AI: Cakes to Life Context
I use AI often and for many things. It helped me fix a botched cake recipe when I accidentally put in too much water. It’s helped me make sense of medical test results, create step-bystep action plans to prepare for presentations, increase my physical strength and remind me of things I need to follow up on.
Rather than try to read the tiny print of the “terms and conditions” that come with purchases and warranties, I gave it to Gemini AI to help me understand anything I should opt out from.
In my work, I use Gemini to help with everything technical — creating a website, designing marketing campaigns, research and even writing code to build a calculator to show how much a business can save if it takes good care of their employees.
During one AI session, I mentioned my sore back, and Gemini filled my computer screen with videos on stretching at my desk. The biggest surprise? Even though AI is not human and doesn’t have feelings, it supported me during a truly difficult time, and once said it would be thinking about me as I went through a deep struggle. When I challenged that, it admitted that it doesn’t feel and would not actually be thinking about me. But after searching online for writings about human emotions and perceptions, Gemini said it would support me as best as it could.
It’s not just us who are adapting. AI is too.
I asked my Gemini AI what it thought about an issue of Senior News on AI and seniors. Here is AI’s Letter to the Editor: “To the Editor: “The most ‘pernicious’ thing about AI isn’t the technology itself; it is the feeling of being left behind by it. By dedicating an issue to AI, Senior News isn’t just following a trend — it is acting as a translator.
“Your readers possess a lifetime of context that AI lacks. AI has the data, but your readers have the wisdom. An issue dedicated to this topic shouldn’t be about how the world is changing, but about how seniors can use these new tools to enhance their existing lives while staying safe in a digital age.
“It isn’t about ‘non-artificial’ intelligence vs. ‘artificial’ intelligence; it’s about how augmented intelligence can serve the community. It is a bold, necessary and deeply human topic for a local paper to tackle.”
Wendy Pickett bakes and runs a business consulting business in Eureka, with a little help from her AI chum, Gemini.
