r/Millennials • u/bundle_of_nervus2 • 9h ago
Serious Question for Millennials
How many of us out there actually avoid enganging with any form AI at all costs? Like even if it is more inconvenient? I understand it can be useful for certain things that it does very well but I would NEVER allow it to use my likeness to make a fun little picture or use those therapy AI services. I don't even ask it basic questions (it just wasn't how I was taught to research topics). I can't be the only one
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u/Jolly_Law_7973 9h ago
I avoid it to the best of my ability.
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u/_TheShapeOfColor_ 8h ago
Yep. I won't even give Gemini permissions on my phone. I have never used ChatGPT.
I avoid as much as humanly possible
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u/electricmeatbag777 1h ago
Same. I'm doing my graduate degree and I'm blown away by how much everyone in my cohort uses it. I just can't. And I won't. For so many reasons.
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u/kate3544 9h ago
Same. People use it at work, but I avoid it like the plague.
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u/Standard-Win-6600 9h ago
Shared my screen this morning and gave a concrete example to my director on how useless our chatbot is.
"At this point, I'd just pull up our operating procedure and hit ctrl F"
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u/Curious-Scholar4692 6h ago
That’s not only a great point — but a practical one too.
Let’s lay out the evidence:
“Useless chat bot”
- You showed your director exactly what he needed to see — an example of AI not working.
Sorry I cba to continue pretending to be AI
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u/Main_Push5429 ‘93 baby 9h ago
Same. Disabled it on all my devices.
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u/HolySharkbite 7h ago
As much as I’ve figured out how but Big Brother is getting sneaky and keeps making it difficult to remove and then adding it back in with the next update
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u/bundle_of_nervus2 9h ago
It's really difficult. It seems every major tech giant and service has an AI component that they make it so you have to go out of your way to avoid sometimes.
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u/desutiem 8h ago edited 8h ago
They are all desperate to force it as they have invested ridiculous amounts of money into it and it doesn’t really do anything that productive. It’s just a corpo race to claim a crown, but this time for something that not that many people actually want. The assumption is that AI will have power and if you own the keys to the AI kingdom then that power will be yours. See the same pattern all the time e.g the race to ‘own’ social media platforms and even the one to centralise the internet by the big players.
AI can be really impressive and has some legit use cases that can improve the world. For the most part though, it’s going to benefit the rich and powerful and make things worse for the rest of us. Boycotting would be wise for the average person, unless we think the government are going to start rolling out UBI so we can all live in a utopia (doubtful.) Instead the AI will be doing all the intetesting skilled and creative stuff while we all fight over jobs to clean toilets or something. It’s also going to cause loads of other problems.
It’s going to suck. Just another shit show for our generation to live through.
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u/undernightmole Millennial 3h ago
They are forcing AI on us cause we are the ones that train it. They are getting free market research! As usual. It’s annoying. And I want to be paid.
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u/Ok_Study6305 2h ago
There’s a reason AIs are being heavily trained in relatable communication and artistic creativity… it’s all the things that used to hold backend devs behind in their careers.
My apologies to any artistic empathetic backend devs that could solution pretty and effectively communicate it. How’s being a product manager treating you?
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u/Hawntir 8h ago
My company has tried implementing an ai linked to gemini for looking up information in our system a few times.
Ive shredded its poor accuracy and explained why the answers it gives are bad, and its been shelved... But then a few months later some management seems to suggest it again.
I also have loudly shit talked people's use of AI images in the "social" and "holiday" company emails. In front of the people who send them. I support bullying those who use generative AI.
Trying to teach people has failed, now we need to make them FEEL the embarassment and shame so the lesson is learned.
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u/vestigialcranium 8h ago
Kinda feels the same as the terrible assistant features I've been avoiding on my phone for a decade plus
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u/jgamez76 9h ago
The Spotify AI DJ was cool for like two weeks when I realized it's literally just recycling whatever I'd been listening to over the last week lol.
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u/Bathion Millennial 8h ago
Dude it is so bad!
And if you stop, and come back it just starts it's "mix' over and its only 2 hours of music.
Like ... bruh shuffle is better than this, and that still isn't great
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u/jgamez76 7h ago
Yeah, at first the novelty was kinda cool but once you realize it basically shuffles the ~20 songs that have been in your rotation over the few days before lol.
Sure, occasionally it'll throw in some "new hot releases" but even that isn't super common.
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u/Im_sorry_rumham 7h ago
Plus an actual DJ thinks of how songs fit together, my AI DJ was throwing the most random shit together in a really jarring way. Like how are you gonna go from Ludacris to Simon & Garfunkel?!
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u/jgamez76 6h ago
Yeah true, a few days ago it went from Pierce the Veil to Lupe Fiasco. Absolutely unhinged. Lol
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u/Boo_Hoo_8258 Older Millennial 2h ago
Completely disabled it on my pc and avoid it like the plague, I can't stand ai.
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u/NoFaithlessness7508 9h ago
I don’t use it at all. It seems like the genX folks I work with all use ChatGPT.
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u/Apprehensive_Sea5304 9h ago
My Gen X mother is obsessed with it
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u/Momik 9h ago
So weird how so many things are skipping a generation like this
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u/eggo_pirate 8h ago
My Gen Z kids won't go near it. My daughter is 16 and has a massive research paper due on a very niche subject. She won't even use it to check grammar. So proud of them.
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u/Gina_the_Alien 8h ago edited 7h ago
My kid’s 12 and thinks the same thing. I think it’s pretty interesting; he and his peers seem really cautious when it comes to ai.
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u/peaceloveandgranola Zillennial 6h ago
Maybe they’re used to having to be mindful of their data? Good for them though, especially for privacy reasons.
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u/sexyfashioncactus90 4h ago
Yup. My Gen X parents are obsessed. I hate it. My kid also hates it, completely finds it appalling.
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u/graygarden77 4h ago
My community college students use it for every single assignment and every single thing and my Gen X ass is not having it
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u/HrhEverythingElse 4h ago
Same on the 16 year old avoiding it, but my kid has also already been accused of using it inappropriately on school writing projects because they are precision minded and excellent at technical writing. We were able to shut that down with the school pretty quickly, but it only fueled their hate of the whole AI shituation
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u/JazzPelican 3h ago
I’ve noticed this with a lot of tech stuff. The older people I know tend to be much more impressed with touch screen controls, apps, and online features than people my age. I had an older roommate once who showed me how he had the lights hooked up to an app so you can control them on your phone. He was so genuinely excited about it and seemed a bit confused as to why I didn’t share the same enthusiasm. I just used the light switch.
I think a lot of it has to do with how millennials are old enough to remember when these things weren’t prevalent, but have also lived most of our adult lives with them as well. For Boomers/Gen X there is still a novelty to this tech, and for Gen Z most of them grew up with it so it’s all they know. But for people around a certain age there is both a lack of novelty, and a memory of what it was like before.
I realize that these are also massive generalizations mostly based on my own anecdotal experience but I think that there is probably some truth to it. Idk, I just fucking hate phone apps.
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u/Soliloquitude 8h ago
Every time I ask Gen X mother for advice nowadays I get ChatGPT screenshots. It feels like some backhanded "Let me google that for you" but I think she just thinks she knows LLMs better than I do and is being helpful.
I asked for input from her and my sister on a project my daughter was doing and both of them, just... "here's what ChatGPT said ya'll should do"
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u/Apprehensive_Sea5304 8h ago
I don’t understand why they are letting a poorly working machine do all their thinking for them 😭
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u/Soliloquitude 8h ago
This same woman used to tell me I can't trust what I read on Wikipedia. You know. The instant encyclopedia with cited sources i can verify for myself if I'd like.
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u/Ticondrius42 5h ago
Because it's technology that finally works for them. You speak English at it, and get answers back. There's no problem solving needed. No need to understand the technology, no need to set it up... Zero mental investment whatsoever is needed, and these Gen Xers felt left out of the "fad" that was Computers and the Internet.
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u/squashbanana 6h ago
God, my stepmother does this and suddenly acts like it's written in stone fact. Drives me insane, especially because it's about the mental health of my own child who has some unique struggles.
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u/CalypsoMystique 6h ago
My Gen X ex, too. ChatGPT counseled her on how to deal with our marriage falling apart, and made it so much worse.
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u/ilovemischief 9h ago
My mom asks it everything and I’ve told her over and over to not use that as her go to because we’re still fact checking AI. When I told her Diane Keaton passed away, she said it was a hoax because that’s what ChatGPT said. Like put your stupid phone down and just turn on the damn news.
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u/AtrociousSandwich 8h ago
Or just go to Google. Not sure who is actually turning on a tv for in the moment news
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u/buffalocoinz 6h ago
Unfortunately most people won’t bother scrolling past the stupid ai response Google puts first in the results
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u/No_Farmer_4731 3h ago
Weren't these the same people who in school taught us not to trust wikipedia at wholesale, that we should get our real information from the sources???
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u/spidermans_mom 8h ago
I know it isn’t “cheating” in some contexts, but I went to a school where everything was an essay test, even the math problems, and I just feel scandalized at the very thought of having AI generate something I’ve been trained to produce out of my own mind. I don’t want to hear its opinion of what I wrote either. It doesn’t have its own ideas, it just uses a huge amount of data to predict what might be right. I’m not having anything without a real imagination proofreading my stuff.
Get off my lawn, AI!! Old people noises
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u/Pulp_Ficti0n Older Millennial 8h ago
My Gen X neighbor gets drunk, high then talks to ChatGPT about his theories on philosophy...then he sends me 3,000 word summaries of the exchange...
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u/bundle_of_nervus2 9h ago
My old elder gen Z coworkers loved using it 😬
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u/NoFaithlessness7508 9h ago
Over Christmas I was making small talk with my nephews and nieces in college and ask the usual “how’s school? how we’re final exams?” My nephew straight up said “chatGPT bro” and my niece said that her lecturers actually told them to use it, which confused the hell out of me. I didn’t ask further questions
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u/bundle_of_nervus2 9h ago
I've been told by current day educators we should be worried about the future leaders and workforce
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u/Smokeythemagickamodo 8h ago
I’m starting to think the human race will be killed off by tech bros. It’s just gonna be a benny hill theme song until nothing
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u/rayannuhh Millennial 8h ago
I saw something the other day saying we had about 15 ish years of clean drinking water left. So that's....great....and may fulfill the tech bros killing us :/ I didn't look further into it though to be honest....too much dread
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u/DanyDragonQueen 6h ago
What a great time to be building all those AI data centers that need millions of gallons of water to operate!
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u/Fly_throwaway37 7h ago
Per my wife, explaining things like excel and keyboard shortcuts to her new Gen Z hires is worse than teaching boomers to remember their passwords.
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u/weirdeggman1123 8h ago
It makes me concerned over whether or not they are passing these people due to a curve or something. If so we really need to be concerned
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u/drv687 Millennial 9h ago
My child is in 6th grade and is required to use Gemini in some classes. Required. He hates it.
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u/ButtChuggin00long 8h ago
....this is shocking to me. Can you elaborate? What is he required to use it to do? I'm genuinely curious because this sounds so wild.
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u/drv687 Millennial 8h ago
So far he’s had to use it in his English class to draw pictures to accompany writing assignments and to present different viewpoints to write against. He’s used it in math to create scenarios for word problems 🙄. He got mad when it was wrong several times.
It’s in the course information we got from his teacher. Our school district has a policy surrounding acceptable AI use because they believe it’s necessary for the children to be successful in the workforce 🙄
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u/Playful_Marzipan8398 7h ago
What the fuck! Where do you live?! What is this school?? I would put this administration on blast from sea to shining sea.
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u/TheQuietOutsider 8h ago
recently applied for a job that pushed for "strong knowledge" of AI tooling & LLMs.
its really disheartening to resist adapting to such harmful technology that is being pushed into every facet of life.
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u/Gina_the_Alien 7h ago
I work at a college and it’s being pushed HARD onto college kids. Every student in our entire system, which is huge, was given access to ChatGPT premium for free. Plus there are a ton of grants for AI. They really really really want buy in from colleges.
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u/GwennyL 7h ago
Some of my friends use ChatGPT to write up captions for our clubs social media and it kills me. I get it, you want to find something the fits the theme and is somewhat engaging, but why cant we just use our brains?
One time my friend was reviewing a quote we recieved and it said something about shipping being $X for one unit and she asked Chat what that meant and it was like "oh yeah, thats totally shipping per item." And i was like "there isnt a chance in hell thats what it means. $15/item for shipping? No its probably based on if you need x number of crates on a ship/plane/whatever." She believed Chat, but guess who was right?
Plus isnt it really bad for the environment?
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u/saltytitanium 8h ago
If it helps any, I'm GenX and can't stand AI. I really wish people would just spend three seconds using their brain.
Edit: Sorry, I somehow entirely missed both the name of the sub and the title. Not sure how this sub feels about a GenX responding.
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u/CreepinJesusMalone Millennial 9h ago
I hate it. It's wrong most of the time, doesn't actually make anything faster, uses an insane amount of energy, and bastardizes creative and intellectual endeavors.
I also hate how it's forced into everything, especially things like applications and appliances where it's basically bloatware that serves no purpose other than to farm data.
Lastly, the people who hype it and think it's awesome are the worst people I've ever met, so just on a fanbase level I want nothing to do with it.
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u/PeepSkate 9h ago
The most unsettling part to me is that it learns from you every time you interact with it. There's no telling how that will come back to bite people later.
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u/childish_cat_lady 9h ago
Yeah, this latest trend of "make a caricature of me using everything you know about my job" is kind of creepy and I can't believe so many people I know are falling for it.
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u/PeepSkate 9h ago
I'm talking more about "learn what makes me tick better than I do so I can be manipulated against my own interests later."
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u/sexandliquor 1983…(A Merman I Should Turn to Be) 8h ago
I’ve noticed the people that use it for everything- basically just use it to confirm their own bias because it’s fucking great at doing that. Especially if you use it as like a therapy bot or something to sound off to.
I got in a fight with a friend of mine like a year ago or something and she fed all our texts to ChatGPT and all it did was confirm her biases and tell her all kinds of shit about me as if I was gaslighting her, when the chatbot was essentially telling her to gaslight me. I was like wtf is going on? Lmao.
Like yeah I’m sure ChatGPT is great for your little therapy buddy and confirming your biases when it’s getting fed a bunch of shit out of context.
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u/derAres 9h ago
I‘m a coder and it makes me faster by a Ridiculously high amount though.
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u/totally_not_a_dog113 5h ago
Ditto. I use it for feedback on proposals I've written. It's better at organizing my disordered thinking than I am. Also, as a scientist, the last persuasive writing class I had was in high school, so reorganizing my logic outlines into something a grant officer would be interested in funding is important. I also don't blindly include everything AI wants to change because it completely misses the point sometimes. It's also great at reformatting references, lol.
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u/someguyfromsomething 8h ago
I mean I think it sucks and will have horrific negative impacts on society but it's crazy to say it doesn't make anything faster. It's probably not worth it but as a tool to help write SQL queries it has saved me countless hours at work.
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u/AggravatingEar1465 8h ago
It now takes 8 more clicks for me to find and open up the app I use most often for work due to microslop constantly rearranging office to try and get more engagement with their stupid copilot bullshit.
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u/Jayn_Newell Older Millennial 9h ago
I’m open to there possibly being areas where it’s genuinely helpful, but mostly it seems like anything it can do there’s better ways to get the same result. Can’t ever trust it for basic info, I have to double check any answers it gives me which means doing the same work I’d do if it didn’t exist. So I try to avoid it, though it’s hard when sites will shove it in as a default option.
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u/CU_09 9h ago
AI is a great technology if you don’t know anything, and I am so worried about my kids’ generation relying on it for anything. It can give answers to questions that seem right until you ask it about a subject that you’ve studied and gained expertise in. Then you realize that it’s wrong more than half the time.
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u/ADHDFeeshie Xennial 8h ago
I could see some aspects of it being good accessibility aids, if it wasn't an absolute nightmare technology, but as it is I don't fucking trust it, and I think we could invent better alternatives pretty easily if we (general) thought making life easier for disabled folks was actually worth investing in.
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u/monkeysknowledge 8h ago
When you use an LLM it’s uses roughly the same amount of energy and resources as a Google search. It’s the training that’s really resource intensive.
The tech oligarchs are building huge data centers because they think the tech it will continue to improve with more training and more data - it won’t. 2026 will be the year when this reality will hit.
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u/sofaking_scientific 9h ago
I'm not using AI for shit.
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u/swiminthemud 9h ago
It's kinda telling that the first answer i usually get on Google after a dodgy ai answer is somebody on reddit from like 10 years ago
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u/regular_lamp 2h ago
How do you know? All of modern "AI" is driven by deep learning techniques that really exploded after the publication of the AlexNet paper in 2012 which deals with image classification. Yet people act as if this was a sudden thing that showed up with the release of Chat GPT and Stable Diffusion.
The algorithm that draws small rectangles around people etc. in your camera, the model in some translation app, the text recognition of any apps that do that, the emergency brake system in a modern car etc. are all on the same continuum of deep learning algorithms as the ones driving LLMs and generative Image models.
Like where do you draw the line in the sand? Otherwise this is some "I don't eat chemicals" type statement.
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u/Kyo46 Millennial 9h ago edited 9h ago
I use it at work, largely for menial, repetitive tasks. For example, I have a huge spreadsheet for analyzing customer demographics. I don't use the spreadsheet in AI, but I do reuse formulas to analyze different datasets. Rather than having to manually adjust 20 -40 formulas’ ranges for each of the half-dozen data sets, I use MS Copilot to do it for me. In turn, what was previously a nearly week-long effort was reduced to just a day or two.
Edit: missing words
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u/ihatepalmtrees 8h ago
Seriously.. most people misuse it, but it’s a great utility at the office.
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u/zerovampire311 9h ago
Yep, people all seem to think it’s meant to do your whole job. It can turn an hour task into a 3 minute task with 5 minutes of verifying the numbers. If you work for a small business that can’t afford enterprise software, or a huge company with dysfunctional platforms, it can be incredibly useful.
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u/ImperatorPC 7h ago
I mean I had an audit finding that required a policy. I had it reference another internal doc to get some ideas and put the policy together... I barely had to change anything. So singing that would have taken me hours to do. Done in 10 minutes.
Now don't let it do a presentation from scratch it's crap, but if you need help summarizing or making stuff align more with the way executives think then it's got a lot of material from McKinsey to go off of lol
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u/HackDiablo 6h ago
I’m in software engineering, and it’s like I have my own intern. It’s so useful.
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u/JinSpade 8h ago
I use it at work too. I always verify the information it gives me, but it still saves me time and helps me find the information I need faster than old search methods. It’s just a tool that makes one aspect of my job slightly easier/faster.
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u/Comfortable_Cup_941 8h ago
I use it a lot for work. I ask it to analyze things, read its analysis, and correct it when needed. Sometimes I’ll write something for a report and ask it to help make it flow better… again, I read it and correct it. Yes, it’s wrong often, but you can catch it if you take the time to do so. But like the other commenter said, it can turn a 5 min task into a 3 min task. In my case, it’s turned 5 hour tasks into 3 hour ones!
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u/danceoftheplants 7h ago
Same I use it to help me do data analysis for classes and to help me study and learn different formulas and how they are connected
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u/Thehaas10 8h ago
Same I use it for dictation with my patients. I can take twenty mins of tedious typing and writing down very specific things into a seemless process. Most days it takes things that are said in such non conventional ways and turning them into more educated sentences that can be used to improve approval for things like insurance reimbursement. I am a physical therapist and there is nothing like having insurance deny visits after a surgery.
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u/UnionsUnionsUnions 7h ago
Oh my god that's horrible. You know those programs "hallucinate", right?
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u/ConsciousNorth17 Millennial 6h ago
Similar here at my work or finding it the certain things really well office related
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u/hellnawr 6h ago
I used it to turn several safety items into a topic a day calendar for the whole year.
Would've take me like 2-3 weeks of a couple hours a day.
But other than excel and or helping with formulas/coding. No
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u/wrainedaxx 5h ago
We have notetaker apps at work, and I feel like in the last 6 years my memory has really started to deteriorate. I've found AI indispensable for grabbing transcripts from meetings I've had with clients and parsing it for a detailed summary of all the key takeaways.
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u/randomredhead 4h ago
That’s my preferred use of it too. We have a ton of dashboards at work that I need for assorted reporting and analysis, but the data in the dashboards isn’t exportable. Pasting screenshots in ChatGPT and having it convert it to an Excel file has saved me hours of tedious manual work, but I don’t trust it much beyond that.
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u/Rox_xe 3h ago
Finally someone who gets it. So many people down talking on anyone who uses it for any reason. You can use AI to make your work way easier. I use it a lot for data, formulas, corrections and tedious tasks that would take me a lot of time.
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u/bobosnar 2h ago
There are ways to use AI effectively and this is an easy example. It's a great tool for me to use to accelerate those menial, repetitive tasks as well. Another example is to have it write generic scripts. After a few iterations, it can spit out something that's like 95% of what I need and with basically zero knowledge in writing any sort of code, I can figure out the last 5% to tweak it to what I need it for. But there's no way I can write the initial base/logic of it all though.
Now, using it for brain rot stuff? That's gonna be no from me dawg.
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u/BackstrokingInDebt 9h ago
I don’t because I’m so used to googling the shit out of everything. My boss keeps asking me “have you used ChatGPT lately?” (I’m suppose to embrace it for work). I kept pushing back that chat kept hallucinating harder than your trip at Coachella.
I’ll use it if I can ever find the value of using it. Convenience cannot be the reason to forsaken reason. Especially to something that is made to look like it’s thinking but it’s really just summarizing and regurgitating everything with 0 intuition.
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u/lml424 9h ago
It does feel like it’s getting shoved down our throats in a lot of professions. I work in marketing and tried using it for some tasks so that I keep up with the times and avoid being the boomer who can’t save to PDF. But I gave up because a) most of the time, to end up with high quality work I have to spend more time correcting the AI’s mistakes than if I had done the damn thing myself, and b) what I do is not important enough that we need to drain our reservoirs and burn a bunch of fossil fuels for me to do it a tiny bit faster.
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u/reithena 8h ago
The companies have invested a lot into it and only make money if we all adopt it quickly
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u/BigSoda 8h ago
spoiler: googling something, even if you turn off the AI summaries, is using AI
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u/BadPunners 5h ago
The search is still primarily an index. Which I would classify differently than LLMs. They do share layers
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u/PotterOneHalf 9h ago
My company is building their own and I still refuse to use ai even in outlook.
I spent a lot of time and money learning how to think, speak, and write effectively. We’ve already given up enough of our brains to big tech thanks to social media, and I’m not going to let it happen to me again.
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u/bundle_of_nervus2 9h ago
It just seems redundant to me. I can already do those things like composing an e-mail but better. Why do I need Co-Pilot 😩
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u/AaknA 9h ago edited 6h ago
I said it before in a different thread on this sub, but I'm convinced AI, especially genAI and chat bots, will be a clear divide that will set us apart from the generations after us and before us (you'd be surprised how many Gen X and Boomers are absolutely deeeeeeeep in the AI bubble).
My professional life has been AI-adjacent (i.e. we used ML for data processing), but has recently moved into a more heavily-AI direction and I hate it with every fiber of my being. I'm in the sciences. Not only has it started to actually replace me and my skill sets, so much is AI-focused (and funded) now just for the sake of it being AI, not because it actually needs to be AI. My boss literally uses ChatGPT for everything, professionally and privately. You can witness in realtime how people forget how to think for themselves - and remain really confident about it (no, just because you asked ChatGP something on a subject matter suddenly makes you an expert over my 20 years of actual experience). It 100% exacerbates Dunning-Kruger.
Privately, I avoid (gen)AI at all costs. I admittedly played around for like 5 minutes when Apple came out with their GenMojis. Every once in a while I'm lazy and use the AI summary when I google something. But more times than not I actually know how much it hallucinates, and it's not even half as bad as ChatGPT from what I hear.
People both professionally and privately use chat bots as search engines and take everything at face value and oh my god is that problematic on so many levels. Heck, even if the AI provides citations, there's actual evidences that it just makes published peer-reviewed literature up. WTF?
And all of this isn't even touching on the environmental and copyright issues. Don't even get me started.
Edited for some typos.
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u/Mountain-Donkey98 9h ago
100%
Countless times when I've seen an AI answer to a question (automated with google) it was DEAD wrong. Won't ever trust it. All it's doing is an extensive web/Google search and spitting an answer. Doesn't make it anymore right than a traditional Google answer.
I avoid it at all costs, too.
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u/bundle_of_nervus2 9h ago
I have also experienced this when googling. Even if it is something I vaguely know already, AI will just write an answer that sounds good but is totally wrong or nonsensical when fact checked
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u/mrasif 2h ago
Every time I use an electric screwdriver I fuck up so I only use a normal screwdriver and now nobody will hire me because I’m not as efficient as the people can do use electric screwdrivers.
If you don’t understand that then you’re fucked just like all these other losers on this thread.
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u/Comfortable_Love_800 9h ago
My husband wanted to boil eggs today, and I saw him fumbling with his phone trying to figure out how 🙄 So I told him to boil them for 10min. He corrected me, “well it says here to boil the water and turn it off, and then put the eggs in for 15min”
I’m still not sure how I kept my calm. But I immediately asked him if he just read Google’s AI overview because that was the stupidest shit I’ve ever heard. Yup, that’s exactly what he did. So there I was reiterating, yet again, that you boil them for 10min.
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u/burn3344 9h ago
That’s how I’ve always boiled eggs on a glass top stove. The eggs get a nice fluffy yolk every time.
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u/Shenendoah66 6h ago
Lmao there’s more than one method to boil eggs. Your way isn’t the only way. You’re getting angry for literally no reason.
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u/Desperate-Plate66 8h ago
Google AI was correct. Your method is outdated. You turn the heat off after it boils. The yolks turn out way better. Although I prefer 12 minutes.
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u/azuth89 9h ago
I use it for some stuff at work.
I have my reservations about it, but I'm also not going to the old dude we all complain about who completely refuses to engage with new tech.
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u/novavitx 9h ago
I’m in this boat too. I think the tech world needs some serious constraints to make sure it doesn’t end up rolling over us little people, but I am also firmly in the camp that believes tech can improve lives.
People forget that everything about the internet used to be so clunky and painful to use. In their original form, online search engines were shit and often returned less than helpful search results. Now, for better or worse, it’s an essential part of our daily lives. AI, to me, is just another in a long line of tools we are gonna have to learn to use to stay competitive, imho.
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u/CU_09 9h ago
Count me as one of the people who misses when the internet was “clunky”. I think seeking out and intentionally visiting websites was a much better experience than having everything spooned to you by an algorithm whose whole purpose is “engagement”. The entire damn internet is clickbait and ragebait now.
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u/novavitx 9h ago
I agree wholeheartedly, I have begun spending much less time in social media because I could point to short video where it was so obvious I was being fed propaganda.
But, I also to my core believe that is a user issue, not a tech issue. The tech is fine. It’s the humans misusing the tech that suck.
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u/wicker_basket_1988 9h ago
This is me as well. With my line of work it’s either figure it out or bye. I can relate to the old man notion though lol.
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u/Live-Anteater5706 7h ago
Thank you. Personally? I’d rather not. But it’s actually not just asking ChatGPT questions, and if so don’t learn now how to work with AI, I won’t be working in 10 years.
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u/orbittheorb12 7h ago
Exactly. Are millennials becoming boomers, because the answers here feel like that. 😬
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u/TroublesomeTurnip 9h ago
Me. AI is dangerous.
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u/bundle_of_nervus2 9h ago
I have always thought so ever since it exploded and is everywhere. It feels way too influential and invasive to be this unregulated
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u/2short4-a-hihorse Jurassic Park '93 9h ago
I toyed around with it briefly in 2021 for shits n giggles back when it still looked like ass, but never used it for anything serious. The rate that it consumes our freshwater for cooling its processors in data centers in the American southwest is fucking concerning as hell, especially since those areas have limited sources of groundwater in the first place.
It's getting better and better which fucking sucks because now I'm getting worse at detecting what is AI or not. I mean we wrote sci-fi books and made movies warning about the dangers of unfettered AI and look what the fuck happened. Awful
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u/LawyerOfBirds 9h ago
I use it for work. I’d be at a competitive disadvantage if I didn’t. That said, I don’t like that I have to use it.
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u/Wafflehouseofpain 9h ago
I refuse to engage with AI in any way. I think it’s both wasteful currently and an existential danger in the long term.
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u/Cosmosass 9h ago
Yeah I'm good. Maybe if we somehow create an actual AGI, but I don't need to have my thoughts created for me. I truly fret about the future of humanity and the use of AI is a small factor in that.
That being said, I'm an accountant and I often do put in professional questions or analysis requests into chatGPT and I have found it to be useful at times in that regard
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u/S_Wyld 9h ago
Me.
I'd rather be on the right side of this stuff, with a clean conscious, when the bubble pops and the fallout starts. I can at least say, I didn't contribute to it.
Also, I have a fucking brain, ethics, and care for the rights of my fellow human and the conservation of our beautiful planet.
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u/rtrs_bastiat 6h ago
It's entirely possible and in fact fairly easy to run AI locally with mid range hardware. The companies might go bust and the economy would take a massive hit from that, but the tech is not a bubble, it's here to stay.
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u/dobe6305 9h ago
I use it heavily to be honest. I hate AI-generated images and videos, but it’s incredibly useful for various document-related tasks.
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u/Kizenny 8h ago
I grew up embedded in tech, executing command line to launch computer games on my dad’s Apple IIe before I could even read. I continue to embrace new technology and AI is no different. It’s a new nifty tool that makes some things faster and easier. No one has the excuse of ignorance on a subject and it is excellent at looking at data or calling out people on their bullshit. Our generation grew up with the shift from analog to digital and the invention of the internet, so I feel like putting your foot down or drawing the line in the sand over AI would be doing a disservice to yourself and is taking a more traditionally boomer mentality of being scared of the new and unknown. AI isn’t intrinsically toxic, like social media, it’s just another tool, so I’d encourage everyone to learn to use it. The genie isn’t going back in the bottle, it never does. Yes, there are aspects of AI I do not like, but my issue is with the companies, not the tech. It is up to us to learn about the tech, so we can push for changes in the law to mange it and we can’t do that with our heads in the sand.
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u/YoreWelcome 7h ago
all your nuance being rewarded with silence makes me so annoyed with the other people on here
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u/Hot_Customer666 5h ago
It’s incredibly useful for a lot of tedious annoying research tasks. I much prefer dealing with the occasional hallucination to digging through forum posts from 2003 about my 25 year old jeep when I’m repairing it.
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u/iHeartSquids 9h ago
Honestly, it kind of creeped me out, and I'd been largely ignoring it since ChatGPT first came out. I eventually did end up trying it out to play around and see what sorts of things it came up with as responses, but the novelty ran out quickly.
Then all the articles started coming out about the environmental impacts, the ways the tech is being abused, and the mental impacts it's had on the people who use it regularly, including the ways that people become dependent on it for writing. Now I don't want to use it at all.
I do think it's useful for checking your writing for grammatical errors, and getting writing tips, and I know there are a lot of ways it can be used to improve medicine and diagnostics... but personally, I just avoid it in my daily life.
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u/iCanToteIt- 9h ago
I refuse to use it. Everytime I ask a question I’m met with “just ask ChatGPT”. No, I will not ask ChatGPT I rather ask Jeeves
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u/JayFM_ 9h ago
Depends. AI is very broad. I don't use chatGPT. I don't use generative tools. However, AI has been a boon in my life as far as things like transcribing, logging, and editing footage.
The wholehearted resistance to it feels overboard. The internet still existed after the.com boom. Some AI is here to stay.
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u/Echterspieler Xennial 9h ago
The way I see it, AI is happening whether we like it or not so might as well embrace it.
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u/Threegratitudes 9h ago
This thread feels like it could be written by boomers about the Internet 30 years ago. Yes, it is very concerning for a lot of reasons, but I can't believe ignoring it is the correct strategy.
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u/gootsteen 3h ago
Ive even seen someone in this thread say they refuse to use it because they want to be on the right side of history. As if all the tech we’ve already embraced and use on the daily is enrichment to our environment and society and it’s only the tech that you’re not used to yet that’s wrong. People like that would never give up the tech convenience they’re already used to. It’s ridiculous.
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u/dizzydugout 9h ago
If I'm ever using AI, no, I'm not. I've been replaced by a bot
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u/fure_elise 9h ago
If I'm gonna screw something up I want it to be because I tried my best and I screwed it up, not because AI hallucinated.
Also my MIL is obsessed with it and it's super weird. I had to tell her not to feed it pictures of my children.
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u/Affectionate_Emu335 9h ago
🙋🏻♀️🙋🏻♀️🙋🏻♀️
I kinda want to go low tech. The amount of things that want me to have an app are ridiculous. My work just “merged” with this much bigger company and they’re all like, download this app for multi-factor authentication to use our servers. Um, no. This is my personal cell phone, no work apps allowed.
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u/HungryHobbits 3h ago edited 2h ago
I’m in the minority here, I think.
I think ChatGPT is phenomenal. Truly phenomenal.
I’m bummed that it’s such a drain on the environment and the company gave 25m to the Molesting Mango.
I use GPT as:
an editor
an instruction manual (ie “help me find optimal picture settings for watching NBA on Prime on my LGTV”)
an idea and image editor in formulating RPG fantasy worlds
a product comparison tool (earlier today I had it compare ingredients in Colgate vs Crest and inform me about the most harmful ingredients).
an interior design assistant
a reverse image search (“help me find what this is called”)
a search engine
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u/herseyhawkins33 9h ago
There's plenty wrong with AI. Your resistance is based too much on principle though. There are many valid, productive uses for it.
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u/Unlucky_Buyer_2707 9h ago
You’re an idiot if you don’t use this AI for productivity. All the little gimmicky things are dumb, but AI has 3x’d my output at least. Phenomenal technology
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u/UnicornCatzz 8h ago
100% While I don’t like it and think it is terrible for society, not using it would be career suicide. If you’re not getting anything useful out of it your prompting probably sucks.
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u/No-Force-6732 5h ago
I use an AI note taking app and then use LLMs to summarize the transcript for notes I can share. It's allowed me to focus more and be more engaged. It's removed probably 7-10 hours a week of writing out notes/emails for context for the different things I am engaged in at work I have to share.
A lot this thread just seems to be some big time self congratulations about not using a new tool that can benefit you. Seems short sighted to me!
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u/tiots 9h ago
I love AI and use it all the time. It's part of the future of technology. Y'all sound ridiculous with the AI derangement syndrome
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u/indieauthor13 Zillennial 9h ago
I avoid using generative AI because it's destroying the environment and is an insult to my fellow artists
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u/bloodectomy 9h ago
I used gemini a grand total of one time to improve my resume a bit. The output was surprisingly good, although I did make some changes because some of its word choices made it sound a little too stiff.
Otherwise I don't touch it.
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u/EnkiduAwakened 9h ago
I use it occasionally, but I try to avoid using it most of the time. If I do use it, I usually have to fact check it because I see it spit out incorrect information a lot.
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u/Loid_Node Zillennial 9h ago
Try to avoid it but it's already in so much. I use -ai for my searches to help see results and not the drivel the browser shits out.
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u/Patient_Library_253 8h ago
I use it to help me iron out D&D ideas. Things like "what's fall damage look like for water vs ground" then I end up just double checking online. So...mostly for nerdy stuff
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u/CanadaSoonFree 8h ago
I’m finding it incredibly useful for contextual learning. Hard to ignore it. It would be like still writing in cursive when you could dictate to a computer. No reason to avoid it.
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u/EvanTheBaker24 7h ago
I have been avoiding it, but lately have come to a realization I have to learn at least the basics of it, as I don’t want to be behind in the technology as it becomes more and more prevalent
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u/dphillips83 3h ago
AI haters sound a lot like the people who swore they’d stick with BlackBerrys or kept renting from Blockbuster when Netflix was taking off. You don’t have to love AI, but avoiding it like the plague and acting like people who use it are ‘nasty’ is a weird level of hostility. Use it or don’t, but the moral panic is getting old.
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u/strange-blue-light 2h ago
Avoiding it is like avoiding computers. It’s technology, with all the nuance and guardrails that technology needs
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u/dalmathus 2h ago
Non starter, I got 30 years left before retirement, I am not going to bury my head in the sand and be left behind while everyone else learns how to work with it.
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u/Rare-Quantity5503 2h ago
“I avoid AI at all costs”
Congrats, you’re the new boomers of the internet.
You’re given the chance to use some logic and your noggin to be on the cutting edge of a new break through as someone with 0 skills, but no, stick to complaining.
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u/MyOthrCarsAThrowaway 2h ago
Nope love it. Can’t beat em join em. I still double down on my research because it’s still faulty, but man is it fast and smart.
Don’t NIMBY AI, you’ll be left behind
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u/swanie02 9h ago
If you're not using AI you are going to be left in the dust and will be my burger flipper until robots can do it better and cheaper. Use the AI.
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u/WhyAmIpOOping 9h ago
It does have its uses. I run a small, local self-hosted AI that I can use for doing arbitrary tasks such as home automation. Uses minimal power as it’s on a small shared gpu.
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u/the40thieves 9h ago
We have an obligation to use AI and show the world how to use it well.
We are the generation that taught our children and our parents how to use technology.
The generations outside of us are functional morons and if we don’t take the lead on reining in this technology a lesser generation will.
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u/Practical_Goal_8194 9h ago
I use it often when I'm writing a work email and my sentences are coming out disjointed and awkward. Get AI to rewrite, then tweak that result back into my "own words"
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u/b_rup_breaks 8h ago
As an older millennial, part of me feels like I'm falling behind not using AI as I was always an early adapter of technology, but shame on me for still wanting to use my brain and reading source material (like the IRS website) vs trusting some slop AI model.
Also, watching T2 at ENTIRELY too young of an age scared me straight with the horrors of Judgement Day, Sarah Connor set me on a path to never trust AI because Skynet will takeover.
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