I have a subscription to Microsoft's Office 365. It's a bummer to pay for it every year, but at least I know that I stay updated.
What I did not realize is that all my documents are available to Microsoft to feed into their Artificial Intelligence machine, "Copilot." More and more I see suggestions about next words or phrases in the things I type. Sometimes the suggestions are helpful, sometimes they are just annoying.
Many AI programs are based on a "large language model." These programs are designed to predict the next word in any word combination. With simply next word prediction, these AI models can build very complex "thoughts" or ideas.
And people are now using AI for all kinds of tasks. You can get AI to help you organize thoughts, suggest creative solutions, or mimic a specific style.
These are all things that I have heard AI can do. I have never done more than pull up the website for Chat GPT. I'm still a little skeptical of the whole concept. I like to do my own thinking, thank you. But I do like to save time and effort.
One day maybe I'll ask some AI for ideas on yardwork, or vacation activities, or ways to fill out a March Madness bracket. I'm not quite there yet.
