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AI and Your Daily Life

A new artificial intelligence feature recently rolled out by Google is under fire for giving out inaccurate information. Listeners call in to share how they use AI in their daily lives and how they navigate some of its pitfalls.

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer, on WNYC, and we're going to end the show today with a call in, as we often do. Today, on the question, how have you been using artificial intelligence in your life? Do you use it in your workplace? Do you use it in your personal life? Has using AI expanded your capacity to tackle life's daily tasks or to do something really big and audacious? Have you encountered any downsides? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, as we're segueing from your experiences with MDMA to your experiences with artificial intelligence,

212-433-9692, call or text. It's been about a year and a half since OpenAI made artificial intelligence accessible to the general public, and since then, some of the largest tech companies, among them, Microsoft, X, Google, have entered the race to build the best AI products for businesses, consumers, and governments. As a result, it seems like AI is getting embedded into every aspect of our lives. While AI tools come with flaws, you can't rely on AI for accuracy, originality, or ethics, just little problems.

They used the word hallucination. It didn't come up in our MDMA segment on psychedelics, but hallucinations is an AI thing too, when AI gets it wrong. This technology can at least take on some of the everyday tasks that used to take up so much of our time as individuals, or businesses' time. As businesses, as organizations that serve clients, obviously, there are a lot of downsides in the employment sector. AI is replacing people at an alarming rate in some sectors of the economy.

Maybe that's your experience with AI. You got laid off and you got replaced by a robot. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Are you using it to plan meals, plan vacation itineraries, plan weddings, plan major financial decisions? I've seen all of these referred to. One of the central concerns surrounding the proliferation of AI is its capacity to replace humans in the workplace.

A little more on that, from coding websites to creating animations out of text prompts, AI is rapidly disrupting how we work and making many jobs obsolete in the process, but we're not completely there yet. While AI still needs people to feed its tasks, we're learning how to incorporate it into our everyday work, as individuals, at our jobs as well. It's complicated, which is why we're talking about it.

Listeners, has your field of work been influenced by artificial intelligence? Are you and your colleagues using AI to perform key aspects of your jobs nowadays? Do you use AI to write emails, complete Excel sheets, organize your meeting calendar? How much of your workload is now managed using AI? Do you see a future where AI replaces you in your particular job? You can call on that too. 212-433-WNYC.

It's in our education system. More examples, OpenAI published a video recently, of Sal Khan-- You know Khan Academy? All of those videos that teach people out of the formal school process how to do stuff, and his son, Imran, using the latest version of ChatGPT, to solve trigonometry problems. In a survey conducted by best colleges, 56% of college students admitted to using AI on assignments or exams.

That same survey found that 54% of students consider using AI tools on college course works to be cheating. Nearly 80% of students have had conversations in classrooms about the use and ethics of AI in relation to their schoolwork. In your everyday personal life, in your professional life at work, in the context of you as a student or a teacher, anyone in the educational system, call and tell us how you're using AI, or how AI is using you. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Call or text, and we'll take your calls and texts right after this.

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer, on WNYC. All right. How are you using AI, or how is AI using you? Anna, in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Anna.

Anna: Hi. Brian, I work at the CUNY City Tech Writing Center, and this semester, we used AI to develop art and video for a professionalization workshop for students, so kind of a more positive view.

Brian Lehrer: What does that mean? Explain it a little.

Anna: [laughs] We Used AI technology to have the technology create these videos for this interactive workshop, which allowed us to circumvent a lot of budgetary restraints and certain things that would prevent us from making a more engaging workshop experience for students. We had a really great response, and it was, I think, very important for students to see faculty and staff using AI in a more positive way, rather than some of the things you were addressing before, about using AI for assignments, plagiarism, and things like that.

It was an overall very, very positive experience this semester.

Brian Lehrer: In the educational context, are you afraid it could replace you?

Anna: [laughs] Well, we developed the workshop. The only thing we used the AI for was these creative artistic things that we didn't have the funding to pay for in our very small, underfunded program.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you, Anna. Thank you for calling in. Tony, in Suffolk County, you're on WNYC. Hi, Tony.

Tony: Hi. How are you doing?

Brian Lehrer: Good. How are you doing? What you got with AI?

Tony: Good. I am a art college professor over in Dix Hills. We used AI, I used it with my students to help combat the artist's biggest problem-- well, at least arts students, which is a paralysis with decision, decision paralysis. They were using it to come up with the prompts, to work with their art, to come up with something to draw, or to work in their 3D environments. I feel that AI was really helpful in showing that.

They don't need to get bogged down and coming up with something to practice with, when they can just get past that part and get to the actual work.

Brian Lehrer: Like organizing. It's almost like what I said in the intro about it, Excel spreadsheets, or just organizing external aspects to the work so that they could focus on the work?

Tony: Yes. I think the hardest thing is, artists try to be all parts of the process, and sometimes, you don't-- Perfect example is, I teach visual artists, they're not writers, so it could be not fair for me to expect them to become writers and to write a script for them to practice their animation on, or to come up with a list of prompts to build 3D environments based around [unintelligible 00:08:16]. That's not what they're trying to learn.

Brian Lehrer: Right. I see.

Tony: It was a way for us to combat that decision paralysis or writer's block, and just have them get to work. I think it was very useful. A lot of them took it with stride.

Brian Lehrer: Tony, thank you very much for your call. AI versus decision paralysis. Casey, in Ditmas Park, you're on WNYC. Hi, Casey.

Casey: Hi, Brian. I'm your biggest fan, and really happy to talk about the use of AI in my creative industry.

Brian Lehrer: Great. Which is?

Casey: One of the interesting things that's emerged is what I would describe as generational warfare, with the older generation of people in my office wanting to adopt AI. We hire a lot of artists and writers. They are desperate to stop filling those invoices, whereas the younger generation of people, millennials and Gen Z, are really protective of those artists, so it's caused a lot of strife.

Brian Lehrer: How does AI replace human artists, if we think of artists as people being involved in original creative work? Take us further into it.

Casey: Sure. So much of the original creative work that I do is in creating characters and designs. That's something that the older generation in my office sees as easy to outsource to a computer. Whereas the younger generation, we work with artists who make that their whole life, their whole profession, they're experts in a way that AI cannot be.

Brian Lehrer: Generational warfare. Who wins? Is it ultimately the owners, who have to manage the purse strings?

Casey: I think it's a truce right now. We've sold the owners on the idea that if we go out to our buyers with AI art, that could leave a really sour taste in their mouths. What we've said is, "Look, it doesn't matter how we personally feel about this. What matters is our image in the world." That's been our best argument to keep hiring artists.

Brian Lehrer: Casey, thank you very much. Thanks a lot. Some of the texts that are coming in after those last few calls, listener writes, "The way I cringe, as an artist, when I hear we used AI for creative artistic things." Another listener writes, "I have used ChatGPT to ask for relationship advice. It generally gives very safe answers." Someone else cites a New York Times article, "See this week's New York Times Magazine, Ethicist column, Kwame Appiah regarding-- Can I use AI to grade my students' papers when I forbid them from using AI to create the papers?"

I didn't read that column yet, and the writer doesn't answer it, but it's certainly an interesting question. Let's see. Lynn, in Park Slope, you're on WNYC. Hi, Lynn. Another CUNY professor, right?

Lynn: Yes, I am. I teach typography at a CUNY school, and the final project had to have a cover that dealt not only with typography, but a good image. One of my students used an AI-generated image, which had people in profile. The faces were almost unrecognizable as faces, and the hands had six fingers.

Brian Lehrer: What's the moral of the story?

Lynn: The moral of the story is we're not there yet, and it's even scarier for me when you get there, when the images they come up with are good, because as your last caller cited, what happens to the artist? Even the bad images that are out there now, they're coming from somewhere, and the bits and pieces that are being taken, those original people who created it originally, they're not being compensated. I'm all for real art, not AI-generated.

Brian Lehrer: Lynn, thank you very much. Nick in Corning, New York. You're on WNYC. Hi, Nick.

Nick: Hey, Brian. I'm excited. I'm wearing my Brian Lehrer baseball cap while I say this. I'm a super fan.

Brian Lehrer: [unintelligible 00:12:54]

Nick: [chuckles] I've been using AI for about two years, and I am a scientist. I use it to have an internal conversation with myself sometimes, just to remind myself of some fundamental mechanisms, or maybe something theoretical or mathematical that could apply to some of my work. Like your last caller said, I think it's very important to double-check and take it with a grain of salt.

AI, I think, is really good to have a conversation with, to become thoughtful about, and engage, but it's not really a great tool to just say, "Hey, I need you to write something for me," or, "Hey, draw this for me," or, "Go do this," and be an agent, without checking or without enriching your own productivity from. I completely agree with that sentiment. I used to be a tutor, and I have some people that come to me and ask math, chemistry, or whatever questions, and I say, "This sounds like a perfect opportunity to use AI, to help yourself learn these kinds of--"

Whether it's memorization, critical thinking, or a concept in STEM. The moral of the story for me is, AI is really nice if you can prompt it and converse with it, rather than just tell it to do something and hope that you can get away with being lazy.

Brian Lehrer: Well said. Nick, thank you very much. We have time for one more. We had a couple of college professors on. Here's a college student, I think, Eric in Suffolk County. Eric, you're on WNYC. Hi there, you've got our last minute. Eric? Do I have your name right? Uh-oh. There you go. Oh, you're breaking up. Give it a shot. Let's see. Is it stable now? Try one more time.

Eric: Hello, I'm currently a college student-- [sound cut]

Brian Lehrer: I think a different kind of technology needs a fix. Well, it's not the way I wanted to end, but when you're out of time, you're out of time. Thank you, everybody, for calling and sharing your experiences with Artificial Intelligence, good, bad, and mixed. That's The Brian Lehrer Show for today, produced by Mary Croke, Lisa Allison, Amina Srna, Carl Boisrond, and Esperanza Rosenbaum.

Zach Gottehrer-Cohen edits our National Politics podcast. Our intern this term is Ethlyn Daniel-Scherz. Megan Ryan is the head of live radio. We've had Juliana Fonda and Milton Ruiz, as usual, at the audio controls. Stay tuned for All Of It.

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