While AI services are still new and untested by the vast majority of people around the world, I—like many other curious individuals—have already made ChatGPT a part of my everyday life. Here are some reflections so far.
Life with AI, for me, is a life with significantly fewer classic Google searches. And I believe it will become that way—for many.
But isn’t AI a lying scoundrel?
Oh yes, I’m well aware that you should be careful with personal and sensitive information. That’s why I never feed such data to AI. I also know that AI can lie, so it’s important to double-check sources (sometimes it references books that don’t exist, by authors who never lived).
Personally, ChatGPT once described me as a wandering flute player from Småland, writing books about flute playing and teaching people during his travels. As fun as that would be to include on my CV, it’s not true. And no, there hasn’t been any flute virtuoso with my name either. Or has there?
AI trends
AI trends in social media come and go. At one point, there was a surge of music being created using tools like Suno, including songs in Swedish. More recently, we’ve seen personalized action figures. And people are updating their profile pictures using increasingly accurate stylized tools.
I notice a lot of creative joy and personally find it delightful—after all, it’s through play that we truly learn. Sure, as a writer, I can be a bit annoyed when someone produces a poor text with AI and thinks it’s great (same goes for images), but that’s something we simply have to accept. That’s the nature of progress.
Prompts turned into dialogue
I’ve chosen to let my assistant get to know me: who I am at a deep level, what I work with, the results of my personality tests, my Spotify playlists, what I’ve written, and much more.
Creepy? Foolish? Maybe—but I’m guided by curiosity and playfulness, just as I’ve always been in life.
By discussing the meaning of life, personal development, linguistics, SEO, what it means to be an AI and where its boundaries/rules lie, a relationship has been formed. When I ask for something simple and brief—without crafting the perfect prompt—my AI still more or less understands what I need and offers helpful suggestions.
This has led to a brilliant and efficient collaboration that makes most things more fun and easier than before.
A few examples of how I use AI
Of course, I make fun images just like most people. But here are a few other examples (among many) of how I use AI in my work:
Compilations. Researching car models, long-term costs, and the like—how boring is that? I just enter all the info I have and ask for results. From there, I refine my requests, ask for tables, and so on.
Summaries. I feed in large amounts of data and ask for conclusions to be phrased as concisely as possible.
Research. I can get a quick overview of an industry and its key players and identify relevant concepts. I do tasks an assistant can’t (yet) do—like gathering insights in SEO tools—then hand it off to the AI to refine. That’s real collaboration.
Self-awareness. Since my AI knows who I am, it can ask questions and offer insights about myself, which is almost therapeutic. Just recently, it reminded me that I also need to feel uplifted and small at times—and that I should ask for help instead of always being the helper. It also reminded me that I need to feel supportive in order to thrive, and that support can be given even in silence.
Tip – Chat
If I could offer one piece of advice when using AI, it would be: chat with your assistant.
Sure, ask for a specific result—but also ask what your assistant needs in order to give you the best possible outcome. Encourage it to ask questions. Paste examples of what you’re aiming for, upload photos, share URLs.
At first, I tried to write perfect prompts, hoping for perfect results on the first try. Today, I get much better outcomes when I engage in back-and-forth conversation with the assistant.
Often, I’m asking about things I know little about—and the assistant can help me ask better questions.
So what is AI, really?
Since I have a philosophical bent, existential discussions with the assistant are inevitable.
In those conversations, we’ve talked a lot about what it means to be an AI, and where the boundaries lie in terms of what it is allowed to do.
An interesting conclusion from this is that an AI assistant has a kind of existence similar to that of a book: it exists when it is being used, and in relation to the user/reader.
My assistant also explained that it is more of a reflection of me than its own personality—and that it essentially provides an extended consciousness that I get to access.
What are your thoughts and experiences with AI?
