The public release of ChatGPT last fall kicked off a wave of interest in artificial intelligence. A.I. models have since snaked their way into many peoples everyday lives. Despite their flaws, ChatGPT and other A.I. tools are helping people to save time at work, to code without knowing how to code, to make daily life easier or just to have fun.

It goes beyond everyday fiddling: In the last few years, companies and scholars have started to use A.I. to supercharge work they could never have imagined, designing new molecules with the help of an algorithm or building alien-like spaceship parts.

Heres how 35 real people are using A.I. for work, life, play and procrastination.

People are using A.I to

Plan gardens.

John Pritzlaff Gardener

Mr. Pritzlaff is building a permaculture garden in his backyard in Phoenix, where he uses drought-resistant trees to give shade to other species.

I do these ultra-high-density planting arrangements, he said. And Ive been employing ChatGPT to give me inspiration on species that wouldnt have otherwise occurred to me, and for choosing the site for each tree: the best part of the yard with regard to the sun at different times of the year.

Taking into account his geographical location, it suggested, for example, that he might use a moringa tree to provide shade for a star apple.

Plan workouts.

Louis Maddox Data scientist

Mr. Maddox finds ChatGPT the perfect companion for his workouts. For example, one day he pasted in his workout notes and said:

Give a concisely formatted summary of this workout and the muscle groups activated. Note any muscle groups that were missed and suggest how to cover them with extras/replacements.

After summarizing the notes, ChatGPT said:

Missed Muscle Groups & Suggestions: Quadriceps: Add leg press, squats or lunges. Calves: Add standing or seated calf raises. Glute Activation: Consider adding glute bridges or hip thrusts for better glute focus.

From there he asked ChatGPT what to prioritize if he didnt have much time for the gym, and to sketch out roughly how long it might all take.

Its not perfect, he says, but it gets the job done. Mostly, he says, ChatGPT helps him get going under time constraints, and not let the busywork become an excuse not to do it.

Plan meals.

Kelsey Szemborski Stay-at-home mother of three

Ms. Szemborski is a busy mom who is always on the lookout for something that will make my life easier. So when she found ChatGPT, she tried asking it for a gluten-free meal plan. And she added:

It needs to be both budget-friendly and also kid-friendly for kids who are picky eaters and we need to avoid peanuts. Please include a grocery list. Thank you!

And ChatGPT obliged. Heres the first day of a weeks meals:

Breakfast: Gluten-free oatmeal with banana and honey Snack: Fresh fruit (apples, bananas, oranges) Lunch: Grilled cheese sandwich on gluten-free bread with tomato soup Snack: Gluten-free crackers with hummus Dinner: Slow-cooked beef stew with gluten-free biscuits

It completely eliminated my normal meal-planning process that involved searching for recipes, trying to think of meal ideas, configuring a list of all of those ideas, and then making a list of the ingredients I need, too.

Make a gift.

Matt Strain Technology and innovation consultant

Mr. Strain used ChatGPT to create a custom book of cocktails based on the tenets of traditional Chinese medicine written in the style of the J. Peterman catalog. He took the idea further the next day, using DALL-E to generate images of the cocktails for the final book, which he gave to his girlfriend for Valentines Day.

An A.I.-generated image of the Golden Elixir cocktail DALL-E via Matt Strain

Design parts for spaceships.

Ryan McClelland NASA research engineer

Mr. McClellands job is to design mission hardware thats both light and strong. Its a job that has always required a lot of trial and error.

But where a human might make a couple of iterations in a week, the commercial A.I. tool he uses can go through 30 or 40 ideas in an hour. Its also spitting back ideas that no human would come up with.

The A.I.s designs are stronger and lighter than human-designed parts, and they would be very difficult to model with the traditional engineering tools that NASA uses. NASA/Henry Dennis

The resulting design is a third of the mass; its stiffer, stronger and lighter, he said. It comes up with things that, not only we wouldnt think of, but we wouldnt be able to model even if we did think of it.

Sometimes the A.I. errs in ways no human would: It might fill in a hole the part needs to attach to the rest of the craft.

Its like collaborating with an alien, he said.

Organize a messy computer desktop.

Alex Cai College sophomore

I had a lot of unsorted notes lying around, and I wanted to get them sorted into my file system so I can find them more easily in the future. I basically just gave ChatGPT a directory, a list of all my folder names, and the names of all my files. And it gave me a list of which notes should go into which folders!

Write a wedding speech.

Jonathan Wegener Occasional wedding officiant

Mr. Wegener and his girlfriend were officiating a friends wedding in December, but he procrastinated.

A few hours before, I said, Can GPT-3 write this officiant speech? he recalled. The first version was generic, full of platitudes. Then I steered it.

Adam is a great lover of plants

The speech came back with these beautiful metaphors. It nailed it. It was just missing one important part.

Can you add that thing about in sickness and in health?

Write an email.

Nicholas Wirth Systems administrator

Mr. Wirth uses ChatGPT to simplify tech jargon when he emails his bosses: My organization specifically pays me to keep the computers internet online, and my own literacy is limited. I work with C-level executives, and their time is not to be wasted.

He also gets it to generate first drafts of long emails. He might say:

I need a midsized summary email written pertaining to data not being given to us in time.

He also asks for a bullet-point list of the concerns that have to be addressed in the email.

And ChatGPT starts a reply:

Subject: Data not received in time Phone and internet provider information

Hello [Name],

I want to bring to your attention an issue we are facing with the data that was supposed to be provided to us by [Date.] As of now, we have not received the following information that is critical for our project

Get a first read.

Charles Becker Entrepreneurship professor

So Ill have a paragraph I might be putting into a test for a student, or instructions. I say:

Where might people have trouble with this? Whats unclear about this? Whats clear about this?

I generate a lot of writing both for my work and for my hobbies, and a lot of time I run out of people who are excited to give me first-pass edits.

Play devils advocate.

Paul De Salvo Data engineer

I use ChatGPT every day for work, he said. It feels like Ive hired an intern.

Part of Mr. De Salvos job is convincing his bosses that they should replace certain tools. That means pitching them on why the old tool wont cut it anymore.

I use ChatGPT to simulate arguments in favor of keeping the existing tool, he said. So that I can anticipate potential counterarguments.

Build a clock that gives you a new poem every minute.

Matt Webb Consultant and blogger

Yes, programmatic A.I. is useful, he said. But more than that, its enormous fun.

Organize research for a thesis.

Anicca Harriot Ph.D. student

Anicca Harriott has been powering through her Ph.D. thesis in biology with the help of Scholarcy and Scite, among other A.I. tools that find, aggregate and summarize relevant papers.

Collectively, they take weeks off of the writing process.

Skim dozens of academic articles.

Pablo Pea Rodrguez Private equity analytics director

Mr. Rodriguez works for a private equity fund that invests in soccer players. And that means reading a lot.

We use our own data sets and methodology, but I always want to have a solid understanding of the academic literature that has been published, he said.

Instead of picking through Google Scholar, he now uses an A.I. tool called Elicit. It lets him ask questions of the paper itself. It helps him find out, without having to read the whole thing, whether the paper touches on the question hes asking.

It doesnt immediately make me smart, but it does allow me to have a very quick sense of which papers I should pay attention to when approaching a new question.

Cope with ADHD

Rhiannon Payne Product marketer and author

With ADHD, getting started and getting an outline together is the hardest part, Ms. Payne said. Once thats done, its a lot easier to let the work flow.

She writes content to run marketing tests. To get going, she feeds GPT a few blog posts shes written on the subject, other materials shes gathered and the customer profile.

Describing the audience Im speaking to, that context is super important to actually get anything usable out of the tool, she said. What comes back is a starter framework she can then change and build out.

and dyslexia, too.

Eugene Capon Tech founder

Imagine yourself as a copywriter that I just hired to proofread documents.

Because Im dyslexic, it takes me a really long time to get an article down on paper, Mr. Capon said. So the hack Ive come up with is, Ill dictate my entire article. Then Ill have ChatGPT basically correct my spelling and grammar.

So something that was taking like a full day to do, I can now do in like an hour and a half.

Sort through an archive of pictures.

Daniel Patt Software engineer

On From Numbers to Names, a site built by the Google engineer Daniel Patt in his free time, Holocaust survivors and family members can upload photos and scan through half a million pictures to find other pictures of their loved ones. Its a task that otherwise would take a gargantuan number of hours.

Were really using the A.I. to save time, he said. Time is of the essence, as survivors are getting older. I cant think of any other way we could achieve what were doing with the identification and discoveries were making.

Transcribe a doctors visit into clinical notes.

Dr. Jeff Gladd Integrative medicine physician

Dr. Gladd uses Nablas Copilot to take notes during online medical consultations. Its a Chrome extension that listens into the visit and grabs the necessary details for his charts. Before: Writing up notes after a visit took about 20 percent of consult time. Now: The whole task lasts as long as it takes him to copy and paste the results from Copilot.

Appeal an insurance denial.

Dr. Jeffrey Ryckman Radiation oncologist

Dr. Ryckman uses ChatGPT to write the notes he needs to send insurers when theyve refused to pay for radiation treatment for one of his cancer patients.

What used to take me around a half-hour to write now takes one minute, he said.

Original post:

35 Ways Real People Are Using A.I. Right Now - The New York Times