Indholdsfortegnelse for AI Made Simple i AI Made Simple

Artificial intelligence is expected to trigger the next industrial revolution, completely changing the way many of us work and organise our lives. But when a technology is advancing so rapidly, it can become hard to keep up. In this guide, we make things simple by breaking down the jargon and explaining how AI can help you. We’ll give you an overview of the various AI tools available, and explain their capabilities and limitations. Discover the ways in which AI can help streamline everyday tasks, and learn more about how to use these technologies effectively and responsibly.…

Humans are flawed organisms. We do our best to behave well, but at times we all make mistakes – so when we’re entrusted with programming an artificial intelligence that we want to behave in a human-like manner, it’s inevitable that some of our own flaws will emerge in said AI’s behaviour. Examples of errors made by AI applications are rife, even though the technology has only become widespread – at least, in public and in our homes – over the last few years. Some of them are genuinely funny, such as a June 2024 incident when an AI assistant programmed to take McDonald’s customers’ orders at several drive-through restaurants failed to understand their requests. A video on TikTok showing a couple begging the AI to stop adding items to their…

Virtual assistants ● We’ve already looked at assistants such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which can perform several functions – chat, advice, image creation and so on – if you’re just looking for entertainment. Increasingly, however, such assistants are also available as business tools that integrate with a whole list of existing software. Microsoft’s Copilot, for instance, is available for free as a simple chatbot but can also manage workplace data, claiming to transform your working methods and thus your efficiency – at a price, of course. Whether these claims bear out depends on your work environment and will no doubt become clearer over time. Writing and proofreading aids ● As any writer will tell you, most of the time we use the same 500 words. The AI in tools such as…

Use up those leftovers ● Apps such as SuperCook and Cookup will ask you to enter a list of the ingredients that you have to hand – whether in the fridge, in the cupboard or ‘on the side’ – and then use that list to come up with recipe ideas. The great thing here is that you can use that leftover pasta from two nights ago, or the slices of ham and cheese cluttering up your fridge shelves. Mind you, there’s only so much you can do if you haven’t been shopping for a while: if you’re a student (or very rich person) and only have half a jar of mayonnaise and a tin of sardines in the house, even AI can’t help you. Shopping list generators ● Judging by…

Personalised travel ideas ● Summer (or winter) is coming and you’re feeling the need to stretch out on a beach (or ski down a mountain). With a whole planet full of travel opportunities, you just need to decide where to go, how long to stay and what to do while you’re there, given restraints of time, budget and entertainment preferences. Why not let an AI app such as Vacay suggest where to visit and what to explore? This is what generative AI was built for, after all. Remember, of course, that AI apps come and go and that their suggestions should be double-checked before you commit any time and money. AI travel agents ● Layla, Kayak and Eddy Travels all function as travel agents, in other words you prompt them…

Google Alphabet ● It would be an omission if we didn’t give Google its own entry here, simply because its suite of tools, AI-based and otherwise, is so widely used worldwide: over 90 percent of all search queries are handled by Google, and more than two-thirds of all internet users choose its browser, Chrome. The company and its products have their critics, of course, but that doesn’t mean we should discount its AI chatbot Gemini, the Google AI Studio – which covers tools such as Google Translate and Notebook LM – or its Grow With Google courses, all of which are orbited by community forums full of people who will help you point out where Google gets AI right… and wrong. Such as… • Gemini (chatbot) • Notebook LM (research…

The first quarter of the 21st century has, we can agree, been eventful. Economic struggles, climate anxiety, terrorism, wars in Europe and the Middle East, a global pandemic and a swing to the political right in many countries have been the headline features, while the revolutionary new tech of AI has been evolving in the background – at a rapid pace. Let’s see how it’s likely to evolve in the foreseeable future, illustrated by predictions from people at its forefront, and ask how AI might intersect with those headline phenomena, and help to mitigate them. “AI will not replace humans, but those who use AI will replace those who don’t.”VIRGINIA ROMETTY, FORMER CEO OF IBM Ms Rometti neatly sums up the near future of AI with this statement. Pretty much…

Depending on your age and interests, you probably first encountered the concept of artificial intelligence in a science fiction book or film, most likely in the form of a robot, friendly or otherwise. For the Boomer generation, that could have been Robby the Robot in Forbidden Planet (1956) or HAL 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). For Generation X, it might have been the T-800 in The Terminator (1984) or Walter the Wobot in the comic 2000 AD; for Millennials, maybe A.I. (2001) and Robots (2005); and for Gen-Z, possibly Astro-Boy (2009) and Big Hero 6 (2014). For the current generation of kids, born since 2010 or thereabouts and known as Generation Alpha, the experience has been different. Their first encounter with AI might well not have been in…

Spending trackers ● We all make hundreds of purchases, modest or large, every year. Each of them is stored in your banking app, if you use one – as three out of five Brits reportedly do – but still, wouldn’t it be nice to know exactly where your money was going without laboriously totting all your transactions up on a calculator? This is where generative AI, which loves nothing more than mining large amounts of data, comes in. Use an app such as ExpensesAI or PocketGuard to track your outlays, analyse your spending habits and let you know if you’re spending too much. Subscription managers ● Netflix, Now TV, Disney+, Apple TV, Hulu… do you know how many services you’re subscribed to? And that’s just TV: let’s not forget internet…

Fitness trackers ● You’ve got a fitness programme, you’re sticking to it and you’re having fun. Great! Now, how do you know if it’s working as well as it should? After all, fitness is not all about how far you can jog or what the scales tell you – so why not ask a fitness app to keep track of your progress? An example is Fitbod, which looks at what you’re doing, analyses your activities and performance and, using machine learning to consult the huge amount of data on this subject, gives you regular reports on your progress. It’ll also advise you how to polish up your routine for quicker, better results. Heart rate monitors ● You can keep track of your heart rate and aspects of your general cardiovascular…

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Now that you’re on top of the principles of generative AI and know how it works and what it does, you’re ready to try out some more sophisticated tools. None of these will require a degree in computer science to operate them, but they all need a bit of experience at the user end to function at their most useful. Chatbots are still most people’s entry into AI, and for that reason – as well as their generally uncluttered interface – they’re often assumed to be relatively simple tools. This is far from the case, especially in the form of ChatGPT’s later iterations, which respond to frequent use by remembering past interactions and user preferences. The tool will behave with a degree of autonomous agency (hence the adjective ‘agentic’), deciding…

Smarter laundry machines ● We welcome the assistance of AI in this field, having spent far too much money on using too much detergent, overfilling the machine so the job doesn’t get done properly, and then spending ages hanging heavier garments on radiators because they didn’t fully dry. This is a great example of AI saving a busy person a lot of time, with machines capable of optimising wash and dry cycles based on the load (some models can even adjust the cycle based on the types of fabrics detected), automatically adjusting detergent levels, conserving water, and connecting to your phone so you can set and monitor cycles remotely. Voice assistants ● The first physical AI to enter most people’s homes was the Amazon Alexa voice assistant, a cylindrical speaker…

Find the lowest prices ● Karma, Honey and the rather more self-explanatory ShopSavvy are just three examples of apps that use AI to survey the market and reveal where a given product is cheapest – whether online or at a physical store. Of course, price trackers, primarily in the form of websites, have been around for years, but it takes AI to scan a large number of retailers in real time and update you as prices fluctuate. Bear in mind, of course, that some tracking apps may be biased in one way or another, depending on their funding model, so check more than one source. Offer codes and discounts ● With so many online retailers these days offering attractive discounts to get you on board, it helps to have the…

AI tutors ● Khanmigo is one of a new wave of AI-fuelled teaching and learning screen apps aimed at students, teachers and parents, the last of these the crucial audience as they are the most likely to mistrust AI solutions – and pay for them once trust is gained. As with all the AI tools we’ve examined so far, these apps personalise and deliver a training programme based on existing data from years of study of educational methods. The most user-friendly of these promise to guide their users to the correct answers to their tasks, rather than simply handing the solutions over on request. Voice assistants and chatbots ● Merlyn and TeachMateAI use voice interactions to guide students through learning programmes, but they’re not there simply to answer questions. Such…

What does an AI tool need to do its job? Information. After all, what generative AI does is take a request, search available data for suitable matches, and return results. The more information you give it, the better it can serve your needs – and the opposite applies too: give it generic or uncertain info and the results will be inferior. What this generally means is that you need to put some thought into the prompts you input into any AI tool. Use specific wording tailored to your goals and take a moment to consider the right vocabulary. This doesn’t mean that using AI has to be time-consuming or laborious: it’s there to save you time and energy, remember. You can even use an AI, ironically, to generate the right…

The simple fact is that a lot of people are afraid of artificial intelligence. They think that it’s going to harm the environment, take away our jobs, invade our privacy, steal our intellectual property and perhaps even replace us, while the corporations that own the technology count their money and our useless politicians do nothing about it. Let’s break down some of those most prominent concerns and see if they have any real merit… The energy crisis ● When we think about the energy required to use a computer or phone, if we ever do, we typically think about our domestic power supply, or our laptop and phone batteries. We rarely consider that, by using the internet, we’re incurring an energy cost elsewhere – but of course, we are. Ask…