An incomplete list of ways in which modern AI has helped me in the past year or so. No over arching point, just documenting how AI has improved my life.

Software

• It writes my code, obviously. Almost all my personal projects are either 100% hand written or 100% vibe coded; almost nothing in between. The vibe coded projects are significantly more ambitious and feature rich.
• AI helps me manage chores for the open source libraries I help maintain.
• On several occasions AI was able to trace and explain a bug in an open source project I didn’t understand, because I didn’t have the time and patience to personally trawl through code I didn’t author. On at least one occasion I was genuinely stumped though, and the AI was provably able to fix a bug that I couldn’t.
• I have been able to run models on a scheduled loop to automatically inspect, debug, deploy, and verify fixes. The model respects my rules for when to escalate problems it cannot solve on its own.
• There have been scenarios where AI acted or didn’t act in the way that I wanted, but so far this has always been due to ambiguity, not insubordination.

Education

• AI is an infinitely patient on-demand tutor on whatever topic I happen to be interested in. At this point hallucinations are rare enough that whenever I bother to fact check anything, the AI answer is corroborated. I also like to think I’m developing an intuition for what kinds of training data a modern LLM is likely to have access to, and that my success is also a function of asking better questions. For example I basically never bother to double check historical facts.
• When I’m traveling I can learn the identity of any building or monument by uploading a picture of it; then I can learn about its history.
• When my daughter was born, AI helped us learn what was expected vs unexpected, and provided a lot of tips and information with citations. This was later corroborated by our pediatrician, and in the only cases there was disagreement (1) it was minor and inconsequential, and (2) the AI advice was backed by more recent studies and better data.
• AI helped me quickly get up to speed on the latest AWS services when I retested for my solutions architect associate certification.
• AI was able to summarize the critiques of the books I read, providing valuable balance and perspective. In at least one case, it linked to a very thorough and convincing critique of the book that thoroughly dismantled the author’s central claim, their academic integrity, and the entire basis of their career. This saved me from establishing a worldview based on fiction that had incorrectly been labeled nonfiction.
• When my wife got her real estate license, AI-authored study guides had fewer errors and hallucinations than the materials provided by the course she was enrolled in, and AI provided answers that were roughly as accurate as the instructor (in the few instances I can recall any disagreement, it often came down to a hair splitting detail in the scenario that can completely flip the outcome, or some legal situation that worked one way in the past but the law changed and it now works a different way, but there was no clear pattern in whether the instructor or the AI had the more “current” view).

Home

• AI helps me look up the relevant building codes and maintenance schedules for components when I’m working on our home. It provides exact citations to the relevant codes.
• I have received very large uncountable benefit from analyzing photos of an old family home with AI, because I was able to identify potentially unsafe conditions that needed immediate correction. At the same time, AI has also warned that a simple and obvious seeming fix for some issue was actually dangerous and could lead to hazardous exposure or massive damage. This has happened multiple times. On at least one occasion many years ago (pre modern AI) one of these hazards actually manifested exactly as warned, so these issues are not theoretical.
• AI made it easier to find and read manuals for equipment I own. In a few cases I needed to know roughly what year something was manufactured, which AI was able to tell me instantly with a photo of the serial.
• AI taught me to do my own minor plumbing and electrical work around the house. It also tells me when a certain project is probably beyond my ability.
• AI helped me find and buy new major appliances that were specifically optimized for the things I cared about, and which turned out to be excellent purchases. This was long enough ago that I only used AI at the “end“ to vet my choice, and in both cases where this happened, I ultimately ended up with a different choice than I started with because the AI found me better options.
• AI was able to correctly diagnose a structural defect in our home from a photo; this exact defect was later confirmed almost verbatim by an engineering firm, and the findings the AI missed were solely because the engineering firm got more and better photos.
• When our electric bill climbed to new highs several months in a row, AI gave me good ideas for how to measure and trace it, which led to an optimization pass in our home, resulting in significant energy savings.
• This section was originally under “education“ but I had so many examples I ended up moving it into its own section.

Email

• AI summarizes my emails, which is particularly useful for certain newsletters I subscribe to.
• AI is able to extract (and track) key info like due dates and contract terms as they are revised.
• AI can compose emails for me, although I don’t do this.
• It’s a better-than-human translator, including for speech.

Health

• I used AI to review my strength training logs and it helped me notice and correct an issue in my training, which fixed some minor joint pain and got me out of a plateau.
• AI at one point made an offhand comment about how (based on my numerous questions about optimizing food pairings) I appear to be a prolific home cook who adjusts recipes to use up what’s on hand and minimize waste, and after reflection, I agree.
• AI gives me good food storage guidelines and convinced me to throw away some items that were past the point of good risk/reward.

Legal/Finance/Tax

• AI can quickly give me a broad strokes overview of my specific situation and point out issues I wouldn’t have noticed. This helped tremendously in preparing to speak to a professional because we wouldn’t have to waste each others time by having them explain the abcs of the specific topic we were engaging them about.
• In one routine legal matter, AI recommended a seemingly valid approach that our attorney didn’t end up taking because our attorney considered it far more important to optimize for a different dimension of the problem. On a different facet of the same matter, the AI recommendation was actually better and more correct than what the attorney recommended (the AI correctly predicted a consequence that our attorney neglected to consider, despite this being a routine consequence of said matter).
• AI helped me refine our financial and tax planning. We have paid for financial and tax help in the past, but don’t need an ongoing relationship with a provider, and this has remained the case even as our financial situation has gradually become (slightly) more complex.
• AI has been instrumental in my investment due diligence process, and helped form conviction in my best performing trades in the past year.

Personal stuff

• AI can apparently plan vacations and make dinner reservations for you and such, although I haven’t used AI for either of these yet.
• I’ve used AI to find video game recommendations, by providing it a list of games I’ve previously played and enjoyed. This hasn’t resulted in a 100% success rate, but when it doesn’t work out, it’s usually for a reason the AI already predicted (e.g. pacing, dated design/mechanics, etc). AI recommendations have a better success rate than recommendations from friends, although the absolute best recommendations all came from friends.