How are you using AI(NOT FOR WORK)

[strife]

Just kind of curious how y'all are using AI for non-work functions.  I know it can code, I don't care about that, just looking for other ideas that maybe I didn't think of.

Other than basically replacing Google with Copilot(I use copilot the most since it's built into Windows and it does a pretty good job for most of what I do), here are a few of the ways I've used it.

1. Dungeon Master for D&D (just single player, had it be my dungeon master and it built campaigns and ran everything for me)
   
2. Learning Blackjack. Not really learning how to play, but learning how to really use good tactics and running through trials.  
   
3. Design - I do a lot of CNC, Laser, 3d printing design.  I use it quite a bit for helping me with design ideas, helping me with creating flat images that I can import into some of my software for tracing out designs, that kind of thing. I have used it a little bit for actually building 3d models, but I don't really like it for that(and they are all pay to play).
   
4. Advice - I think this is a huge area for it.. I use it a lot for work, but have also used it for dealing with personal situations in my life.  Obviously I'm just using it as a data point and not blindly following it's advice, but I think it does a really good job in this at the very least as a sounding board.  
   

I do a lot of automation and such for work, so kind of avoided that for my non-work life.

[Slamz]

1. I've talked about this one quite a bit and maybe it falls under "coding" but: this forum, this website. Some of the customization I tried to do fucked it up in small ways that I could never fix. Claude fixed it. It also runs backups for me, it can check the health of the server, and basically anything I feel like doing with this website, I can just tell Claude to do it. Really if you ever wanted to make a website for any reason, just get one of the AI tools and tell it what you want and let it walk you through the entire process.
   
   
2. I made a skill that is trained on what my gaming machine is (hardware, software) and can keep an eye on it, help me fix problems, and run updates. Some app won't start? Fix it. Some app crashes? Find out what happened and fix it. Need something new installed? Fix it. Next time I visit my mom I'm going to put a Claude CLI on her computer, set it to start every boot, and enable remote control so next time she tells me something doesn't work, I can just tell Claude to figure it out, from my phone.
   
   
3. Gmail was complaining about running out of space. I used Claude to help sort out what we can delete. Freed up a bunch of space by deleting a bunch of obvious junk mail from folders like "Social" and "Updates" that were > 3 years old. I think it deleted like 50,000 messages. (I still have another 50,000. My gmail account is old.) Note that for this, it was a hassle getting gmail setup in such a way that Claude could easily use it but it did walk me through the whole thing. (Protip: when stuck, tell it to take a screenshot of your browser so it can see what you're stuck on. For a while I was screenshotting, cutting and pasting but then I was like "wait, why don't I just tell it to get its own screenshot".)
   
   
4. I, too, have used it for advice and ideas. Work, personal, social. Not a lot, but it's convenient to have something to bounce thoughts off of sometimes.
   

My latest idea was to make something to help me learn Spanish, mostly just for fun. I thought Duo Lingo was kinda dumb and never got much out of it, but something I could play with and customize might be more fun (I will never need to ask how to get to the library, nor do I want to learn how to do a shopping trip, so if we can skip that part, that would be great). I have temporarily ruined this idea by trying to create it with Fable 5.1 set to ultracode, which ate my 4-hour window in about an hour and ate quite a lot of my weekly limit in two hours (and I'm on the $200/month plan), but I might end up with something neat.

I also have in the back of my mind something that might help me learn to play the accordion (no, really!). I have one I bought a couple years ago and it's pretty fun but "teach yourself to play the accordion" almost does not exist. I got tired of spending ages learning to play sheet music of tunes I don't like, but it was all the beginner stuff I could find. A customized program might be what I need and I bet I can get agentic AI to pull something together. (I am too lazy and anti-social to want some meat-bag instructor that I have to make arrangements with).


I do think that most people have not caught on to what AI is like in 2026.
It really turned some kind of corner this year and is wildly better than what it was like just 2 years ago.

AI still has flaws, issues, and tips and tricks to make it work better, but I think that will all get baked into next year's AI, and we aren't far from being Captain Picard shouting wishes into the air and having a computer that does a bang-up job of delivering what you imagined.

[strife]

I probably need to do #3. My oldest email is from 2008 so it's at least that old. Although I only have 10k emails

I deal with AI so much at work, when I come home I just don't feel like spending any real time doing anything that takes actual work, so must of the stuff I do at home is kind of mindless.

[Slamz]

Incidentally, one of my coworkers runs Qwen ("open-weight") on his home PC. I thought you needed one of those $16,000 cards to even have a start point but some of the Chinese models will run locally (that is, they are not running on a Chinese server). Personally I would not trust a Chinese made AI model no matter what anyone says but he seemed unconcerned about it, and you could always create a defensive setup (like make it run in a docker container with no network, or a tightly screened network).

Anyway, he says it can do about 1.5 tokens per second (which is dead slow). It basically works about as fast as a person could type. But he says it actually is pretty smart. And free. He gives it a coding task and just lets it go. Takes hours to do something Claude would do in 10 minutes, but it gets there, all running locally. The fact that this works at all is kinda wild. I thought we were a long way away from having AI that didn't run on a billion dollar server farm but maybe we're closer than I realize.

[strife]

One of my employees runs Ollama. I'm probably going to start building something locally to build my resume more than anything, just trying to think of something to build.

[Jakensama]

I avoid AI at work because it costs me money so I am an old cranky man who doesn't use it at home.

[Arsilon]

1) Custom WoW Server coding and maintenance
2) Fantasy Grounds Content Conversion and Extensions
3) Savage Worlds GM content aid and lore tracking
4) Personal financial planning (just got laid off and doing the analysis to determine if I can just say F it and retire)
5) Glorified google to look up and modify cooking recipes; home repair options, etc.
6) I used AI to help me tutor my son in a couple of his college classes; building out study guides, practice questions with explanations, etc.

[strife]

I avoid AI at work because it costs me money so I am an old cranky man who doesn't use it at home.

lol, there are free / cheap options.  

1) Custom WoW Server coding and maintenance
2) Fantasy Grounds Content Conversion and Extensions
3) Savage Worlds GM content aid and lore tracking
4) Personal financial planning (just got laid off and doing the analysis to determine if I can just say F it and retire)
5) Glorified google to look up and modify cooking recipes;  home repair options, etc.
6) I used AI to help me tutor my son in a couple of his college classes; building out study guides, practice questions with explanations, etc.

4 - ugh, sorry man.  Unfortunately in the role I'm in at work, the work my team does has caused multiple people in other departments to be let go(we automated their tasks), granted that wasn't through AI, that was just RPA.

[Jakensama]

I avoid AI at work because it costs me money so I am an old cranky man who doesn't use it at home.

lol, there are free / cheap options.  

1) Custom WoW Server coding and maintenance
2) Fantasy Grounds Content Conversion and Extensions
3) Savage Worlds GM content aid and lore tracking
4) Personal financial planning (just got laid off and doing the analysis to determine if I can just say F it and retire)
5) Glorified google to look up and modify cooking recipes;  home repair options, etc.
6) I used AI to help me tutor my son in a couple of his college classes; building out study guides, practice questions with explanations, etc.

4 - ugh, sorry man.  Unfortunately in the role I'm in at work, the work my team does has caused multiple people in other departments to be let go(we automated their tasks), granted that wasn't through AI, that was just RPA.

It's not the cost of AI I care about it's the business model.  If a human spends 5 hours reviewing documents I can bill the client for 5 lawyer hours.  If AI reviews documents I can't bill for that time ethically.  Fortunately most clients want a human to have reviewed their stuff at this point still.

[Arsilon]

I avoid AI at work because it costs me money so I am an old cranky man who doesn't use it at home.

lol, there are free / cheap options.  

1) Custom WoW Server coding and maintenance
2) Fantasy Grounds Content Conversion and Extensions
3) Savage Worlds GM content aid and lore tracking
4) Personal financial planning (just got laid off and doing the analysis to determine if I can just say F it and retire)
5) Glorified google to look up and modify cooking recipes;  home repair options, etc.
6) I used AI to help me tutor my son in a couple of his college classes; building out study guides, practice questions with explanations, etc.

4 - ugh, sorry man.  Unfortunately in the role I'm in at work, the work my team does has caused multiple people in other departments to be let go(we automated their tasks), granted that wasn't through AI, that was just RPA.

It's not the cost of AI I care about it's the business model.  If a human spends 5 hours reviewing documents I can bill the client for 5 lawyer hours.  If AI reviews documents I can't bill for that time ethically.  Fortunately most clients want a human to have reviewed their stuff at this point still.

In the spirit of this thread.....you can still bill the AI babysitting time.....which in many cases is even more value add than just reading the document yourself -- You could probably bill the 'enhanced' lawyer review time at a premium over what the flat hourly rate for 'non-enhanced' review time.

I've learned quite a bit in the last 2 years really putting AI through its paces both personally and professionally.  And even though my team was a casualty of AI, I'm still pretty bullish on the potential it brings.  It will definitely change things...but so has the internet, so has cell phones, etc.

I think expectations are a bit out of alignment that it can fully replace people in anything but the most basic jobs....but put in the hands of people that know how to use it, it can be really really good stuff.

[TinStar]

I'm still trying to figure out how to use AI to import invoices. I have to manually input thousands of invoices a month, and it would save me a ton of time not having to do this manually, but our accounting software(quickbooks) does such a shit job of it, I would spend more time fixing it's mistakes than it would save me. Although, I know this was designed as "not for work".

Personally, I use it as a defacto doctor/nutrition coach quite a bit. I don't trust anything it says and do spend time checking the information, either using multiple AI's or researching it independently, but it does a great job most of the time getting you in the ball park of where you need to be. I also use it a little as a life coach(I have a paid account for this). Again, I don't just assume everything it says is the word of god or anything, but it definitely helps me, if nothing else, get shit off my chest. It is a good alternative to journaling, and the app I have doesn't just sugar coat and tell me I'm awesome, it will tell me I'm a piece of shit, if it needs to.

Another thing I really love AI for is identifying plants and giving ideas for landscaping and stuff like that. Or it's pretty great at identifying problems. For instance, the other day I had a warning light on my home generator and I was about to call my generator maintenance guy, which would have cost me probably $150 for him to come out. I took a picture of the warning and all I needed to do was reset the maintenance light that is designed to let you know when your generator has hit a certain milestone and you should check the battery for corrosion.

[Slamz]

For legal document review, my thought would be do the review yourself, then have the AI also review it at the same time, then compare notes. Essentially you get an assistant that works for pennies, but you are still billing the full rate since you are still doing the full work yourself. Then look into the concept of "skills", which are basically just documents informing the AI of how to do something. You don't build the skill, you tell it what you want and let it build the skill.

"Do research and create a skill for reviewing legal documents [insert some statement about what type of documents they are]."

Then, anytime it "catches something" that turns out to be a dud, you have it update the skill. "Your finding here was wrong because .... Update the skill with this information."

Even if you always review everything yourself, I would think that having an AI look over your shoulder would be pretty valuable for a trivial amount of time and money.
(Do expect to have to train it how to talk to you, though. AIs are chatty. The real battle is figuring out a way to phrase what the deliverable should be.)


Making a "skill" was how I got Claude fixing forum issues without me ever having to remind it how to log in or what's going on. "/mybb-maintainer See what these 582 guest accounts are doing" and off it goes.
(Incidentally, they are nonstop crawling the public threads and the members list. I had Claude verify what they can see. Although maybe it's worth a note that public really does mean public, but google has been crawling this forum for years.)

[Jakensama]

For legal document review, my thought would be do the review yourself, then have the AI also review it at the same time, then compare notes. Essentially you get an assistant that works for pennies, but you are still billing the full rate since you are still doing the full work yourself. Then look into the concept of "skills", which are basically just documents informing the AI of how to do something. You don't build the skill, you tell it what you want and let it build the skill.

"Do research and create a skill for reviewing legal documents [insert some statement about what type of documents they are]."

Then, anytime it "catches something" that turns out to be a dud, you have it update the skill. "Your finding here was wrong because .... Update the skill with this information."

Even if you always review everything yourself, I would think that having an AI look over your shoulder would be pretty valuable for a trivial amount of time and money.
(Do expect to have to train it how to talk to you, though. AIs are chatty. The real battle is figuring out a way to phrase what the deliverable should be.)


Making a "skill" was how I got Claude fixing forum issues without me ever having to remind it how to log in or what's going on. "/mybb-maintainer See what these 582 guest accounts are doing" and off it goes.
(Incidentally, they are nonstop crawling the public threads and the members list. I had Claude verify what they can see. Although maybe it's worth a note that public really does mean public, but google has been crawling this forum for years.)

That's probably a good idea.  I did use it recently when I got dumped a case another firm had been handling and I had about 24 hours to write an initial review.  I used it to parse about 50 deposition for key information so I could write my report and wrote it with the caveat that it was a first pass.  I probably do need to start integrating it more as a backup.

Since ya'll use it more than me, which platform do you think would be best for document review?  I know some are better at some things than others.

[Slamz]

Since ya'll use it more than me, which platform do you think would be best for document review?  I know some are better at some things than others.

And that I'm not sure. There are metrics but if the metric is over 6 months old it might as well be ancient history. I'd personally just try Claude (Fable) and see how it goes but I have no reason to think it will do better or worse than ChatGPT (Astra). All these AIs are leapfrogging each other constantly so give it 3 months and the answer might change.

The cheap plans are cheap enough that you could probably just get a low monthly tier of ChatGPT, Claude, and throw in Grok or Gemini, then feed them all a few tasks and see how they do. If you start hitting limits, then pick the one you like most and bump up your subscription tier then cancel the others.

There are apparently some dedicated legal AIs out there (see: Harvey) but I know almost nothing about them. I think they are just packaged layers overtop of other AIs, though, and my suspicion is you'd get just as good or better results by picking a premier model and spending a little time customizing it yourself. (Which really just consists of talking to it and having it build those "skills" around your specific workflow.)

[strife]

IMO, they are all about the same and all changing almost daily. I'd say pick one and go with it and you'll be fine. One will move ahead of the other and then get surpassed the next week. We use copilot(GPT) at work and have agents that are basically doing what you're talking about now(Reviewing legal paperwork). Ours are more around loan documentation(which are sometimes 100+ pages and none of them are the same format), and GPT does it just fine. It's all about getting the prompt right and having someone that's competent enough to work with it and tweak it(AI assisted of course).