Nothing on this site or anything written in my voice on the internet was generated by AI. I deeply value writing and the internet for thinking, self-expression, and connection with other humans. I am committed to using my own voice when writing anywhere on the internet and don't foresee that changing in the future.
I use AI for coding. I use the Cursor code editor for pair programming assistance, inline code suggestions, troubleshooting, and brainstorming. I've found that Cursor: (1) helps me write code about ~30-40% faster, (2) removes any hesitance to dive into new languages, packages, frameworks, etc., and (3) dramatically reduces burnout and increases enjoyment. I heavily revise AI-generated code for human readability, performance, and style. I've also been starting to use more vectorized data (good summary here if you're not familiar with the concept) for search and indexing with AI.
I occasionally use OpenAI (mostly via the API playground) and Anthropic for helping me think through original ideas. For example, I'll put initial drafts of my writing, journaling, emails, etc. into AI and ask questions to help me find new perspectives that contradict my own thinking. I'll explore areas of my writing and thinking that might not make sense, or areas where there are gaps in my logic or reasoning. One contrarian take I have is that AI's "hallucinations" are really helpful. They force me to be truly engaged with whatever I'm working on and reveal tons of insights. In general, I use chat-style generative AI as a digital rubber duck.
I use Perplexity for some information-based questions that I would have consulted search engines for in the past, like "when do dogs lose their baby teeth?", and "how many pounds of tomatoes per plant?" Like many people, I'm fed up with the quality of the user experience on Google and other search engines. Perplexity has it's own set of problems, but it has been helpful in that: (1) I get simple answers more easily, and (2) it helps me get a better feel for AI content, which for better or worse is a critical sense to develop.
Finally, I've been using AI to transcend written language barriers. This is probably the AI use case I'm most excited about. I've been continuing to learn written Japanese and German, both of which I've passively used since youth (I took German from grades 6 thru college and started Japanese in college). Over my years of living in smaller American cities, I have struggled to regularly speak foreign languages. I don't live around many Japanese or German speakers, I am not interested in remote methods, and I am mostly at peace with the practical reality that getting good at speaking foreign languages isn't in the cards for me at this point. But the written word is an entirely different story. AI has fundamentally and dramatically changed how I view written language. After some in-depth trial and error, I don't believe that AI (or any purely technical implementation) is a great "translator" per se. But with a little patience and grit it's been really good at helping me unlock languages so I can understand writing in its native language. Especially for Japanese, that has made a world of difference for me because it unlocks so much cultural context that gets completely lost in translation.