This week, we discussed and thought about the ways we use AI in our everyday lives and how AI systems might improve these processes to better assist us. By learning how to use AI more effectively, we can make our lives easier. When considering how we use AI daily, its significance is much greater than many realize. AI is at work almost ubiquitously, and we appreciate the increasing amount of ease, simplicity, and personalization it offers, such as personalized music recommendations, home security systems like Ring, and AI in the social media apps that many of us spend a considerable amount of time on.

After reflecting on how I personally use AI in my everyday life, I realized that regular use of ChatGPT has taught me how to communicate with it more effectively to avoid confusion and misunderstandings. I often find myself getting impatient when using AI software, particularly because I expect it to function like a mind reader. I expect AI to understand exactly what I am asking and to communicate it clearly. Nevertheless, that is not how the AI I have experienced works, at least not yet. By communicating with these AI models in a very detailed and specific way, I am able to get much better results.

However, I found my frustration, caused by my unrealistic expectations, especially noticeable when we were given the challenge of generating a self-portrait with Leonardo.Ai. No matter how specific I was with the details of my characteristics and facial features, it generated portraits of individuals who looked the complete opposite of what I specified. These results made me think about the biases that exist in the data AI heavily relies on (Elliott 2018) and how my portraits reflected those biases and lack of diversity. While my frustration lessened with other challenges that allowed me to explore generative AI in a more liberating and creative manner, the lack of racial diversity was apparent in the images based on the prompts I used. This makes me consider how dominant representations are being reflected in AI. With its growth and development, we should strive to avoid following the same path of misrepresentation and lack of diversity in our society, especially if AI is capable of reflecting differences without the limitations and social discrimination present in other forms of digital culture.

While there is a lot of fear, criticism, and concern around the ubiquity of AI in many societies, I believe approaching AI with caution is essential, as with any unfamiliar territory advancing so quickly. However, embracing and accepting AI can be a powerful marker for future generations. As societies continue to change and shift with innovations and technological developments, reflexivity occurs as a natural form of adapting to our circumstances (Elliott 2018). We see this reflexivity today with important conversations around the digital age and AI while simultaneously adapting our daily practices and routines around it in ways that make our lives more enjoyable and efficient. Similarly, de Certeau (2011:40) describes tactics as an “ageless art which … goes back much farther than our histories and forms strange alliances preceding the frontiers of humanity,” emphasizing Elliott’s (2018) argument of the importance of maintaining a curiosity for AI that allows us to create and adapt in ways that change the narrative around AI as a threat.

 

 

References

de Certeau M (2011) ‘III. “Making Do”: Uses and Tactics’, in The Practice of Everyday Life, University of California Press, Berkeley, accessed 31 July 2024. https://rmit.instructure.com/courses/139133/pages/week-2

Elliott A (2018) The Culture of AI : Everyday Life and the Digital Revolution, Taylor & Francis Group, accessed 2 August 2024. http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/rmit/detail.action?docID=5613372.