OK, I hate AI, but are there acceptable exceptions?
At the very end of last year, I wrote a post about AI on my gaming-focussed site. The short story is that I’m pretty much against most generative AI, for the usual reasons:
- Risk of misuse
- No plans for job losses
- Abuse of creators’ rights
But I’m always keen to point out that the term AI has been misused itself, applied to a huge variety of technologies and products, often for marketing purposes. And I do accept that there are some legitimate uses for AI; this is a complex issue and I think, too often, people are either all-in or totally against, without much room in the middle.
I’ll admit it now, I use AI probably most days, in one specific way: web search. I’m not sure what happened but, at some point over the past few years, ‘normal search’ seemed to start declining. To be clear, I only use AI via search engines—the Google Search or DuckDuckGo. They both handle more ‘conversational’ searches—like questions—far better than the default search does, so I’ve found them pretty essential.
Am I particularly happy about this? No. Will I continue to rely on AI search, despite my reservations? Almost certainly.