Op-Ed: Artificially Intelligent. How to Use AI for Dummies Like Me

I have a love/hate relationship with AI, and I need to tell you about it. In the corporate world, as we all know, time is money and cash is king. I get the benefits of having AI, but, damn, do I feel dumb and lazy when I use it. Here’s a venting session about my thoughts on AI.

Section 1 | You Hypocrite!

Now, I’ll preface, I use AI to generate the images for this blog. I know! I know! I don’t like taking away from true artists. As the war against AI art carries on, just know, I’m a huge hypocrite. I also use AI as a crutch while researching. I don’t pump-and-dump in articles asking for a synopsis, but I’ll cross reference AI’s output against what I’ve read and obtained. Most of the time, it’s spot on with my current understanding. I’m not in a place where I can bounce ideas off a peer, so it’s nice to have a sanity check.

I use AI to make funny images on a free-to-read blog. I use AI as a peer to cross reference my existing knowledge against. I’ll keep AI in my toolbelt for when it’s sparingly needed. Even though I’m an automation specialist, I can’t support the current trend of cramming AI into everything.

Section 2 | Take Pride in Your Work

AI should be used as a supplemental tool, a digital monkey wrench to fix a leaky faucet. What AI should not do is replace years of experience, knowledge, and technique. AI should not replace the trials-by-fire that come with professional growth. I’ll spend hours configuring servers for a project by reviewing documentation and forum posts. If I use AI to tell me exactly what to build and how, I’m not learning anything. I doubt that the steps I take to build this system would even retain in memory if I relied solely on AI’s guidance. And what about the “gotchas”; the caveats and nuances? Just keep yelling at my AI bot to give me the correct answer, I guess?

Here’s an example: coding. Yes, AI can make some smooth scripts and lines of code, but if I just copy and paste the output, I’m not strengthening my skills. The more I grow my skills, the more often I can come to the next problem and go “Ah! I remember using the Start-BITSTransfer cmdlet. I can use that here on this project”.

The need for professional experience is being shorted by AI, and that’s depressing to me.

Section 3 | “Prompt: Write my a summary of this blog post”

Referring to the heading — I would never do that. AI could probably write me a soulless summary of this post. Then I could ask it to make the summary more engaging, and probably even translate it to Spanish. But I just can’t work up the nerve to do that. Artificial Intelligence has its place, but we can’t use and abuse it. We can’t cram it into every facet of our lives. What is that doing for us? It’s eliminating personal growth.