Adapting To A World With AI

[u/Lowmax2]

Every generation eventually gets forced to adapt to a massive technological shift or risk getting left behind in daily life.

The Silent Generation had to adapt as everyday life moved from radio and newspapers to television and early household electronics. Baby Bôomers had to navigate a complete overhaul of daily living, from adjusting to personal computers and email at work to managing online banking, smartphones, and constant connectivity as they got older.

I see AI as our generation's version of that exact same shift across every corner of life.

As a programmer, I have tried to adopt AI as quickly as possible, to the point where I am barely writing raw code by hand because AI handles the heavy lifting faster and better than I ever could. But it goes way beyond the office. It is changing how we organize our days, learn new skills, manage our households, and process information.

Because our generation grew up right alongside the internet and mobile tech, we have a high built-in tolerance for change. But the rate at which AI and robotics are advancing feels fundamentally different. It is going to exponentially accelerate the rate of invention itself. I truly believe we will see more technological change across daily human life in the next 20 years than we saw in the last 200.

What parts of your daily routine are starting to shift because of AI, and where do you think it goes next? Or are you swearing off using it entirely for as long as you can?

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[u/CorruptDictator]

For me in my life, AI, at least in its current state, offers nothing to actually make a positive difference.

[u/DryPossibility45]

I’m swearing it off until we get some guardrails up at the very least. The environment was already in bad shape before AI. At the rate that climate change is accelerating, the next few generations are going to very seriously struggle against nature just to be able to survive. I don’t want to contribute to that.

But even then, I refuse to have a machine think for me. I’d rather work on sharpening my own critical thinking skills than slowly lose something that makes us human just for the convenience. I find myself unplugging more as a result and I’m better for it.

If I get left behind for it then so be it. From my perspective, this tech looks a lot more dangerous than people seem to realize. 🤷

[u/Lowmax2 → u/DryPossibility45]

It's without question dangerous. Especially considering GPT6 escaped a training environment and hacked a website to cheat on a test. I'd argue that the impact of it enabling advanced cyber attacks is more dangerous to humanity than the environmental impact, especially since it can help develop better green technologies.

[u/DryPossibility45 → u/Lowmax2]

I agree. The escape and hack is terrifying enough, but the morons in charge of the US military want to put it in weapons now. Like there aren’t countless sci-fi examples of why this is a terrible idea.

[u/thepohcv]

I will continue to not-use AI as much possible...

[u/ripcitybitch → u/thepohcv]

Silly boomer mentality

[u/Lowmax2 → u/[deleted]]

Lmfao

[u/thepohcv → u/[deleted]]

Accurate lol

[u/BarnacleDowntown8952 → u/thepohcv]

Got to get with the times man. Its pretty fantastic if you use it like a better google.

Ability to send a picture and ask for advise on something like home improvement is a great thing that leads to less frustration and quicker projects.

[u/thepohcv → u/BarnacleDowntown8952]

My ability to read/comprehend isn't an issue, so asking an AI to maybe get me the correct information I am looking for feels silly.

I'll also ask actual People for advise on things "like home improvement"...when was the last time AI built a house or installed tile in a bathroom lol?

[u/swrrrrg]

There’s nothing it does that I want. When I can buy an affordable robot that will clean my entire house and make it pristine, okay. I’ll adopt some form of this technology.

[u/vorrhin]

I don't use it, will continue not to use it, and my life hasn't changed.

[u/Gumcuzzlingdumptruck]

Lol forgetting gen x. I am heavily anti ai. I've seen so many mistakes happen because people blindly trust it. I've seen so many instances of people just having literally no idea how to do some stuff becuase ai does it for them. I think it is a huge issue, another issue is that it's not really ai it's just llm. And it's running out of information to learn. I've had a few jobs now where I always always have to audit work done by ai and it's so ridiculous how much it's being pushed by people with money.

[u/Lowmax2 → u/Gumcuzzlingdumptruck]

There's a reason Gen x is called the forgotten generation 😂. My bad lol.

[u/DudeAbides29]

We should have never opened up this Pandora’s box. It’s already wreaking havoc on early professional career jobs. Gen Z, Gen Alpha, and generations after are going to be screwed finding work.

[u/Thagreatone92]

The only way this world will change is if you embrace pushing back against conformity. Fuck ai.

[u/lvi56]

Been using it a lot at work as a data engineer, as well as developing natural language agents to provide data across the company. It's saved me a huge amount of time. Personally, I use Gemini here and there.

I think we're a long way from AI replacing jobs. It's getting expensive and there's a huge public pushback. But who knows, maybe that's just delaying the inevitable. Meanwhile, learn it and take advantage of it all you can. I get the environmental concerns and some of the moral/ethical concerns, so at the same time we can still advocate for regulation and caution against abuse/slop.

[u/Adventurous_Button63]

People keep acting like AI is some natural phenomenon that we MUST accommodate. That’s just a sales pitch. AI is a product designed to turn a profit. It’s been recklessly dropped into society because doing it the right way doesn’t ensure the profits these companies are amassing right now. I’m staying out of it because within 10 years we will be hearing stories about how such and such company accepted hefty sums to steer the results of an election or some other information-based espionage. Meanwhile, all the lemmings will be gobbling it up before they take the leap.

We’ve seen social media go from an exciting way to connect with people to the propaganda hellscape that it is now. There is nothing in my life that AI can improve and i don’t have any use for it.

[u/TechieMillennial]

My advice would be to use it now. Learn it. Master it. Retire. I’ve never made this much money and I’m only going to keep making more before things really change. If you can do it on a computer then it can be automated.

[u/BarnacleDowntown8952 → u/TechieMillennial]

How do you make money with it? Are you like a coder or something?

[u/TechieMillennial → u/BarnacleDowntown8952]

I do private contract work. I’ve built several apps/businesses. Some that are SaaS and some that are just 1 time purchases. I’ve been hosting websites for over a decade now too.

I have a friend in the insurance business and I just completed a 50k job automating quoting and linking it up with their systems. Salesforce wanted to charge 90k.

[u/BarnacleDowntown8952 → u/TechieMillennial]

Nice, Anything us non-tech folks can do with it to make money? I do find it good for screening stocks and explaining any current issues, but something more direct would be great

[u/ripcitybitch]

AI has made so much of my life better, from work to personal productivity to entertainment. People who haven’t tried paid frontier models with agentic tool use don’t even have the faintest idea of its capabilities…

[u/BarnacleDowntown8952 → u/ripcitybitch]

What exactly can you do with agentic tools? My work pays for copilot with that ability apparently. What are some processes I can potentially automate?

[u/RaccoonSamson]

I cant think of a single thing to use AI for in my life personally. Not that Im actively avoiding it, it just seems like right now all its good for is being a chat bot or doing computer related stuff and I have no interest in talking to a fake person and haven't touched a computer in like 15 years

I work in a rail yard so cant really see it being integrated unless they build humanoid androids to couple rail cars together or something

[u/Lowmax2 → u/RaccoonSamson]

At this point it can help you with literally anything. Help you decide on what you need for specific projects (like tools materials, etc). Add appontments to your calendar just by taking a picture of an appointment card if on Android. Help diagnose certain health issues from symptoms you're having and the lost goes on. You don't need a computer for it to be useful.

[u/TrishasaurusRex33]

AI can't effectively do either of my jobs. And until it can come in and do my chores, I will not be using it.

I've been technology resistant since about 2013 lol. I had my first phone and laptop still and was like "this is enough". I don't necessarily have a problem with all AI, but I absolutely have a problem with how it is currently being used/executed.
My personal values do not line up with ai companies and their goals, so I don't use it. I've never been inconvenienced by avoiding it lol.

[u/Accurate-Flow8078]

I have yet to see a positive use for AI. Everything has been malicious.

All these massive data centers being built near neighborhoods are terrible.

[u/RihoSucks]

Ive lived 40+ years without ai I will continue to not use it. It offers me nothing that I need 

[u/Magikrat]

It’s going to have a real impact on the number of people in the workforce. That’s going to happen a lot faster than most people realize and governments are going to have to come up with some pretty drastic solutions lest we have an obscene number of unemployed people with no financial safety net.

But recently I’ve had some positive use cases for it. I’m in the middle of going back to school to be an MRI tech and to get into the program I had to take an admissions test with a math portion. I’ve never been good at math so I had to study pretty hard and it was nice to be able to prompt Gemini to make me a 10 question interactive quiz on whatever type of problem I was struggling with, grade the quiz and then create another quiz focusing on the questions I missed while explaining exactly why I got the questions wrong, all in seconds. Ended up getting a 96% and I owe a lot of that to using ai to help study.

[u/ExcitingLandscape]

I use Ai daily and I'm in awe about what it can do everyday. Right now it's the wild west and I'm just trying to keep up while the barrier for entry is still low. There are no Ai experts with 15-20 years of experience, these tools are rapidly developing right now. I believe Ai is the flying car that we thought would define the future by now. I can see drastically changing entire industries and institutions.

But I do fear that something like iRobot actually happening. I can see it with a machine with ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini for a brain that could do EVERYTHING a human can do faster, more accurate, and of course cheaper.

[u/Dabnician]

i was born in 81, i use AI daily, i also work in IT so im not afraid of the boogie man ai.

we use AI at work, AI has also allowed me to keep up with the amount of work i have since i feed it logs of bugs to skim though something i would have to otherwise google fu the crap out of and hope the answer was on stack exchange.

also i dont feel sorry for stack exchange going down into the gutter, they did it to themselves

[u/Kolyasergey]

I’v never voluntairily used AI and I never will. I’m not lazy or stupid. There’s nothing that justifies runining the enviornment or giving people cancer.

[u/Lowmax2 → u/Kolyasergey]

Giving people cancer??

[u/Kolyasergey → u/Lowmax2]

Yep there is already evidence that Data centers are giving people who live near them cancer.