Sometimes I wake up in the morning with ideas bursting out of me. It might be a solution for a tricky project I’m working on, or a fix for a small task I’m completing. For example, the other day I was working on the home page for a new website and could not for the life of me remember how to make the buttons all the same width. I would have looked it up when I next worked on the project … but I didn’t have to because my overnight brain remembered how to do it for me! Thank you, brain, I knew you had some life in you yet.
This morning what my brain was insistent that I do is write this blog post. I woke up with it writing itself in my head. Does anyone else have that happen, or am I just weird? Totally willing to accept that I’m weird, but this thing can’t just be me can it?
I won’t lie, I’m a bit nervous about putting these thoughts into a blog post. I fear that my views aren’t going to be popular with a lot of people and that I might get scoffed at. But sometimes you need to put yourself out there. And if you identify with what I’m saying, yay, you’re my people!
My AI journey
So … let’s get into it. AI. AI is flipping everywhere at the moment, isn’t it? And by all accounts it’s here to stay. Over the last couple of years, I feel like I’ve gone full circle on the subject. When it first became the “big thing” I ignored it at first. I’m not necessarily one for jumping on the shiny new object straight away, I like to see how things develop and take my time.
And then it really was everywhere, and I began to feel like it was one of the “shoulds” of running a business. You know, that I should be using AI in my business and I was missing a trick not doing it. So I dibble dabbled a bit. I did a masterclass or two and learnt what it was all about. So that at least I didn’t feel stupidly ignorant anymore. And it was exciting and kind of magic. I can definitely see the appeal of being able to jump on ChatGPT (that’s a word that is ridiculously difficult to say isn’t it?) and get an instant answer to a very specific question.
I used it a couple of times to find answers to technical website building questions, and it did allow me to get an answer and move on quickly. I can’t ignore that it can be a time saver. Hey, I could have asked ChatGPT how to get my buttons all the same width and I’m sure I would have got a solution instead of having to sleep on it and let my brain do its magic.
But then, I started worrying whether it really was the right thing for me to be doing. Wasn’t I better off using my own brain? Wasn’t it somehow too easy? And what about the environmental impact? Enter the angst.
And I’ve spent months and months going through it in my head. I feel like I shouldn’t be completely ruling it out as a tool, but on the other hand I actually don’t feel comfortable using it. There I’ve said it. I would like to think there is some kind of sensible middle ground, but I don’t know what that is. Hey, maybe I should ask ChatGPT 😉
My decision
So for the moment, I have decided that I’m not going to actively use AI in my business. I say “actively” because I know there is no way to completely avoid it – it’s everywhere after all. But I’m not going to be using ChatGPT to get answers and I’m going to be skipping over the AI bit of the results in a Google search and looking at actual websites for answers.
But why, Emily?
What is your actual problem with it, you ask? Aren’t you a fool for rejecting such a powerful tool that could make you more efficient? Yes maybe… but here are my reasons:
1. Quality
I have been hearing horror stories (too strong?) about the quality of the results in AI searches. It can come out with absolute nonsense and by all accounts some people are blindly following it. I don’t want to be that person. In my very small amount of experience with it, I have found I’ve had to push to get an answer that worked. “That didn’t work”, “okay, try this”, “no that didn’t work either”. And actually, my last experiment with it I found that ChatGPT got me partway there, and I figured out how to get the bit of code of actually work. And then for some weird reason (yep, there’s weird again) I explained to ChatGPT what I did to get it to work – well I couldn’t leave the poor little fella hanging with a wrong answer could I?
2. Overwhelm
Now this is an interesting one. The other day, in one of the Facebook groups I’m in, somebody posted about how overwhelmed they had been getting using ChatGPT. They were getting answers that were too detailed and too much information, followed by “I can create this for you, would you like me to?”. Apparently, the tool is so intent on pleasing that it is just too much. Like an overexcited puppy? When I read this, I had an “oh yeah!” moment. Until then I hadn’t really thought about it, but now I realise I had found it overwhelming too. There is an argument that that is because I don’t know enough to get the best out of it … that I was “doing it wrong” but if that’s the case, I’m not the only one.
Surely a tool like that should be something to take away the overwhelm. But instead, I was finding it was moving at too fast a pace for me and putting me under pressure to have done the thing and moved on before I had even absorbed the first bit of information.
Maybe sometimes slower and thinking things through properly is better, just saying.
3. Brain power
I won’t lie, I am worried that if I get too reliant on a tool like AI that I will lose the ability to use my own brain. I’m aware that I already have to a certain extent – if I can’t remember something the first thing I do is grab my phone and look it up on Google. Does that mean that Google has become my memory? Maybe. But I absolutely don’t want ChatGPT to replace my ability to think for myself.
4. Environment
And then we get to what truly is the clincher for me. The environmental impact of AI. I’m worried about not getting this right, so I’m going to quote Wikipedia:
“The environmental impact of artificial intelligence includes substantial energy consumption for training and using deep learning models, and the related carbon footprint and water usage. Moreover, the AI data centers are materially intense, requiring a large amount of electronics that use specialized mined metals and which eventually will be disposed as e-waste.”
That genuinely makes me uncomfortable. How can I justify using something with that kind of impact to answer a question which in the grand scheme of things is pretty insignificant? I dunno, I just feel that saving me a bit of time isn’t a strong enough justification.
The impact of my decision
It is in some ways a relief for me to have made the decision not to us AI. Honestly, the angst was getting a bit much! But I’m also very aware that it’s yet another decision I’m making for myself which other people will find challenging.
But as with my other challenging life decisions, this is something that I am choosing for myself. The only person I’m being judgemental about is myself. I’m not going to tell my clients not to use AI to generate content for their websites and I won’t judge them if they do (because I get why they might do that!) but if they need any help with it, I will introduce them a professional who can help them get the best results with what they’ve generated – whether that’s a copywriter for words or a graphic designer for images.
So, AI is everywhere, it has been for a while now. I still feel like there is pressure to use it – that it’s a should. But I think that sometimes it’s good to push against the shoulds and make decisions for ourselves. I like using my own brain to find solutions and I love the brain magic of waking up with a solution to something. If this resonates with you in any way, I’d love to hear from you!
