Creative WorkHour Podcast – Episode 52: How Can We Use AI in Honest and Ethical Ways?

The team discusses practical and ethical ways to use AI, from enhancing travel experiences and improving writing to creating art and researching health information. Alessandra shares how AI saved her from a performance mishap, while others highlight the importance of transparency and fact-checking. Each participant offers unique insights on integrating AI responsibly in daily life and work.

Greg
00:00 - 00:09
Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Creative WorkHour Podcast. Today is episode 52. My goodness gracious, where does the time go? I say that every week, don't I?

Greg
00:10 - 00:35
But in the room today, you've got myself, Greg, we've got Alessandra, we have Melanie, Devon, Ellie, Shadows Pub and Hillary. It is May the 17th. We got a great question today that Alessandra and I were talking about and the question today is how can we use AI in honest and ethical ways? And AI is kind of everywhere whether we realize it or not.

Greg
00:35 - 00:42
You might be using it and not know it. Alessandra, pretty good question right? How do we use AI in honest ethical ways?

Alessandra
00:43 - 01:04
Well, sometimes we can use it to CYA. I used it to avoid some colossal embarrassment. And if we have time, I'll tell you that story at the end of the podcast today. But one of the fun things that I love to do with AI, and right now I'm quite enamored, I'm AI crushing on ChatGBT.

Alessandra
01:04 - 01:23
I'm doing a lot of travel, and so if I see a building that just knocks my socks out, I'll take a quick picture of that building. I'll go to ChatGBT. I'll hit the little plus sign, and it will give me the option for files, photos, or camera. I'll hit photos, and I'll click the picture of that building that I just took.

Alessandra
01:24 - 01:37
and click the checkmark and over that picture goes and I can say, what's it? What's the building? Tell me about it. And miraculously, it will say, oh, well, that building was built in 1902.

Alessandra
01:37 - 01:56
That building is known Wardian. It has been the hotel of the Manchurian Hotel in London. And it was made because the timing of it coincided with this treaty that was being negotiated, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And you get the whole story of the thing.

Alessandra
01:56 - 02:20
And you're like, oh my God, I was going to stay at the place next door. I want to go with a place with the story. Boom. So, there you've just used AI to enhance the value of the money that you're about to spend enhance the value of the trip that you're taking enhance the value of you're going to remember that trip that you took to that city at that time as oh yeah then

Alessandra
02:20 - 02:38
when we're old and gray and we're having our cordial because I remember that building we stayed in, the hotel that was made in 1902, and we've just like made our lives better by that very simple, very fun, ethical, honest way of using AI. What about you, Greg?

Greg
02:39 - 03:09
Well, you know, Grammarly is used a lot by a lot of people, which is AI. A way that I would use it if I write a blog post, having ADHD and a traumatic brain injury, often times my writing doesn't make sense so maybe I'll be writing in the sixth paragraph something that belongs in the first paragraph and I'll jump back and forward. So when I finished, I'll read through and I'll format it, you know, as best makes sense to me. But then I might feed that into an AI and say, rewrite this in a logical sequential way that makes sense.

Greg
03:10 - 03:27
And so it's, it's my own writing, but AI is kind of reformatting it and moving things around, reshuffling it, you know, so that for me would be a use case, right? But I am not saying to AI, write this for me, I'm doing the writing. Melanie, how about you? How can we use AI in almost technical ways?

Greg
03:27 - 03:28
Or do you use AI?

Melonie
03:28 - 03:54
I don't really use AI deliberately much, although I might start to, but I know that when I ask questions online that I'm getting AI answers at the top, which these days with all the crappy ads and sponsored info is kind of useful, even if it's not 100% accurate. So there's that. That's about it. I'm not so AI-y.

Melonie
03:54 - 03:57
I think I don't even have ChatGPT on my phone.

Greg
03:57 - 04:09
You're right, though, when you go to Google, it has an AI overview at the top, doesn't it? And then there's a tab now as well that says, you know, AI, and it'll dive deeper into the AI element of it, not just the AI overview. Yeah,

Melonie
04:10 - 04:10
more.

Greg
04:11 - 04:16
That's right, yeah. Absolutely awesome one, yeah. Devon, how about you? How can we use AI in honest, ethical ways?

Devin
04:17 - 04:44
Yeah, I don't know all the ways that it can be used, but my favorite way is when I... post something, usually on Hive, I want an image to go with it. And I can't paint or draw, but I have an idea in my head of what an interesting image would be. And now, thanks to what I use is ChatsGBT, and it used to be Dolly, now I think it's something else.

Devin
04:44 - 05:07
But I can say, hey, I want an image that looks like this. And it creates very interesting images. And I'll keep talking to it until I get it close to What I had in my mind and it's a very good image. And so now it's like I'm an artist, you know, I created this image and now it's something that goes with my post and makes it more interesting and I fully disclose that this is what I did.

Devin
05:07 - 05:22
This is how I created it. But now people that want to read the post I can see my Hopefully cute little image that I thought up to go with it. And it makes me feel like I've added a certain next level to my artistic expression. And I find that quite enjoyable.

Devin
05:22 - 05:27
And yeah, I don't think I'm fooling anyone because I'm fully disclosing how it came about

Greg
05:27 - 05:31
and what I did. Thanks, Tevin. Yeah, that's it, isn't it? The disclosure part of it.

Greg
05:31 - 05:37
That makes all the difference. Ellie, how about you? Ethical ways we can use, honest ethical ways we can use AI.

Ellie
05:39 - 06:27
One of the biggest things that I've been challenged with before AI is I've had health conditions that require me to research a lot in the fields that I actually don't understand. And there's all these health influencers out there who come out with some of these crazy claims sometimes about what you need to be paying attention to. So I'm constantly on the AI, feeding it in studies, asking me to help me interpret something, interpret somebody's words, validate the strength of evidence that I'm seeing, Cross-check my understanding, pull things together from different fields, and help me understand how things are relating to each other. And I use it on a really regular basis to help me make sense of things that I actually don't have a strong background in, and to help me not be influenced by people who are oversimplifying things.

Greg
06:28 - 06:32
Thanks, Sally. That's a really great use case, isn't it? Fact checking. Absolutely.

Greg
06:32 - 06:35
Well, then you've got to fact check the fact check. But yeah, absolutely.

Ellie
06:36 - 06:41
Yes, yes, I do. I fact check the fact check as well.

Greg
06:41 - 06:46
Absolutely. Shadows Pub, how about yourself? Honest ethical ways that we can use AI?

Shadows Pub
06:47 - 06:55
AI is pretty much my virtual assistant. I do just about anything with it. This week, I've been busy using it. You're gonna love this.

Shadows Pub
06:56 - 07:10
I've been using ChatGPT to write emails to open AI support because they've been screwing me over and not providing support. And ChatGPT has been doing battle with them through me. So

Devin
07:10 - 07:10
I've been having

Shadows Pub
07:11 - 07:37
fun with that one. There's times that I'm working online or working at doing something and I run into a roadblock I'll screenshot it, upload it into chat GPT and say, this is what I'm trying to do and this is what's happening, what's going on. And it'll provide me tech support. And of course I use it in writing and when I write something, I'll put it in and say, okay, I want some feedback on this and grammar check and suggest refinements.

Shadows Pub
07:38 - 07:46
And we'll work from there. I don't always let it hold forth on the refinements because it's too formal and it's writing for my style.

Greg
07:46 - 07:53
and shadows. What's your favorite all time? Do you have an all time favorite use case? I know you use it in your echoes as well, don't you?

Shadows Pub
07:54 - 08:10
Oh, yeah. Well, needless to say, I create lots of images in in mid journey using it. When my chat GPT account is actually working, I create images in in GPT for all. And favorite use case.

Shadows Pub
08:11 - 08:23
I got to say, I'm getting real happy with this use of creating scripts for me. so that I can create an interface for doing some of the stuff that I'm doing to work around the problem I'm having with OpenAI.

Alessandra
08:23 - 08:34
And so do you think, I heard you say something recently, Shadows, about teetering around with or tinkering around with Python. Is that what you mean by scripts? Yep.

Shadows Pub
08:35 - 08:54
So the scripts are written in Python. ChatGPT is written in Python. and we're now moving to the next level and using Streamlet, which is a Python library, to create simple interfaces so that I can work on them just like their desktop apps. That is so

Alessandra
08:54 - 08:57
far above my head, but I love that. I'm basically

Shadows Pub
08:57 - 09:10
creating the L.E. Echoes workflow so that I can do it on the desktop, and when I don't have full access to my chat GPT account, I just keep going. I'm not getting held back.

Greg
09:10 - 09:26
And as far as AI is concerned, I don't think I've met anyone with as much experience in using mid-journey for AI art as Shadow. You could train the trainer on that, for sure. Hilary, how about you? How can we use AI in honest and ethical ways?

Hillary
09:27 - 09:36
Thank you, Greg. Okay, AI in ethical ways. I use AI. One, I'll say I don't use it enough.

Hillary
09:36 - 10:19
Never taken any prompt training, which I've always kind of wanted to, so you can really get exposed to what AI can do for you. So my use of it is pretty superficial, but I use it a lot. Also, like you, Greg, ADHD and some traumatic brain injury, and I have a hard time getting written words out. And AI has helped me be able to get my thoughts, these sentence fragment thoughts out on paper that don't necessarily make sense written down.

Hillary
10:20 - 11:14
And I can throw them into chat GPT. and, you know, clarify this, clean this, you know, just little things like that. And I use it mainly to, yeah, get my own act together and don't necessarily use it enough to come up with things for me. But sometimes I do like right now, I was just using it to come up with some interesting benefits someone would receive from joining Toastmasters and I can, get it those thoughts that are in my head, they're more abstract.

Hillary
11:14 - 11:27
So when it, when I can see it, I can't produce it, but I can see it. And there's my thought into some words that make sense. And that for me is my use of AI.

Greg
11:27 - 11:42
Thanks, Hilary. Yeah, it can be a great starter as well to, if you've got writer's block, you can give it some ideas and say, you know, give me some ideas to, for this or for that, get me started on or, Yeah, absolutely brilliant. Alessandra, this is a great conversation, right?

Alessandra
11:42 - 12:21
Yeah, I love it because it can be very data-driven, the use of AI. Okay, I was going to tell you about how I was saved from utter embarrassment. I'm playing a day-long rehearsal in England and then I'm heading off to, this time next week, heading off to France to do a week of rehearsals and then two back-to-back concerts. So I'm, I'm rehearsing here yesterday, and I'm working on my part for the Robert Schumann Opus 54 clarinet, not the clarinet concerto, the piano concerto, and I'm playing my part.

Alessandra
12:22 - 12:32
You know, the clarinet parts in orchestra take an A clarinet. If you're playing in band or in jazz, it takes the B flat clarinet. Slightly smaller. Two different keys.

Alessandra
12:33 - 12:44
One works well playing with strings, the other works well playing with brass. So I'm working on this part, and the part is published in German. It's an Italian company. This is a German edition.

Alessandra
12:44 - 13:02
Go figure. But I'm playing these passages, and one says, in a font that looks quite different, it says, and it's underlined, NB. And then several systems down the page, it says NA. And I hit my foot switch, and it goes to the next page on the iPad.

Alessandra
13:02 - 13:17
It says NB. And I'm like, what the hell is that? I don't have time to write the conductor and then come back, wait for an answer back, and figure out what all that is I need to know right now. TikTok, right?

Alessandra
13:17 - 13:58
And I'm like, I wonder if chat GPT could help. So I took a screenshot, messy screenshot, took the screenshot, threw it into chat GPT, and I said, what is going on with this NB and NA? And Chat GPT came back and said, oh, well, you best pack both of your clarinets for this concert trip, because in B means you need to be playing on the B-flat clarinet. And where it says in A, you need to stop playing that one, take the mouthpiece off, switch it, put it on the other one, and make sure that you understand in which hand is which clarinet, because you're going to be switching back between the two of them throughout

Alessandra
13:59 - 14:23
all three movements of this piano concerto. Now, I could have very easily only had on my packing list to take the A clarinet because I was going to play orchestra, or I could have just been, I'll work that out later, and continued to play the clarinet that I had in my hand, and then be completely out of whack. And you know musicians and their temperaments, if somebody is wrong in the room, it's not gonna be them.

Alessandra
14:23 - 14:44
There would have been all eyes on me, like daggers, like, what are you doing? And that's called not getting invited back. So, I am very grateful for ChatGPT. It gets a lot of stuff wrong, but I have to be grateful because it just pulled my cow out of the ditch without my cow having to go in the ditch.

Alessandra
14:45 - 14:51
So thank you, ChatGBT. Thank you, OpenAI. I know it's a show. I know the technology's all over the place.

Alessandra
14:51 - 15:01
There's feelings, there's controversies, there's people quitting, there's companies going bust. But for this one use case, I'm grateful. Greg, what time is it?

Greg
15:02 - 15:11
It's that time again. You've wasted some perfectly good time listening to the Creative Work Hour podcast when you could have been doing something else. But what about you? What do you think?

Greg
15:11 - 15:20
How can we use AI in honest and ethical ways? And how do you use AI in your work? Let us know. Visit us on creativeworkhour.com.

Greg
15:20 - 15:27
Come back next week. And if you have a question, let us know and the team will discuss that for you as well.