Productivity, True Confessions

The Ordinary of Extraordinary

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When ChatGPT, and other forms of generative Artificial Intelligence (gen AI), first hit, I felt dazzled. And overwhelmed. Also baffled, curious, and a teensy bit scared. Initially, I couldn’t figure out uses for this new magical, and terrifying, technology. Every time I opened the news I read more stories about all these amazing uses for AI. In a short time, some of these uses crossed a boundary and became scary, questionable, or just plain litigious.

In schools, kids used the technology to create deep fakes of their teachers and principals. Teenage girls discovered deep nudes of their bodies circulating on social media. AI generated these deep nude images in mere seconds, requiring little thought or effort to create. Other news featured protests over genAI taking over jobs, for example, writers of TV shows and movies. Everywhere I turned, something, somewhere, was being powered by AI. Or at least it seemed that’s what everybody wanted, and still wants, if they’re not using it already.

Though I did try out a few things in the beginning, I mostly felt bewildered by the number of options. It was hard to know where to start! What could ChatGPT do for me to make my life simpler? One day, after procrastinating on making a meal plan for about a year, I had my idea. Making a meal plan was a perfect task for ChatGPT.

Some years ago I painstakingly created meal plans every week. While, I didn’t enjoy the process and the tedium of creating the plan, I did appreciate how much mental energy it saved me during the week. I no longer had to think about what to make for each meal or figure out what to put on the grocery list. The answers were there, on the meal plan. This time, I had a draft in less than 10 minutes. I tried a few prompts and still need to do some editing, but overall, it’s a good start! Check out the sample below:

“Week 1: Monday

  • Breakfast: Scrambled eggs with whole-grain toast, and a side of strawberries
  • Dinner: Chicken stir-fry with mixed vegetables and brown rice
  • Dessert: Yogurt with honey and granola

Tuesday

  • Breakfast: Oatmeal with sliced banana and a sprinkle of cinnamon
  • Dinner: Beef tacos with lettuce, cheese, tomatoes, and salsa (on soft tortillas)
  • Dessert: Apple slices with peanut butter

Wednesday

  • Breakfast: Whole-grain waffles with fresh blueberries and maple syrup
  • Dinner: Grilled salmon with roasted sweet potatoes and steamed broccoli
  • Dessert: Chocolate pudding

Thursday

  • Breakfast: Smoothie with spinach, banana, berries, and yogurt
  • Dinner: Vegetarian pasta with marinara sauce, spinach, and mozzarella
  • Dessert: Fruit salad with a drizzle of honey

Friday

  • Breakfast: Whole-wheat pancakes with sliced strawberries
  • Dinner: Chicken and vegetable skewers with couscous
  • Dessert: Homemade chocolate chip cookies

Saturday

  • Breakfast: Scrambled eggs with spinach and cheese on a whole-grain English muffin
  • Dinner: Beef and vegetable stir-fry with rice noodles
  • Dessert: Frozen yogurt with mixed berries

Sunday

  • Breakfast: Pancakes with peanut butter and banana
  • Dinner: Veggie burger with sweet potato fries
  • Dessert: Ice cream”

Today, a blog I like to read (The Art of Doing Stuff) offered a ChatGPT prompt to create a seed starting schedule. In that moment it occurred to me, ordinary, everyday tasks are a good fit for ChatGPT. Nothing special, nothing scary or damaging, but a whole lot of time and tedious effort spared.

Digital Dilemma

Governing the Governed

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The recent events in the United States are scary to consider, on more than one level. One of the most dangerous is giving the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) workers so much access to data! Though we have some idea of what DOGE can access, we don’t really understand the full extent. And probably neither do they, which can be dangerous in its own way.

When we collectively started to go digital and mobile, our data came along. We all generate mass quantities of data about ourselves and others every day. Even worse, in most scenarios, we don’t even realize how much data we’re giving up control to or who is gaining access. Nor do we fully know what will happen to all that data.

Based on my experiences working in information and data governance, the little “g” governance is sometimes missing in big “G” Government. Basically, this means not enough controls or guard rails exist in systems controlling information and data. I’m willing to bet that the US government is similar to a lot of places I’ve worked. They probably didn’t put in enough controls and guardrails on their information systems when they were first created. After all, when the workplace started to go digitally, nobody was thinking this far ahead. Or perhaps not imaging this particular scenario could happen.

For example, an organization should put controls around highly sensitive and personal employee data. This would include information about an employee’s marital status, health issues, personal address and phone number, etc. Controls are a way to protect data and the people behind it. One control may be to restrict access to authorized personnel. Another could be to anonymize data when used in aggregate. Deleting data once it is no longer needed is a control often overlooked. However, it protects both former employees from and the company by limiting and minimizing damage if there is a cybersecurity incident.

With all this technology and advances, one might think implementing these controls is easy. After all, can’t AI do this for us? The short answer is “no.” Often the controls are missing because they weren’t considered part of the information system. It’s usually only after a disaster happens that people start to think about these things. By that time, it’s often expensive, or sometimes not possible, to implement controls. Now we’ll all be learning a valuable lesson about governing the Governed.

Uncategorized

The 600th Posting

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Another milestone reached! Looking back at the last year of postings it would be hard to ignore the influence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Politics. Almost every few posts features something related to, or impacted by, AI. This even includes the ways in which I’ve been experiencing it, first in the imaginary realm before IRL (that’s “in real life”). Though I have yet to use AI to create one of my blog posts. Somehow, I can’t make that leap yet.

The continuing technombie saga features Hanna unwinding with a swim in her Endless Pool. Her Augmented Reality goggles transport her to Ketchitan, Alaska. Though my own experience wearing Form 1 swim goggles was not quite as cool as projecting the Alaskan underwater scene in my gym’s pool, I was impressed.

As for politics, it would be hard to ignore the women’s rights issues plaguing the United States. The court case decision to allow a couple to claim damages to “children” when a clinic accidentally destroyed their fertilized eggs opens up all kinds of challenges. The post called “Operation ER” imagines a future where these “children” must be cared for. Couples wanting children must first do an egg retrieval and implant before attempting to get pregnant without clinic assistance.

In other issues, there were the strange happenings with the 2024 presidential election. No amount of technology could save that one! And of course, the alliance of the tech moguls with the new president, and rejecting all their obligations to manage their own social media outlets responsibly.

Even with all the fancy technology, shiny apps, and allure of AI, there’s something nice about an old-fashioned list. Though I’ve tried many apps to organize tasks, I sometimes resort to paper. And it usually does the trick! Easy, effective, reliable. Best of all, it’s simple to delete when I’ve finished everything on it.

In conclusion, here are a few favorites from the Human Archives series. Almost a year ago, we experienced a total solar eclipse, including a plate of “eclipse cookies” to munch on during the event. In the summer I went through a second bout with covid, one that temporarily took away my sense of smell. Luckily it came back, but I can tell it’s still not 100%. And finally, with all this cold winter weather and snowfall, it’s nice to recognize “The Comfort of Warmth.”

Digital Dilemma

The Intrusion of AI

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Lately, I’ve noticed AI (Artificial Intelligence) turning up in all kinds of places unannounced. For example, sometimes as I’m going about my day, my phone’s AI will randomly start answering something. Or looking something up. It’s called Gemini and I still haven’t figured out how to delete it. I feel like that’s not even possible. Gemini, it seems, is here to stay.

Every time I do an internet search, some AI-generated “overview” is the first thing to show up. I sometimes find this even more dubious and suspect than scrolling through regular results. First of all, I have no idea where the “overview” pulled the content. It could have been from random reddit-chats, poorly constructed web pages, rampant bot-generated disinformation, and something legit. There’s no way to know. At least scrolling through results provides me with the option to see the source. Or to review the information in its original context. The AI-overview likely mixes little bits of information from lots of different places.

What feels crummy about the whole situation is I didn’t ask for the “convenience” of AI to help me on my phone or with searching. It was just there one day. When Gemini appeared on my phone, it was automatically the new default. I use Google-assist when I’m driving and need to do something hands-free. However, I never use it during other times. I thought it was shut off. Then one day, while having a conversation, Gemini started looking up some stuff related to what I was saying. It felt creepy, intrusive, and not helpful at all. In fact, I had to spend a lot of time searching for non-AI generated responses to find out how to disable the feature. Even now, it will still occasionally show up, despite my efforts to turn it off in settings.

When I think of all the amazing ways that AI can be helpful, it’s not in these overt and unwanted ways. Rather, I imagine AI taking care of mundane, time consuming, and repetitive tasks. Or using it’s huge power to do useful things such as blur my image from photos that others take and may post publicly. Mostly, I think about having a choice about whether or not I want to use AI on my personal devices. Making it the default automatic option feels intrusive to me.

As you can see, my finished plate was definitely “Worth the Wait.”

Digital Dilemma

Relying on Car Tech

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Towards the end of 2023 I swapped my gas car for a hybrid right before winter started. I did feel a nervous wondering how the car would react to the cold weather. The 2023-2024 winter was extremely mild and the car was absolutely fine. This winter, however, is a different story and I’ve had a number of weird things happen.

My car couldn’t handle the frigid, polar-vortex temperatures one morning, around -18 degrees Celsius. I blogged about this before in “Such a Thing as Too Much Technology.” Naturally, it was a morning I had to commute to the office. Despite warming the car for several minutes many warnings flashed on the dashboard. The car is still pretty new, so I thought this was odd. It was rotating through 4-5 different warning messages about things that may have been wrong. I had a hunch it was related to the cold weather. As the car warmed up, the warnings gradually disappeared except for one that the brakes may not be working properly. They seemed to be working fine so I drove to the office. I left early that day in case my car wouldn’t start, however, by that time the message had mysteriously disappeared.

Last Friday I drove home from the office in a snow storm. It was windy and snow was blowing directly at my car. Somehow this impacted some of the sensors. I had a visibility warning on my dashboard and some of the side signals that let me know if another car is in my blind spot also weren’t working. Rather, they worked intermittently, which almost felt scarier because I couldn’t trust it. Luckily, I learned how to drive without any of these things. I also retain some “old-school” driving habits like turning my head to physically look if anybody is in my blind spot, despite the side mirror sensors.

I feel good that I learned how to drive when a car was still just a car. They didn’t have computers or fancy features displayed on large screens. While I do enjoy many of the conveniences, esp. the GPS, ability to play podcasts, and dictate messages, none of things matter as much as my safety and my passengers. It’s scary to experience the many strange ways that car technology fails as soon as the weather gets bad.

Human Archives

Worth the Wait

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This weekend I went with some friends and family to one of those “paint your own pottery” places. I wasn’t sure what to expect. We had a gift card to use and it seemed like a fun weekend activity.

The pottery place was bright and airy. Inside were lots of white tables surrounded by chairs. Each table contained big buckets of multi-sized brushes and two trays of glaze, one plain and one “fleckled.” A handy fired tiled with the name and color of each glaze provided guidance. Along the perimeter shelving stretched from floor to ceiling filled with different pottery pieces available to paint. There were houseware type items such as places, cups, mugs, and shark-themed sponge holders. Other shelves held tiles, heart-shaped ornaments, or piggy banks in the shape of a penguin, dragon, car, or princess. Picking the piece to glaze was more challenging than figuring out the colors!

Armed with a piece of pottery, we headed to the table and started glazing. We had a 90-minute time limit, which seemed ample. But it went fast waiting for the glaze to dry for double and triple layers. We left the pieces at the shop to be glazed and eventually fired in the kiln at 1600 degrees (!) before they’ll be ready for pick up. After all that fun, now the hard part is waiting.

This evening I thought again about the cupcake-shaped snack plate I decorated. It won’t be ready for at least a week and I’m eager to see how it turned out. With so many things instantly available and readily customized, I have to confess waiting for something feels a bit nostalgic.

Growing up, waiting was part of the experience. We had to wait for everything. Photos took time to develop, or cost a lot to get them faster. Letters, aka snail mail, took time to handwrite and send. Even television shows only came on once a week. We had to wait a whole week and be available at a certain time to see the next episode. The only thing we could “binge” on was reruns, or sometimes if the network ran a marathon. But sometimes the waiting and anticipation was worth it, almost as though I got to experience the joy twice.

I’m excited to see if my pottery piece was worth the wait. Stay tuned for updates!