Kira Herdman

There is a lot of buzz at the minute about AI, what it can do and how useful it can be.

Big money being thrown at it.

Big companies are pouring money into AI. Nvidia, the graphics card company that most people know for gaming graphics, was at one point the most valuable company in the world thanks to AI, as its graphics cards are needed in the thousands, if not millions, to power the data centres where all this AI stuff is happening.

What do I use AI for?

I’ll be frank, I think most of this AI stuff is useless. Companies are putting the AI name into everything as it is the latest trend. There are, however, three things I use AI for, of which I have found to be very useful.

1. Proof Reader. Every blog post I make these days goes through the proofreading part of Apple Intelligence. I am the first to admit my English is not good, even though it is my native language. Logic and problem-solving have always been my strongest points, so proofreading is very useful for me. It just means I don’t need to subscribe to something like Grammarly.
2. WordPress AI Image creator. Almost all the images on this blog are AI-generated by the built-in WordPress image generator. Again, this is saving me money in a way, as I don’t need to subscribe to any stock photo site.
3. OpenVINO Noise Suppression. This is a plugin for Audacity that does what it says: removes background noise from my recordings in Audacity when I am doing my community news shows for TransRadio UK. This free plugin is the most used plugin I use in Audacity.

AI everywhere doesn’t work

It seems companies are trying to shove AI into everything these days. A classic example is Meta with its Meta AI in Facebook and Messenger. All I want to do is turn it off. I have yet to use it.

These chatbots, while they can be useful at a pinch for research, always need to be fact-checked before they can be a trusted source.

I sometimes use Perplexity if I am researching something, but I only use this to point me in the general direction, then go and do the research myself without the help of AI.

While there are some very useful applications of AI, like in the medical profession. I think 90% of it is overblown and overhyped in a big way.

I would much prefer big tech to concentrate on fixing their services/software rather than shove AI into everything.