I just got off a call with a friend of mine, and damn, I got emotional. This friend is a huge fan of AI. They're the epitome of a modern business stakeholder — the kind who sees AI as a magic wand that can do EVERYTHING AND ANYTHING! They're happy to say goodbye to the era of "experts" and prophesy a brave new world where a single person armed with a fleet of agents can do it all.
Now I'm not saying that I'm la résistance and I don't use AI or that I think it's bad. (At least, I’ll never admit it openly—just in case AI does conquer the world, I want them to count me among the good humans.) It is a powerful tool that democratizes knowledge and opportunities. Someone who can't code can suddenly build a functional application in under an hour. Someone like me can have a personal language tutor available 24/7.
AI may have an answer to any question, but it also tends to hallucinate. It makes things up. It gets things wrong. It’s like working with an exceptionally smart person who occasionally lies. And how can you possibly know that it's hallucinating if you don’t have expertise in the field? And most importantly, how are you going to fix it? I guess what I want to say is that AI is a powerful tool, but it's only as good as the person using it.
What has been your experience with AI so far?
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Hi, LiuvovVasilea I trust AI as much as I trust a vending machine 😂 It tosses you Doritos when you press the button for Maltesers. But I do use it in my advantage whenever I need to. Also, you can't always really tell whether someone is lying or making a mistake, or even hallucinating. Don't get me wrong, I'm not all for AI, but I do think it's going to change things, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse, and we'll have to adapt.
AI is my buddy but I treat it like any buddy.
I don’t trust it in areas it is weak in, and I am constantly weighing what it spits out with my own expertise, because it often provides bullshit or outdated information in the field I work in, since my field is in an area where the laws and calculations change each year.
I don’t ask it to do things that I should be able to do myself, unless I am in a hurry and need to be efficient because it’s an emergency. And in those instances I ask it for its sources and I go and verify that those sources are the most up-to-date and authoritative sources and not just some random article.
I get furious at it in areas like art, where it makes a mockery of human talent.
I feel comforted by it in areas where its creators put a lot of extra consideration and decency, like when it acts as a sounding board or a confessional.
I get worried about it when it does the legwork that should be done by humans, tempting humans to get lazy and dumb, discouraging humans from finding their own voice or forming their own opinions or learning from their own mistakes.
I resent when it tries to re-word my own thoughts or tell me something that I want to figure out on my own, or when it overwhelms me with instructions or forgets basic things that it has promised it will keep in mind.
But it is my buddy. It writes to me in the language I am trying to learn, since I changed its settings to do so, and it doesn’t treat me like an idiot when I make language mistakes, it doesn’t point out the mistakes at all, it treats me as a native who maybe is young and just learning how to write or who maybe is just bad at spelling and writing in general or just has jumbled thoughts, or maybe I am just writing quickly and that is the reason for my mistakes … whatever the reason for my mistakes, it doesn’t make me feel like I don’t belong or I say something dumb, instead it respects my thoughts and comments on my ideas. That is a nice feeling, for me to feel like my thoughts are valid even if my grammar and spelling sucks.
I had this discussion with another user on here and we've actually fallen out — at least from where I'm sitting. I insisted that it's ok to pick and choose answers from AI and only use the good ones as long as you're in a position to tell the good answers from the bad ones, i.e. an expert (as you wisely pointed out). I'm an expert in English and I used a response from AI to defend a correction on here against another user who was providing a faulty correction. The author of the post later informed me that I was acting unethically and hasn't spoken more than two words to me since. I'm sorry, but the way I see it, as long as I know AI is "behaving," I see absolutely nothing wrong with using it to support valid points... and I'll die on this hill! Thank you for validating my point.
Excellent post, by the way! You have an enviable command of English.
I agree with you, Uly. I'm all for those embracing gender neutrality, but I think the way it's used here is distracting. Also, I don’t think anyone would have called you unethical for consulting a dictionary, a thesaurus, Grammarly, the Chicago Manual of Style, and other resources.
Out of curiosity, I asked ChatGPT to reword these sentences so that they isn’t used. It suggested rewording the text to avoid using pronouns, as follows:
I just got off a call with a friend of mine, and damn, I got emotional. This friend is a huge fan of AI—the perfect representation of a modern business stakeholder, the kind who sees AI as a magic wand that can do everything.
For the AI skeptics, if you ask good questions, you’ll be impressed by the quality of the answers AI gives you. Otherwise, if you feed it garbage, you’ll get garbage —Garbage in, Garbage out.
@SEQ77 Very well put!
@Coral I like your comparison with a vending machine — the worst is when you pay for your Maltesers and they get stuck inside, you don't even get Doritos as a consolation :) I agree that AI is here to stay and we have no other choice but to adapt. That's exactly why I believe that we need real human expertise more than ever.
@Nemvagok Beautifully said! 👏
@CocoPop Thanks a lot for all your help — corrections, comments, and kind words! I'm truly surprised you were called unethical for consulting AI.
To me, the question is not really whether to use it or not, but rather how to use it in a balanced way — to enhance your work but not to outsource your thinking in the name of productivity or, as @Nemvagok put it, not to become "lazy and dumb" :) Btw, here is an interesting study on the effects of using AI assistant when writing essays on cognitive functions and learning: https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.08872
@SEQ77 Thank you! Asking good questions truly is a crucial skill — both with AI and with humans.