Are you actively trying to learn to use AI to complement your work? Or are you trying to learn more unique skills that cannot be easily replicated by AI?

The regular daily prompt was something about a big risk that I haven’t taken yet, but since I answered that one a while back, I decided to fill in with my own. It did pop up in the back of my mind again, though, when I stumbled upon the one I added above while scouting for a new idea.

First, I’d like to mention that I have already dabbled with AI a bit for different reasons, but I haven’t made the leap to trying to use it for my own benefit. I’ve learned a smidge about how they work, and how they’re being used in different industries, but shelved the idea of leaning on them when what I saw was giving me an icky feeling (at the time).

One of the things I did was mess around with ChatGPT a little to try and see what kinds of information it had access to from Dungeons and Dragons so that I could try to possibly use it as a little Assistant DM (should I ever actually get a group together and play). This was early on in my research for trying to understand the hype, learning a bit about Large Language Models, and I kind of liked how things were turning out. It could pull up all kinds of information on short notice and offer explanations (to the best of its ability) on how certain things worked or where the information was sourced so that I might look into it myself to confirm.

After tinkering with it for a bit I got the idea to see what kinds of ideas it could string together to help me from a creative writing aspect. Then I got cold feet. I put that idea aside for a bit, and went on my way. Not long thereafter was when I stumbled upon an issue that was springing up in the indie-publishing world for fiction authors. Apparently, the market, especially on Kindle, had been getting flooded with stories. What tipped me off were comments and posts on different social media sites and on reddit that all mentioned how they felt similar, and were poorly constructed and almost rushed. People started putting two and two together, and realized that it had to be AI-related. This gave me some serious pause. Several months went by and I saw someone comment about how people were being caught and screened for trying to submit AI built manuscripts to traditional publishers, which caused these reviewers and some editors to start including phrasing concerning these kinds of manuscripts. So, while I didn’t get my hopes up to begin with, it did severely stifle the idea of using AI for creative writing purposes.

At least, until someone pointed out (it was probably Brandon Sanderson, since I listen to a lot of his podcasts and such) that it’s still up to the writer (me) to actually sift through the AI responses and craft things. I don’t HAVE to use exactly what is generated. Which just took me back to my original idea for the D&D stuff. I can use it for ideas, maybe throw in a more developed prompt to see what gets churned out, and then further customize everything (or even throw things out entirely!) So, I may circle back around to trialing it at a later date if I feel like I’m getting stuck. For now, though, I’m still running on my own brain.

One other area I dabbled with AI, actually very recently, was with coding/scripting for work. I didn’t actually use my work device or any sort of sensitive data, so as to avoid risks, but I was stuck trying to figure out a way to make something work in Microsoft Power BI for some reporting I work on. I wanted to try converting DAX scripting into M code to see if it might help improve processing data from a massively customized date table I had constructed. So, I plugged in the idea to a different AI service via my phone, and tried to work with what was given back. Sadly, I couldn’t make it do what I wanted, so it was a bust. I’ve not looked toward AI for work purposes since then, and doubtful I will again since I really should be developing that knowledge and skill set on my own and not relying on AI to do it for me (or else why bother having me do the work at all?)

At this point, all things considered, I still haven’t messed with AI as much as some people, and I don’t know how soon I’ll get back to dabbling with it for creative writing purposes or as a sort of Assistant DM, but I know I’m definitely not intending to use it for work again any time soon.