I promise this question is asked in good faith. I do not currently see the point of generative AI and I want to understand why there’s hype. There are ethical concerns but we’ll ignore ethics for the question.

In creative works like writing or art, it feels soulless and poor quality. In programming at best it’s a shortcut to avoid deeper learning, at worst it spits out garbage code that you spend more time debugging than if you had just written it by yourself.

When I see AI ads directed towards individuals the selling point is convenience. But I would feel robbed of the human experience using AI in place of human interaction.

So what’s the point of it all?

  • I use it to re-tone and clarify corporate communications that I have to send out on a regular basis to my clients and internally. It has helped a lot with the amount of time I used to spend copy editing my own work. I have saved myself lots of hours doing something I don’t really like (copy-editing) and more time doing the stuff I do (engineering) because of it.