AI and I

I’ve always been critical of Artificial Intelligence.

In my own defense, AI criticism has valid merits. The ecological impacts of AI cannot be ignored. One researcher attributed a lone query in ChatGPT to the amount of energy it takes to power a light bulb for 20 minutes. AI’s thirst for water to cool their advanced supercomputers is similarly staggering. Creatives have raised legitimite concerns over the morality and legality of using their work to train AI models.

Another element of my disdain for AI is general dislike of what I like to call “tech-bro culture.” In the early 2020s, journalists couldn’t stop raving about how Bitcoin and non-fungible tokens were the key to our future. All our money was going to be virtual; our drivers licenses were going to be on the blockchain; we were going to own real estate in purely digital universes.

It’s been just a few short years, but much has changed. Web3 has lost much the public luster it once claimed. Tech golden boy Sam Bankman-Fried is a digital Ozymandias — his crypto empire crumbled to dust. Dimond-handed apes who took GameStop to new heights are holding shares worth (at time of writing) less than one dollar. The decentralized economy has been decentralized from public thought as our busy news ecosphere moves on to The Next Big Thing.

I could rant about how NFTs and crypto won’t save us (and never could), but I think the talented documentarian Dan Olson explains the topic much better than I ever could.

I mentally associate AI with those post-pandemic tech trends. And why not? Silicon Valley hasn’t been truly innovating for years. Just because the headlines proclaim it doesn’t mean The Next Big Thing has any staying power.

AI language is obvious

AI writing can sometimes feel a bit formulaic, and that's because it often relies on patterns and templates to generate content. While this can be great for consistency and efficiency, it can also lead to writing that lacks a personal touch or unique voice.

Think of it like following a recipe: you get a reliable result, but it might not have the same flair as a dish made with a bit of improvisation. AI is fantastic for generating quick drafts or handling repetitive tasks, but it's always a good idea to add your own spin to make the content truly yours. After all, the best writing resonates with readers because it feels authentic and human.

So, use AI as a helpful tool, but don't forget to sprinkle in your creativity!

If that all sounded a bit stiff and hollow, it’s because it is. AI wrote it for me. Call it the uncanny valley, there’s just something about the way it communicates that grates on me.

It sounds formulaic and robotic. I don’t ever think in the way that AI writes.

Maybe it’s my journalism degree, but I don’t know if I can ever get behind creative writing being done by algorithm.

And yet, for all my criticisms, I have been using AI a lot lately.

I recently gained access to Microsoft CoPilot at work. There are several reasons why CoPilot is an ideal platform for employers to explore.

First off, the fact that it integrates with Microsoft 365 apps like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Teams. Then there’s security benefits. CoPilot does not use your data to train other AI models and encrypts all data. As a part of the Microsoft 365 ecosystem as a whole, CoPilot will only accesses data that you already have permission to see, based on your role and access levels within your organization. It respects existing security settings and doesn't share information with anyone who shouldn't see it.

There are several benefits I’ve discovered by adding AI to my workflow.

• Weekly recaps. I send a weekly, company-wide email recapping the important work and tasks my department has accomplished. Typically, I create this at the end of the week by going through my Outlook Calendar and my sent emails. Using CoPilot, I’ve easily cut the time it takes to compile this information in half.

• Meeting notes. Frankly, I may never go back to the “old way” of taking notes before AI. If you’re in a Teams meeting, you can activate meeting transcriptions, ultimately giving you extremely details notes in a meeting recap. It knows who was talking, who said what, and the action items that were proposed. I can’t tell you how refreshing it is to be in a meeting and in the moment, not worrying about what I need to write down. If you’re familiar with Tiago Forte’s book Building a Second Brain, the notion of using AI for notes and your brain for creativity will likely resonate with you.

• Easier file search. I asked CoPilot to find me a file I knew a co-worker had shared with me before, but couldn’t locate. Outlook has a notoriously bad search function, but CoPilot is a breath of fresh air to find what you need.

There’s still room to improve.

CoPilot has limitations. One glaring disappointment is that it can’t create graphics or diagrams with SmartArt. I spent around an hour trying to get CoPilot to create SmartArt based off images in an existing PDF. I turned the PDF into a Word Doc, and then used the Word Doc to create a PowerPoint file. It was able to summarize and re-word the written content, but the diagrams were entirely missing.

It’s a shame. This is absolutely something that would save me lots of time at work.

One day CoPilot will do this for me (I hope)

While CoPilot does a great job of compiling data, I still hate the way it writes. When I get those weekly work summaries for internal communication, I often re-write much of what it says, using the data it gives me.

How do I feel about AI today?

Having concerns about AI is valid. The AI skeptics among us have good points and important questions that need answered. At the same time, I’ll continue to use CoPilot for note-taking as long as I have access. The convenience and time saved is just too good to ignore.

AI is not a magic bullet, but a tool. And at the end of the day, a tool is only as useful as the person who wields it.