Bearing Fruit

In the way of things on family gatherings, last week, I ended up chatting to our son's parner's sister's fiancé. Forty years younger than me, but in the same line of work (software), so of course we compared notes. He's a bit cool on AI, but nevertheless acknowledged he uses it as an aid, but doesn't trust it as a substitute

So far, so normal - writing software based on a carrfully constructed natural English description is one of its acknowledged strengths. A few weeks ago MrsM's brother told of a young professional he met who had been assessed as having below par productivity because she resists letting AI write the replies to her professional emails

Again in casual conversation, our son mentioned he uses it both professionally - to sanity check his quotes for building work - and socially - to prepare first drafts of activity programmes with young people's groups, taking into account that organisation's (decidedly progressive) values

And today, our daughter had me exercising brain-muscles that haven't flexed for a year or two, acting as a sounding board for her solving some logistical and tech issues. She also asked her Doctorate supervisor for input: the email reply was the answers provided by AI when the supervisor asked it for suggestions. This was not meant as insulting ('let me Google that for you'!) but a genuine effort to help - rather the obverse of the 'students use AI to cheat' popular narrative

Just a small snapshot of where we are. Whatever concerns we may have about it, it's here, it's widely established and valued, up and running, integrated, irreversible, irresistible. I expect the day will come when I ask it to take into account all the blips I have ever written and write something in my style to fit a picture. It probably wouldn't be this

We are home from our progress around our family. I expected the grapes to be riper. Some things progress more slowly than us, or AI