Ask HN: How have you applied AI in your life, work or hobbies?

[azeirah]

AI has had a mainstream introduction in the form of ChatGPT this year. I use GPT a lot for all kinds of small tasks.

I'm looking for concrete use-cases where people are applying AI models and tools in real-life scenarios.

For example, at work we found a benefit to use an AI-based image removal tool for poor-quality product photos sent in by our customers.

There's a lot of hype out there, and lots of demos. I'd love to know where you're really getting use out of it!

[MH15]

I've been using ChatGPT as a brainstorming assistant/Google replacement for stuff I don't know how to find. For simple document retrieval (blogs, documentation, etc) I find search to be far superior still, but ChatGPT shines when I'm trying to figure out what I don't know I don't know.

There's a quote, apparently by Donald Rumsfeld (TIL) that reads “There are known knowns, things we know that we know; and there are known unknowns, things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns, things we do not know we don't know.” I find the known knowns and known unknowns are well served by traditional web search, but ChatGPT and similar tech can help me explore the unknown unknowns.

[cableshaft]

I've been using it to give it the rulesets or general concepts to video games I'm designing and asking it for ideas for special powers or cards, or providing it with an overall theme and asking it to generate ideas for how to apply that theme to the ruleset or game concept. It provides a lot of junk ideas, but enough useful ideas that I keep asking it. Something another game designer said that I agree with is that it's 'about the same as a playtester tossing out a random idea.'

You have to evaluate it to see if it fits your goals, and work out the details and prototype and playtest it, but sometimes just seeing those ideas can get you unstuck or enhance the design or spark another idea which works even better. And some of those ideas I know I would never think of, and probably never get them from a playtester, so I'm thankful for them.

Also used it recently when my wife was feeling stuck in the motivations for certain people in her book, I gave it a paragraph overview and asked it to come up with motivations and it provided quite a few, including about six or seven we had previously tossed around and discussed. She was skeptical beforehand but was more impressed afterwards, in particular because it provided a bit of validation that the ideas we were tossing around weren't bad ideas.

Just this morning I asked it for what tools within Azure cloud tech to use for accomplishing a programming task, and the information it provided me seemed a bit more useful than me asking other experienced users in our organization as well as a few videos and articles I read (because it was able to provide an idea more directly applicable to our specific use case). Even provided some sample code.

[opyate]

I'm an indie game dev, and exploring/finding all sorts of ways where AI/ML/DL can assist. There's a non-exhaustive list on my blog [0]. For coding, I use Github Copilot too (which I think is just GPT3?) - massive productivity boost.

However, as I'm not a rich indie dev, I have to do client work too. Currently working in insuretech, where I'm focused on document extraction (layout detection, OCR, labelling + retraining models, etc).

0. https://juanuys.com/blog/2023/03/07/thoughts-on-ai-and-games...

[drakonka]

I use AI to help me brainstorm for my fiction sometimes. Sometimes for basic things like names, other times to help me reword certain sentences. Possibly the most useful so far has been getting ideas to visualize a sparring scene. Knowing nothing about fighting or different types of holds and such, I described with a lot of specificity how the two characters were positioned. How character A was restraining character B. The idea was for B to instruct A how to get out of the situation.

I first got some ideas for how this could be done by straight up asking for different methods character A could use to get out of B's grip. I then got it to write some ways that B might explain this, or instruct A. It went so far as to have B offer encouragement at strategic parts and such.

The final version ended up being heavily edited of course, but it helped greatly to visualize the scene and the physical actions.

I also used it to help me brainstorm my way out of some plot knots I got myself into. Like "Imagine such-and-such situation. What would be some possible reasons why so-and-so would choose NOT to perform this particular action?"

[hitori]

English is not my mother language, Im now level up my English skill with ChatGPT

[Awelton]

I have spent so much time prodding the edges and trying to break it that I kind of forgot that I could be using it to be productive.

[nmfisher]

I’ve been using ChatGPT to help generate sentences for an interactive/dialog-based virtual Chinese tutor [0].

The sentences still need human vetting as it will occasionally get things wrong, but it’s a massive productivity multiplier. I’m mostly happy that it’s available via API so I can stop endlessly copying and pasting.

If you consider speech recognition/synthesis “AI”, then I try heavily on that too. I did. dabble with using Stable Diffusion to generate images to assist learning. That shows promise but it’s not a priority at the moment so I left it.

[0] https://polyvox.app

[dstala]

Here are my cases

GitHub CoPilot : I come from embedded engineering background, but now working in web tech space. CoPilot helps as a very good assistant when I am working with TypeScript. Essentially lesser number of lookups now to Google & StackOverflow

Content creation : I take help of ChatGPT to give me some pointers when I am about to write on a topic / blog post. For tech articles, it's a good help. Helps correct grammar, change content to professional tone.

[imhoguy]

I am using free OpenAI's Playground (faster response than ChatGPT, but it is the same davinci) to make UI texts and docs for my side webapp project, including translations.

For now it is just "Explain it nicer:" plus seed with some topic context, and then "In German", "In French"...

I think soon I can probably do an entire customer support work over email in any foreign language which I may not even know much but with an aid of LLM these bariers disappear easily.

[netsharc]

Ha, ChatGPT helping you create a literal implementation of the Chinese room, extending it to different languages.

Edit: come to think of it, actually not (because the operator in the Chinese room has no understanding), but is helping you ChatGPT understand the questions (I presume?).

[danielmakestech]

I write more. I think writing can be broken down into three main things - the idea, the structure of how you laid it out, and the style. Now I don't have to care about the style, I can focus on having clear thoughts and good ideas. It's like autoformatter for programming. And who formats their code manually these days?

[devstein]

I've been working on using OpenAI to manage (organize, auto-respond, etc) my inbound recruiting emails. I think the same could be applied to sales emails.

It's been a ton of fun. I'm basically using AI automation to fight AI automation :)

You can follow along at: https://sharedrecruiting.co/

[alvivanco]

I use it to help with my newsletters -- cuts down the editing process time by 80%. Mix of notion AI and ChatGPT.

[ezedv]

I use AI (ChatGPT) when I can't come up with a title for some templates or article blogs: https://www.ratherlabs.com/blog For these cases, ChatGPT is really helpful and useful!

[ActorNightly]

ChatGPT, premium, basically replaced googling documentation.

I have found quite a few errors in generate response though, but 90% of the time it gives me what I need.

Its also pretty good for generating boilerplate code.

[hodovaniuk_m]

I used it to explore math and computer science concepts. I tried it with one I knew before and then moved forward.

[replwoacause]

Mostly for learning new subjects and editing text.

[aussiegreenie]

I use ChatGPT as a typist. I get it to do "hack work" and then edit it.

If I employed a real typist in a cheaper country, it would be faster but ChatpGPT is avaiable when I wnt to work.

[henly]

By generating AI waifus. You should try it, research shows it to boost self esteem and confidence