Dare to Care

I have always considered myself on an anti-AI trajectory. I had disabled the help me write a gmail feature and the search assistant on my browser. I thought I was helping protect the environment by not using AI willynilly.

Then on Sunday, my brother shared this article with us called, “Something Big Is Happening.” My hubby read it, and passed it on to our kids. I was hesitant, but I finally read it. I found it heartbreakingly scary, like our world will never be the same, and the bad players are going to have so much power to manipulate others. I recommend reading Matt Shumer’s manifesto, if you haven’t already. (In response, Forbes published a response by Paulo Carvão here, which makes it feel less scary.)

Anyway, today, on this President’s Day, I decided to help my friend Rocio complete her petition for habeas corpus, so she can get out of her prolonged and punitive detention, which started while she was legally seeking asylum. After an hour on the application, following the really good instructions from the National Immigration Project, I needed some input to see if I did it right. After a few readings through and making small corrections, inspired by Matt Shumer, I decided to embrace AI. I chose Microsoft Copilot and first asked it (them? him? her? what are AI’s pronouns?) to review it for accuracy and effectiveness.

I’m not going to go into all the details, to be sure, for I’d be here a loooong time, if I tried. I spent about five hours today, going back and forth with my Copilot. It offered so many good suggestions and asked questions of me to dig out more information. It was very helpful for improving the petition, and I went from offering one generalized ground for Rocio’s challenge, to having three grounds that captured her case specifically. I was starting to feel good about this.

I did notice two important thing to be wary of: Copilot is overly-confident, like a mediocre white man. It will answer whatever question you have, whether it knows the answer or not. However, it is also brown-nosing. It made so many comments like, “Your petition is excellent. It is clean, factual, consistent, and persuasive. Here’s what stands out…” “great question; your instinct is correct” and “perfectly formatted and legally safe. Everything is in the correct order and ready to attach” made me feel like I was at the head of my class!

However, when I was thinking I was finished, there was one address that needed to have a copy sent to that wasn’t formatted correctly, so I asked about it. Even though previously it had told me everything was perfectly in order, now it said:

OK, I thought you would have double checked the addresses before telling me it was ready to mail. That is important to know. It was telling me lots of things were perfect that it didn’t even see or try to see. What is this about? I then went through with a fine-tooth comb and asked a lot of specific questions about names and addresses and other details that might have gotten missed. I also found a few grammatical errors it didn’t tell me about. (Though, I wonder if I would have asked it to read for only grammar, could it have been successful?)

Finally, I needed a break from the law. This week I had purchased some mushrooms and cauliflower for a recipe for some vegan Bolognese sauce that I had made once before. However, for the life of me, starting Saturday I could NOT find the recipe. I looked in Google Drive (where my cookbook is with all my recipes). It wasn’t there (or in the Drive Trash.) I searched my saved recipes on Instagram. I did a general search online and found a thousand vegan Bolognese recipes but not the one I had misplaced. So, though disappointed, today I planned to wing it.

However, since I had had AI success today, I opened a new inquiry on Copilot and asked this:

And what do you know? It found my recipe in less than two seconds:

Wow! So I got to cook with the real recipe instead of trying to remember it after only making it once before. I didn’t add pasta, so instead of pasta water I thinned it with broth. We ate it for dinner tonight on spaghetti squash. Here is the recipe, thanks to Half Baked Harvest and Copilot, in case it sounds good to you.

If this habeas petition is successful and Rocio comes home, I am going into pro bono wannabe law practice with Copilot as my partner. We’ll be helping others in her situation.

So, what are you thinking about AI these days?