Robo-Roommate or Revolution? How AI Tools are Transforming Home Working

This year we are seeing what many would describe as a classic exponential leap in technology adoption. However, the difference between the acceleration we are seeing today, and the technology adoption curves observed in previous years is the sheer scale of the change. I am of course talking about the adoption of Artificial Intelligence Tools.

Back in early November last year I wrote about mature tools that help us edit stories so that they have a better narrative flow, and their grammar is verified. But since then, things have moved on at a tremendous pace.

In January this year Google announced generative AI tools for retailers, these to improve on-line customer experience, during the same month Microsoft announced AI tools to help store associates to improve customer service.

With two of the world’s top technology companies, Microsoft, and Google, vying for the top AI slot, can we be surprised that with every announcement, another is just around the corner?

Currently the three main AI tools for those working at home are “Copilot” (Microsoft), “Bard” (Google) and “ChatGPT” (OpenAI). It should of course be noted that Microsoft is a partner and major investor in OpenAI who owns ChatGPT.

With ChatGPT gaining much of the publicity recently, this month Google announced its “Gemini Pro,” with the selling point that it is a “Multi-modal” Large Language Model. They say it can understand and combine diverse types of information including text, code, audio, images, and video.

As a user of these AI tools, I have of course listened to various commentators and lecturers talking about the pros and cons of Generative AI over the last three months, and agree with them that while controls are needed, there is certainly value to be gained in terms of the productivity of individuals. So, in this article I am concentrating on the value for those working from home.

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A task often facing home workers is the construction of a report or presentation.

To engage the reader or listener, it is often useful to use a “story structure.” That is there should be a clear introduction or lead-in, a central section filled with an interesting narrative around the details and things should wrap-up with an easy-to-understand conclusion, and if needed, recommendations.

Those wishing to “sell” their ideas often use a catchy title or “strapline” and a great graphic always helps.

But, when working as an individual at home, with no one to bounce ideas off, dreaming up a distinctive strapline and putting together a graphic is very time consuming.

What if there were a “tool” that you could ask to carry out these tasks?

Now, today, there are tools that will do this! But you might ask, will they take away the creativity of the individual?

While I have been using AI tools to assist with the narrative of my articles I had never, until today, used the tools to create graphics or to generate a title, so I decided it was time to try these.

I accessed Microsoft “Image Creator from Designer” and typed the following, “a picture of a home worker supported by online AI tools.”

It "thought about it" for about 20 seconds and returned four pictures, I dismissed three of the pictures as having too much of a focus on robots. But the fourth I liked, and it is at the head of this article. (The “Content Credentials” are “Generated with AI - 6 February 2024 at 9:45”)

Then I turned to Google’s Copilot and typed, “I am writing an article about home workers using Generative AI tools to support their work, what would be a good title for the article, that would draw people in?”

It quickly returned ten suggestions, five under the heading “Intriguing” and five under the heading “Benefit-Driven.” I liked the first under Intriguing – it is, of course, the title of this article.

Did producing a nice graphic and a title save me time – YES! (Quite a bit).

Was I “in-the-loop" when it came to choosing the graphic and title, yes very much so, and with the graphic I did have the option of modifying it...

Did a generative AI system author my article, No! In fact, I ignored more than 80% of its suggestions for changes!

So has using AI tools diminished my creativity, I do not think so. In fact, by taking away some of the tasks that I am not good at and find time consuming, the tools allowed me to concentrate on my writing.

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Robo-Roommate or Revolution?

Certainly, this writer is enjoying the revolution, and allowing AI tools to take over some tasks that are time consuming and not within a general skill set, while retaining “editorial control.”

But at the same time carefully listening to those who still have their doubts and concerns about Generative AI.

Notes on this article:

It seems at the outset that creating content, words or images is amazingly simple. However, how questions are phrased is key to getting your required output from an AI system; this is known as "Prompt Engineering".

Ray Kurzweil has some interesting things to say about working with AI, a video of his thoughts in February this year is here.

Lastly, using the Microsoft “immersive reader” allows an author to listen to their writing, and often something that sounded great in the mind, does not sound good when “read” by a third party or machine!

This article has been through a final edit after being read aloud by a machine ??.

Updates:

8th Feb - Bard is now "Gemini", - https://gemini.google.com/?hl=en

14th Feb - OpenAI adds memory to ChatGPT - https://openai.com/blog/memory-and-new-controls-for-chatgpt

Things are moving very quickly... another AI generated image, people working in concert with AI.