Trying to get AI to do something useful
Because I will soon be part of discussions at my work place regarding policies around AI use I have been trying to use it more to see where there "might" be benefits. So far, the only positive is that it's helped me put together a film "recipe" for my Fuji camera as well as assist in dialling in the settings for a new bag of coffee beans I got recently.
Aside from that though, it just isn't very good for "normal" things. I tried using it to help me optimise The Witcher 3 on my Steam Deck as I'm using a copy I have on GOG. I tried three different AI's (Claude, Gemini, and ChatGPT) and they all missed things out and provided misleading and unhelpful information. Ultimately, the solution I used was one I had already got from Reddit. This solution also never came up in any of the AI suggestions. So good old-fashioned research still wins out.
This is not all too surprising when even Microsoft are saying that 'Copilot is for entertainment purposes only' and that 'It can make mistakes, and it may not work as intended'. Further stating that users should not 'rely on Copilot for important advice. Use Copilot at your own risk'. Wow! That's damming! They weren't saying that previously when they were shoving Copliot down the throats of every enterprise customer (including my own employers).
My experience with Copilot at work has never been good. I've tried to use it within the confines of Microsoft services, thinking that if it was going to work, that would be the area where it would be most successful. For example, I had a Microsoft form from last year that I wanted to replicate and amend. I didn't create the original, but it was created by someone in my organisation. Microsoft Forms has a Copilot button, so surely it would be able to do this? Nope! Made a complete mess of it, I quickly realised it will be far quicker for me to manually create a new version copying over text, rather than amending the mangled "copy" Copilot had provided.
In Excel I have tried to get it to help me when existing formulas have broken. But again, Copilot couldn't see what was wrong. In the end I just found a previous version with the same formula and worked backwards. I'm glad I can use my problem-solving skills to fix these things for myself, but it shows the problems with these AI services. Not inherently their inability to do what we want them to do, but rather the marketing lies from these companies.
Soon I'll be more involved with discussions around the implementation of AI at the workplace. Whilst I will be approaching it with an open mind, I will also be very much there to highlight the very valid issues with it.