Everyday AI tools: convenient echolocation

By Liz

Photo by Ishan @seefromthesky

 

Our society is responding to the rapid uptake of AI technologies in everyday tools in real time. We’ll look back and talk about how we first used and felt about AI. For some, AI conjures uncertainty – they’re the ones asking “Aren’t you worried about ChatGPT taking your job?” around the braai. For others, these tools are just another thread in the digital fabric of their day, making things quicker and easier. All of us probably underestimate how much it has touched our lives.

While the platforms can process and package information like we’ve never seen before, we are still figuring out how best to use them and there are absolutely still issues with the tech (nobody mention hands to an AI image generator!).

Convenient but not an authority

What these AI tools produce is only as good as our handling of them – from prompts to refinements of what they create to edits of their contribution in your wider project.

To get the most out of AI platforms, use prompts that are as specific as possible and give the platform something to build on. For example: “Please suggest edits for my email below. I want the tone to be professional and friendly but for the decision to be clear and firm. Please also add a conclusion that expresses enthusiasm to work together again.”

An existential aside: be polite to AI platforms. They’re a system learning from every interaction and we’re training them how to treat us in return. Thank you soooo much, Alexa!

These tools can create a base to start from (“Generate five ideas for…”), or suggest additions (“What is missing from this…”) or polish (“Edit this document for spelling and grammar)” but ultimately, we have the critical thinking and nuance. It’s when we hand over to these tools entirely without assessing their contributions that real problems arise.

AI tools as echolocation

A useful framing we came up with in a team chat recently was using AI tools as echolocation. It’s most useful when we throw out a prompt and see what comes back. It’s so much easier to start with something rather than nothing but the key is gauging your response to what it generates. If you see a suggestion and think “It’s got that all wrong!” or “No one who comes from this place would use these words”, that response is what’s really valuable.

Sending out prompts like bats’ “pings” frames AI tools as collaborators (rather than replacements) that provide feedback as we navigate through thinking. Ultimately though, we choose the path.