The world is requiring me to see things differently. Life seems to be demanding a new way of thinking…again.

A New World Requires a New Way of Thinking

The famous quote “No man ever steps in the same river twice” is attributed to the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus. It’s one of my favorites. It reminds me that change is constant and that I can expect it and possibly even look forward to it.

Lately, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is one of those big changes. I don’t know if you are completely against AI or totally for it or somewhere in between. Regardless of your thoughts, AI is going to have a significant impact on our lives. It already has and given the global aspect of the technology, I can’t imagine it can be stopped.

Ways AI Is Useful to Me

I’ve set up some rules for myself about how AI is best used. AI takes two roles in my world these days. First and foremost, it’s a teacher. I’ve learned an enormous amount about updating websites, for instance. AI has taught me ways to start using my obsolete and no-longer-supported Nook e-reader again. I consider AI to be a very knowledgeable person that’s available anytime for a question about how to do something. Even when I’m away from my computer, I often think of new things I want to learn and explore.

I’ve also found AI to be very useful for saving me time with tasks that used to take a lot of effort. Examining long, complex documents, like insurance documents to see if a procedure would be covered is one example. I can’t bring myself to read long, tedious documents. I also used AI recently to compare two versions of a spreadsheet to tell me what has changed.

Ways AI Isn’t Useful to Me

I’m often reminded that AI knowledge is still flawed. Recently I asked it to set up reminders to take some antibiotics three times a day for a week. I specifically wanted my Apple Watch to vibrate three times a day to remind me. It was really bad at this task and every time I’d ask it why my Apple Watch didn’t vibrate at 5:00 am to remind me to take my medication, it would come up with a different, inaccurate answer. My brother-in-law reminded me that AI often only has access to all the potentially flawed information that any moron can add to the internet and it will sometimes spit out moronic bullshit. It keeps getting better, but it’s not close to perfect.

Using AI as a therapist or trusted friend to provide life advice is also something I will never do. For that task, I will never consider it trustworthy.

Finally, I will never ask AI to perform any tasks that require any of my creative ability. I don’t want it writing blog entries, designing sweaters or creating artwork for a family picnic. It’s not very good at creativity. I find its efforts flat and plastic. Also, why would I give up doing tasks that I enjoy? Finally, it often steals creativity to create its own, poor version of creative content. No thank you.

If you want to find one of the funniest reasons why AI does creative work badly, read David Sedaris’ The Land and Its People. Or better yet, listen to the audiobook…the AI story is near the end of the book and it’s definitely NSFW, but as funny as he’s ever been.

And to be clear, this blog entry was NOT written by ChatGPT or any other AI.

Current Knitting

I started my next stranded knitting tube to demo steeks and zippers in September.

This one will do a few things differently. First I don’t need to have fancy, different colored stranded knitting or random Fair Isle motifs. Two colors is sufficient and one common motif repeated throughout will work just fine. Second, this tube also has two steek sections, so I can use it as a demo piece twice.

Now I just have to figure out what to do with a six-inch long tube with a zipper on each side of it. Garter belt?