How often do you use AI? [i.e. ChatGPT / Grok]

[Chris in TN]

Memes every once in a while.

Otherwise not at all.

 

[DunnCoHunter]

I tell chat gpt to give me recommendations for hunting gear using rokslide as its source. Not that I don’t love killing time on here… but it is much quicker than reading 10 different threads on leg gaiters haha

 

[ARB]

couple time a week

 

[ODB]

Can’t stand it. Don’t use it and I think it’s brain rot.

Guys at work can’t perform basic calculations and they take what it gives them. I’ve pointed out so many blatant wrong data it gives them but they keep using it.

I’ve seen this as well.

 

[Poser]

Through work, I have subscriptions to all of them. I prefer Gemini 2.5 Pro, by far. I don’t like Chat GPT very much by comparison.

If you go onto the job marketplace anytime, you’ll most likely have to use AI to write your initial resume or you won’t make it through the initial AI screening.

 

[Doc Holliday]

My employer forces us to use it periodically (ie: in a team meeting, manager asks us if we use the AI app, we all stare blankly. Manager says, OK, all of you have to ask it to do these 3 things, and report back to me by close of business tomorrow with screenshots, etc.) So then a few months later, same thing happens but in a different way. We know how to use it, we just don't want to. Pretty sure they are going to tighten the screws on us through bonuses, performance reviews, etc and they are going to start punishing those who don't use it, or just get rid of anyone not falling in line.

 

[Ranger 692]

Also in the employer forced camp.

 

[COJoe]

If you go onto the job marketplace anytime, you’ll most likely have to use AI to write your initial resume or you won’t make it through the initial AI screening.

I am not in HVAC any more at work but I help our HVAC supervisor with interviews. In the past two years, we seen that most of the resumes are being generated by AI. They look and sound wonderful but after the page of technical questions we ask them, we quickly find out that too much of what they claim to know is false or nowhere near the level of expertise that the AI generated resume claims. I enjoy an honest, simple resume that uses common trade language to express their level of knowledge.

For example, The resume may say something like, "My level of expertise enhances the customer experience. " Once we talk with the applicant, we find they are a simple person (but a quality tech) who would never talk that way. It's these kind of examples that AI isn't personal to people and who they really are, good, bad or indifferent.

 

[satchamo]

I use it daily for my job but we’re provided with an internal system we’re encouraged to use. It brings me a lot of pride knowing I’m helping the company train my replacement.

 

[SonnyDay]

I don’t eat steak often enough to use it every day…

 

[mikkel318]

I just started using it for looking at applications. Claude.ai can give you great results if you upload draw odds pdfs from the state websites. A simple "Which hunt areas/gmus are available at X preference point level?" is a pretty slick way to narrow down areas from that filter. I use GoHunt too, but they usually don't update their filtering odds very soon after they come out.

 

[sodaksooner]

Ive played with it with known data (already know the answers) and it actually does a decent job, but calculates it much faster. It's not 100% on but close. We have a pretty strict policy at work as far as the data we can use, but for what I have used it for, it's not terrible. I have done some car/engine build stuff as well and the suggestions I get are mostly on par with the "experts" Also most search engines give pretty decent AI responses without having to look through a shitload of pages.

 

[DangerRanger]

My work has its own proprietary version that I use to create essentially reports and other performance management stuff. Pretty convenient, insert logs of everything I’ve done and it churns out summaries catered to the questions/prompt I give it.

Has saved me a lot of time doing nonsense stuff instead of actually working

 

[Rich M]

The only AI i use is the one at the top of google when i search stuff. It often contains errors and misleading information, so will take it with a grain of salt.

We are not allowed to use it at work - absolutely forbidden.

 

[HunterGatherer]

We’re all using AI in some form whether we realize it or not. It’s built into so many things we use on a daily basis. I avoid it except for the AI search results that are automatic. But I never take the summary of the info as accurate. I’ll go through all the links the AI used to come up with the summary and then draw my own conclusions.

Cognitive offloading will lead to cognitive atrophy. If you take a forklift to the gym to lift the weights for you what do you think is going to happen ?

 

[Poser]

We’re all using AI in some form whether we realize it or not. It’s built into so many things we use on a daily basis. I avoid it except for the AI search results that are automatic. But I never take the summary of the info as accurate. I’ll go through all the links the AI used to come up with the summary and then draw my own conclusions.

Cognitive offloading will lead to cognitive atrophy. If you take a forklift to the gym to lift the weights for you what do you think is going to happen ?

The idea in theory at least, is that AI serves as your "co-pilot", freeing up mental capacity of the mundane for the more complex. I think that people who have been around modern tech exclusively in their adult lives, that may very well be true, but for Gen Alpha, maybe even the youngest Gen Z, its just going to be woven in their fabric of day to day life. However, they could very well be challenged by a new set of problems that require mental capacity we can't yet anticipate. ~10 years ago, we didn't really anticipate the issues around AI short of a handful of movies that were imagining a future: 2001 Space Odyssey, War Games, The Terminator, Ex Machina, Blade Runner etc. So, now, we're dedicating a lot of mental capacity on how to best use and not use AI.

But then there are the unanticipated consequences. I don't recall anyone expressing concern about AI generated music, for example and, yet, here we are with a AI generated song on the "country" charts, all of the revenue simply going to the publishing company instead of writers. What's going to stop the streaming services from just generating their own AI music and serving that up in favor of human generated music and then just keeping all of the money? Same for scripts, books, film etc. Of course, there could also emerge a future where their is a total backlash against anything AI generated presented as art, solutions etc.

Anyway, all of that to say that I think we replace one set of problems with another. Afterall, calculators were controversial in math classes BITD, but they opened up the ability to do much more complex math at increasingly lower levels of education. While you may not be manually doing the computations, you still have to understand a certain amount of complex math in order to determine the solution. A math professor from the 1950s might be horrified at the idea of modern calculators, but, at the same time, might be unable to pass the equivalent class to the one he taught without the use of a calculator.

Its not necessarily that we are using a a forklift to lift the weights for us, its that the forklift is lifting one set of weights while we are lifting another. In theory, at least.

 

[HunterGatherer]

The idea in theory at least, is that AI serves as your "co-pilot", freeing up mental capacity of the mundane for the more complex. I think that people who have been around modern tech exclusively in their adult lives, that may very well be true, but for Gen Alpha, maybe even the youngest Gen Z, its just going to be woven in their fabric of day to day life. However, they could very well be challenged by a new set of problems that require mental capacity we can't yet anticipate. ~10 years ago, we didn't really anticipate the issues around AI short of a handful of movies that were imagining a future: 2001 Space Odyssey, War Games, The Terminator, Ex Machina, Blade Runner etc. So, now, we're dedicating a lot of mental capacity on how to best use and not use AI.

But then there are the unanticipated consequences. I don't recall anyone expressing concern about AI generated music, for example and, yet, here we are with a AI generated song on the "country" charts, all of the revenue simply going to the publishing company instead of writers. What's going to stop the streaming services from just generating their own AI music and serving that up in favor of human generated music and then just keeping all of the money? Same for scripts, books, film etc. Of course, there could also emerge a future where their is a total backlash against anything AI generated presented as art, solutions etc.

Anyway, all of that to say that I think we replace one set of problems with another. Afterall, calculators were controversial in math classes BITD, but they opened up the ability to do much more complex math at increasingly lower levels of education. While you may not be manually doing the computations, you still have to understand a certain amount of complex math in order to determine the solution. A math professor from the 1950s might be horrified at the idea of modern calculators, but, at the same time, might be unable to pass the equivalent class to the one he taught without the use of a calculator.

Its not necessarily that we are using a a forklift to lift the weights for us, its that the forklift is lifting one set of weights while we are lifting another. In theory, at least.

The issue is that many people, especially younger generations, will use AI as “autopilot” instead of “copilot”. Their cognitive abilities and capacity for critical thinking and problem solving will not develop in the same way they did for earlier generations. We’ve already seen this happening with the invention of the internet. Kids don’t respect or value lived experience in the same way Gen X does. Pre-internet I was thrilled to find a guy that knew how to work on cars or hunt or had unique perspectives gained from life experiences and I would latch on to them in order to educate myself on things I was interested in. Youth today can just look everything up on the internet and ignore the old timers.

They say we are the last generation of true humans. We are beginning to merge with technology with biology. As AI progresses and we start integrating tech into our bodies, There is going to be a certain population of humans that reject it all in the name of remaining human. The tech adopters and Neuralink implanted humans will dominate with their advantages. I see a real split coming.

 

[Poser]

Youth today can just look everything up on the internet and ignore the old timers.

I get what you're saying, I am a late Gen Xer myself. I did my undergrad with little more than a email address experience of the internet + maybe a few airline purchases, and I don't believe I even had that until my 2nd year of college.

At the same time, you also have to consider the things you are able to DIY that you couldn't unless unless you had direct access to someone with the skillset. For example, if you need to replace the waterpump in a 2007 Honda Civic and you don't want to have to remove the power steering pump to do, there is probably a YT video showing you how to hack the install. Or, if you want to convert your M1 Garande to shoot modern 30-06 rounds, you don't have to go to a gunsmith. Our access to information allows us to bypass an insane amount of analogue learning curve.

I'm just thinking of the DIY shortlist of things I've done in the last few weeks that I couldn't have done in the 90s: Fixed a squeaky dryer. I couldn't find a video for the exact model, but I watched 2-3 videos of other models to know what I was looking for. Hooked a voltage reader up to a light switch, diagnosed and successfully corrected an electrical issue at a friend's new house. I have no electrician skills, but I'm not the least bit afraid to dive in when a breaker keeps tripping. I've been contemplating attempting an engine swap on a 4Runner and saving myself ~$6,000 in labor despite not being a mechanic. I can't imagine what my skill set would be if I had access to these DIY resources back in the 90s. Your best bet back then was to by the "how to become a mechanic" book series from Sears and Roebuck.

On one hand, I get what you're saying, but on the other hand, its not a critique that hasn't been made about every generation. The master mechanic from the 1970s transported to 2025 probably couldn't even find a spark plug on a modern vehicle. Sure, a modern car tech is running diagnostics on a $40,000 computer to figure out what the problem is, but the problems are also way more complex than they used to be. And, I think that's where we are at: Young Gen Z/Gen Alpha are going to face a whole new set of complexities that you and I will be completely aged out of addressing and we'll be stumbling around talking about how great we had in back in the olden days of 2025 while Gen Alpha is complaining that the next generation doesn't actually understand how AI works, they just assumptively use it.

 

[307]

The AI song is kind of funny. It's pretty clearly a voice/style associated with a black singer yet the image is a white "cowboy". Some things are more difficult for AI to understand.

 

[307]

Completely agree on the DIY expansion due to YT and now AI. It's incredible how much more I can do for myself due to these resources.

As far as the value of "old timers", many of them (including me) are making crap up as they go and passing it off as fact. The value of human experience is still valuable in many areas but information gatekeeping is not one of them.