Saturday, March 16, 2024

How could AI affect us?

There's been a lot of talk about AI recently and I decided to investigate.   I recently was speaking to a younger family member who says she uses AI "all the time" at work.  Things have clearly changed.  Might it assist us in the Sou'Westers?

So I decided to find out.   I'd heard of ChatGPT but never used it.   I discovered there's also a Google AI called Google Gemini.   So I had a go with that.   Both are free to use.

In about an hour, I set the Google AI about ten questions - very easy to use.  The answers were fascinating, and the text-based answers were quite plausible.   Others, not so much, at least with this particular AI.  A couple of the questions were based on our own Sou'Westers blogs, and it seems that Google is shy of using personal information from the blogs, which is a good thing.

The answers are roughly a page each, so I won't post them here, but if you click on the question, it should take you to the answer.

Write a poem about cycle touring

Write a blog about when Mark Cavendish rode with the Midweek Wayfarers in the Surrey hills.

Write a blog about the pros and cons of electric bikes

Design a bike ride in the Surrey Hills

Design a cycling tour of the Surrey Hills

Draw a bicycle

(This one was interesting.  Google Gemini can't do drawings, but it did produce some html code which in a browser draws a bicycle - or does it?).

Write a story about the people in the Midweek Wayfarers

Make a painting of three women on a bicycle tour

Write a summary of SouWesters-on-tour.blogspot.com

Write a poem about <url for the blog post about the Sou’Westers annual lunch>

Write a short article about cycling safely in groups

Write an advert for the Cheam & Morden cycling group


Is there any other AI experience out there among the Sou'Westers?   Do you have other ideas of things we could ask it?



1 comment:

Mark G said...

Interesting stuff, Simon.

Something I'd like to understand is how it qualifies its input data - presumptively from the internet. Now, the internet has loads of useful and accurate data, and loads of corrosive tosh, too. If the bot should light on the latter, there seems to me to be the risk that it might produce 500 nicely written, balanced words of corrosive tosh. And you wouldn't know.

More narrowly, AI is already in use in e-bike systems, or at least, it is claimed to be. The Mahle x20 system, a popular lightweight model used by a number of manufacturers says that it uses AI to optimise performance. It builds a database of your use of the system; cadence, power, gradient, speed and so on, and uses this to develop a pattern of support that is of most use to you, as an individual rider. People like it, it works well and it generates quite spectacularly large range figures.

The Shimano Auto-Shift, of which I wrote few weeks ago, also does something similar, which it too says is AI. Power of Marketing. It notes the extent to which you override its automatic choices and builds a set of gear selections that you prefer. After a week or two you should never need to override it.

Works OK, but it's a moot point whether it's AI or a fancy algorithm.

But it's here'n now - you can buy these things and ride them. More to come, I'm sure.

Mark