and I asked what colors would look best me. I went on to ask what hair styles and colors I could do that would accentuate my face, or my eyes, or hide areas that I was a little self conscious of. It even gave me prompts of what I could ask my hair stylist for to give me the exact look I was going for!
In this example, here is the prompt I put into Claude: “Here is a recent picture of myself. Based on my skin tone, hair, body, head shape, and eyes, what wardrobe colors would suit me best? Am I a spring, fall, summer, or winter?”
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“Child friendly entertainment, or fun chore charts!”
Yes, I have been guilty of putting in a prompt like “please tell me 10 Star Wars jokes” to pass the time on long car trips. The kids were giggling, and it gives us some temporary sanity.
Another thing I have used it for is bed time stories. My kids LOVE to be told a bed time story, and I always loved to give them one. We used some of their stuffed animals and friends as part of the stories, each of them had their own personalities and interacted with them in different ways. My kids love it, and they beg for it almost every night. The problem is, after so long of doing this, we run out of ideas. My husband and I end up grasping for straws, as there are only so many stories we can come up with to have the toys play out.
In comes Chat GPT. In the prompt, I put in each of the characters (A large stuffed Spiderman, a Pikachu from Pokémon, and a flamingo we got from the zoo) and asked it to generate a bedtime story for my kids, specifically for their ages, using the characters. To my surprise, it came up with a fun and wildly entertaining story that the boys were on the edge of their beds listening to.
I even recently used it to help me come up with new chore charts after the kids went back to school. This wasn’t as big of a hit in my kids eyes, of course, but it helped me keep them engaged and come up with chores that each kid could handle according to their age.
For this example, I said that I had a 10 year old boy and I am trying to put together a chore chart for him to use after school. I put in some of his interests (Pokémon and Minecraft, mainly) and asked him to put together a list of age appropriate chores and a reward system based upon his interest. I made sure to give the reward system a price budget of no more than $10 a week, and I even asked for it to be creative in how he can select the chores he does every day.
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“Responding to a negative message in a tactful way”
Have you ever had a text, email, or Facebook comment that was negative towards you, but you want to keep things respectful, or professional, because saying what you really want to say would bring on consequences that you aren’t willing to have? I think we have all had a situation like this, honestly.
This is another way that AI can be useful. You get to type out how you really feel, and the things that you would really like to say, and then simply ask AI to reword it in a way that is tactful, respectful, or kind and polite. Its a great way to get your point across, while still maintaining the peace.
For this example, I pretended like an extended relative wrote a passive-aggressive comment on my recent post, complaining that we never take the kids and see her. In the AI prompt, I put in the message that I would really want to say, and asked it to rephrase it in a more kind way (and yes, this is all hypothetical): “Hi Aunt Cathy. As I have mentioned countless times to you already, we are not able to make the trip to Nebraska to see you. Please stop posting stuff like this publicly and message me in private if you want to have a real discussion about this! Taking a trip like this is a massive financial burden, not to mention a long drive with two small children sounds like a nightmare. If you want to see them so bad, why don’t you take the time to come to US, and stop being so selfish and negative for once.”
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“Generating a resume or a cover letter”
The days of spending hours pouring over your resume and then even more time writing a different cover letter for each job application are no more!
With one note: we do always recommend going through the AI responses and personalizing them if need be, and using it for creating a resume and cover letter would absolutely require your own personal touch. With that said, using AI is a great way to get started. Sometimes summarizing your work experiences, education, and professional achievements into one solid page seems like a momentous task, and then you hope that you have done enough to catch the eye of the recruiters, crossing your fingers that you stand out among the other applicants.
Here is an example, in the prompt I made up some previous job positions, education, and even some reasons why I left the previous companies. I also made sure to include a name and contact information. I then asked Chat GPT to use the information to create a one-page resume that will help me stand out among other candidates. Again, we will always encourage you to go back through it and make any changes necessary to make it your own.
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Of course, there are always the fun trends you can do, asking AI to make your pet into a human or seeing what your spirit animal could be. This begs us to ask the question, what fun things do you use AI for, and what were some of the answers that it gave you?