When is it appropriate to use AI? 🤖 (A bare minimum litmus test) ✨

I have lots of thoughts about AI, some of which are fairly clear, some less so.

But here are two principles I was thinking of recently that I think are non-negotiable when it comes to using AI, whatever your philosophical views of AI are.

1) Would you think it was OK in principle to delegate the task to another human being?

 

Here's a few examples:

 

Write a political speech. Write a best man speech. Data entry. Write a love letter. Write a social media post. Design your logo. Write a YouTube comment. Ghostwrite a book. Illustrate a book you wrote. Design stickers for you to sell on Etsy. Summarise the minutes of a meeting you were chairing. Write the captions of a video. Summarise an email from a friend. Book-keeping. Research your project. Write alt-text for images on your website...

 

Also, with each of these tasks, would you distinguish between a) delegating a rough draft (which you then take as a starting point and make your own), or b) delegating the entire task? [Edited to add: conversely, would you do a rough draft yourself and then delegate to someone else to polish off?]

 

Different people will have different answers to each of these. What I'm asking, is what do YOU think is appropriate to delegate?

• If you'd be willing to delgate to another human, it may be appropriate to delegate to AI (other factors may of course mean it is not).
• BUT if you'd not delegate to a human, what makes it OK to delegate to AI?

We need to think about these things.

 

Would you delegate an illustration to brighten up a text-heavy blog post to AI? I just did. Not sure how I feel about that :-)

2) In a specifically Christian context, assuming your answer to my first question was yes, would it be something you were OK in principle with delegating to a nonbeliever? 

(I'm of course assuming a sympathetic non-believer who will do the task to the best of thier ability, not an anti-Christian troll!)

A few examples: 

 

Write a sermon. Write a prayer. Give you spiritual guidance. Design sermon visuals. Design church publicity. Write a Bible story book. Illustrate a Bible story book you have written. Advise you on the best candidate for a church job. Write a hymn. Write a tune for a hymn you have written. Plan a Sunday School lesson. Draw visuals for a Sunday School lesson you have written. Plan a church rota. Summarise the theological scholarship on a topic. Plus many of the examples in the first section...

Again, different people will have different answers to these. My question is what do YOU think is appropriate to delegate to a non-believer?

• If you'd be willing to delgate to a non-believer, it may be appropriate to delegate to AI (other factors may of course mean it is not).
• BUT if you'd not delegate to a non-believer, what on earth makes it OK to delegate to AI?

We really need to think about these things. 

Oh, and finally, if you have a chatbot that pretends to be Jesus, that is idolatry and blasphemy.

We are weak but he is strong

"As a father has compassion on his children,

so the LORD has compassion on those who fear him. 

For he knows what we are made of,

remembering that we are dust."

Psalm 103v13-14

What is it with packaging designers and percentages?

All this tell me is that it doesn't remove more grease than is there to start with.

Even I know that's not how percentages work

I got this hairbrush.

If there's 45% less breakage and 55% less effort, you don't add them together to get 100%.

The total percentage of overall benefit can't be more than the highest individual benefit. And if any of the individual benefits is not 100, the overall benefit can't be 100.

So (assuming breakage and effort are the only factors that contribute to 'happy hair'), I think (and my maths could be wrong) they add up to 50% happier hair - the average of the two. Which is still a good percentage.

Percentages aside, I think it does a good job - definitely much less breakage. Effort - easier than dragging a comb through it, but have to go over it more times. Happier hair? I haven't asked it how it feels 😊

 

[Edit: after a lengthy discussion with my brother (we do talk about interesting things 😁) I have concluded that a) my percentage was too simplistic, but that was partly because b) the whole thing is like comparing apples and oranges and makes no sense whatsoever.]

Quote Zzzzzzz 😴

"Sometimes the godliest thing you can do in the universe is get a good night’s sleep … If you are among those who become nasty, cynical or even full of doubt when you are missing your sleep, you are morally obligated to try to get the sleep you need."

~ Don Carson

Happy New Year!

Jesus spoke to them again: “I am the light of the world💡. Anyone who follows me will never walk in the darkness but will have the light of life.”

John 8:12

Happy Easter 🥚🥚🥚

Was in the corner shop today, and there were creme eggs and biscoff eggs on the counter.

Faith and reason and reasons for faith

Watching Bones, and I found this conversation at the end of an episode (5:14 The Devil in the Details) fascinating. 

Booth is a practising Catholic, with genuine faith (sometimes muddled, but real).

Bones is a logical empiricist and atheist, who frequently says that she doesn't understand how anyone intelligent could believe in God (she's autistic - tact is not her strong point!).

They have just been dealing with a particularly troubling case, in which there has been a lot of discussion about good and evil and religion.

 

BONES: I need to ask you some things.

BOOTH: You gonna ask me about God and the Devil?

BONES: Yes!

BOOTH: You're going to ask me how God can place such a burden on good people.

BONES: No, I'm going to ask you how you can still believe in a kind God after a case like this.

BOOTH: Was my faith shaken? 
Yeah. Mm-hmm. It is.

BONES: It is?

BOOTH: Yeah. I'll go home tonight and I'll lie in bed, and I'll toss, and I'll turn, and I'll beat myself up, and uh...I'll question everything.

BONES: Will you get your faith back?

BOOTH: Always have in the past.

BONES: So you have faith that you will retain your faith. 

(Booth nods) 

BONES: Why?

BOOTH: Because, Bones, it's...the sun'll come up, and tomorrow's a new day.

BONES: I know that feeling.

BOOTH: Really?

BONES: Mm-hmm.

BOOTH: You know what it feels like to get your faith back?

BONES: When I see effects and I am unable to discern the cause, my faith in reason and consequences is shaken.

BOOTH: And then what happens?

BONES: Two plus two equals four. I put sugar in my coffee and it tastes sweet. The sun comes up because the world turns. 

These things are beautiful to me. 

There are mysteries I will never understand, but everywhere I look, I see proof that for every effect there is a corresponding cause. Even if I can't see it. I find that reassuring.

BOOTH: And life is good again.

BONES: Life is very good.

BOOTH: Yes it is. Amen

(Both laugh)

 

 

This made me think of a quote by C.S. Lewis:

"I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else."

And then a line from a song came into my head: "the sun came up today" - which after a fair bit of brain-racking I realised was this, by Andrew Peterson:

 

 

And now I'd better get back to work...

Quote

"free curiosity has greater power to stimulate learning than rigorous coercion"

~ St Augustine

Quote

 The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.

~ George Bernard Shaw

Tough on grime

Every time I see this my mind goes, "Tough on the causes of grime."

The power of a slogan!

The magic word?

The word please is odd.

I was just writing a WhatsApp to ask someone to check who a jacket belongs to.

"Could you check if this jacket belongs to anyone?" sounds like a friendly request. I'm asking her to do it.

"Could you check if this jacket belongs to anyone, please?" sounds like an instruction - polite enough, but I'm telling her to do it.

"Check if this jacket belongs to anyone, please" sounds like an order.

The word 'Please' doesn't necessarily make a sentence politer. It may do the opposite.

The usefulness of childhood stories

Whenever I'm liquidising something like soup, I remember the story of Paddington decorating his room. He switched the electric paint stirrer on before putting it into the paint, instead of once it was in. I take care not to do this - as a direct result of hearing that story 40-odd years ago.

I didn't take this photo - it came from an Etsy listing. The book is Paddington's New Room.

DIY advice my dad gave me

When drilling, make a little pocket out of scrap paper, and fix it to the wall with masking tape. Then all the plaster/brick dust will fall into the pocket, instead of onto the floor. Throw the pocket away - no cleanup neccessary!

 

Bad design

If you need to cover your carton of fabric softener in huge ugly DO NOT DRINK warnings, maybe consider that putting it in a carton identical to a juice carton is not the best idea.

Also, there's no braille warning.

Happy New Year!

Fairytale mattresses

Reading reviews of mattresses - I assume they were written by the three bears 🐻🐻🐻 and the princess & the pea 👸🏻🟢

The same mattress is apparently: 

• far too soft, 
• as hard as a brick, 
• really comfortable, 
• and you can feel every spring.

Cleaning tip

If you feel your hoover isn't sooking as well as it should, it's worth checking that the hose is not blocked by such things as odd bits of plastic, straws, or the handle of a violin case.

At least I think that's what this is.

Faces

The problem with things with faces is that it seems so sad to throw them out 😟

This was once a very happy bin. It still looks very happy - but isn't really a bin any more...

Toner

Having problems with the photocopier - toner not sticking to the paper reliably.

So I google it.

A few answers down, I come across this:

"Is it essential to use a toner? Toner isn’t an absolute.,"

Huh? How can you print without toner?

It then continued:

"but toner will benefit your skin in many different ways, therefore it’s a plus to have toner in your beauty routine."

Ah! the other sort of toner. 

 

This is where more intelligent search AI would be useful.