A retirement activity: Getting information through an AI agent

In retirement, you spend a lot of time doing one of three things. 

1.  View/listen to videos/audios/TV/media. 

2.  Talk/text to friends/relatives.

3.  Get information/knowledge on some topic.

I have already authored an article on viewing/listening to media. 

Here is that essay: https://jaykasipersonal.blogspot.com/2025/03/a-retirement-activity-watchinglistening.html

I have already authored an article on many ways to talk to or call people. 

Here is that essay: https://jaykasipersonal.blogspot.com/2025/03/the-many-ways-of-calling.html

This essay is about getting information/knowledge on a topic. There are primarily five ways to seek reliable information/knowledge on a topic.

1.  View a podcast on, say, YouTube by a dependable author, or view an article/show in a magazine or a paper or TV by a reliable author. The podcast or paper or magazine articles or TV show you trust is up to you.

2.  View an educational show by a dependable producer.

3.  Do a search for material with a search engine like Google or Bing. The challenge is knowing how dependable the resulting information is.

4.  Take an online course with a Bonafide professor.

5.  Ask a trusted AI agent.

Most people know how to do the first three and I will only touch on it very briefly. I watch podcasts on YouTube either with a browser or streaming on my TV. My wife, for example, has been watching podcasts by Dr William Li on diet and health. I primarily use google for searches and the keywords you use for the search are critical for useful results. I watch educational shows on cable TV or streaming TV.

I take online courses through the "The Great Courses" and "Coursera" web sites. These are accessed with a browser or from a DVD. For courses with a browser that both me and my wife are taking together I chrome cast it to my TV from my windows PC. From chrome, you can cast either the whole screen or just a tab. I cast the whole screen and fill the screen with the talk. 

The rest of this essay focuses on asking AI agents for information. AI is a rapidly evolving area with a rich ecosystem. However, I currently use only three AI products – Siri on my iPhone, Microsoft CoPilot on my windows computer or with a browser, and OpenAI Chat GPT with a browser. I only use Siri for pointed questions related to a person or organization I want to contact or the location of someplace I want to go to. So, my usage is exceptionally light. No more said on that. 

While Chat Bots like chat GPT and CoPilot are more knowledge agents that are trained with select information, Perplexity is more of an AI driven next generation search engine that digs through the web and gives a summary along with web links to the sources it came from so you can follow the links yourself to get more details. I have tried Perplexity very briefly and liked it. Will explore it some more. Feel free to explore it yourself. Here is the link: https://www.perplexity.ai/

I will limit the rest of this essay to Chat GPT and CoPilot. 

The web link for chat GPT is: https://chatgpt.com/

CoPilot is built into Microsoft Edge (icon at top right corner). It can also be accessed on the web. The web link for CoPilot is: copilot.microsoft.com

I relied quite a bit on CoPilot and chat GPT to research a topic when blogging. It does not matter what experts say. The ONLY way a human would trust a Chat Bot is by interacting with it for a sufficiently long time and being satisfied with the responses. This process may involve cross-checking information received through other sources. I have learnt to trust CoPilot and chat GPT although I still occasionally cross-check responses. I have noticed that CoPilot may choose not to answer certain questions on sensitive topics like politics. That is a legitimate choice by the owner (in this case Microsoft) of the Chat Bot. However, a change in ownership or a change in the guiding philosophy of the company that owns the Chat Bot would require trust to be reestablished again from scratch. I am not a power user. I use the Chat Bots primarily for two things. 

1.  Answer a focused factual question posed in ordinary English. 

2.  Feed an ordinary English paragraph or a full essay I have written to ask for a fact check, get feedback, get a review, and get elaboration on the topic.

I have already given the web links for CoPilot, Chat GPT and Perplexity. When you follow the link the input box is prominent (you can skip signing in for now). That is more than enough to start using it!! Just enter or paste the input and hit enter. That is a good enough place to start. Any plain English question, statement, paragraph, or article as input is fine!! It is easy!! Try having a conversation with the AI agent!!

Here is open AI's website introducing Chat GPT: https://openai.com/index/chatgpt/

Here is a Time article on starting to use Chat GPT: https://time.com/partner-article/7270411/chatgpt-for-beginners/

Here is Microsoft's website on starting to use CoPilot: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/copilot-tutorial-start-using-copilot-fe837774-3f6b-4885-850d-01f0e428898c

You can search for other material. If you are genuinely interested, you will find material and learn more. 

 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The cost of health care for seniors in Oahu

This essay is about the cost of healthcare for seniors. The core backbone of it is Medicare (unless you are a government employee). The earlier sections apply to everyone in the US. The last 10 sections have quite a bit of Hawaii or Oahu specific content.  I don't cover this here, but when planning, it is important to carefully read and know when you are eligible for the various Medicare or supplemental parts, when enrollment can be deferred without penalties, and what the penalties are for late enrollment.  Medicare is ONLY a secondary payer/payer of last resorts for injury due to auto accidents. The car insurance is the primary for this. Hawaii is a no fault mandatory PIP state (personal injury protection) which is the key option that applies in the auto insurance.   Here are the key sections.  Medicare part A & B Insurance Original Medicare Part A and B are a great deal for seniors and is government run. Without it, seniors would be loaded down with huge ...
Read more

A retirement activity: My daily regimen of Diet and Exercise

I am the cook in the house these days. I really dislike cooking, and I minimize my time doing it. But eating healthily is vital and you do want reasonably tasty food!!  Almost all my cooking is instant pot cooking. It is easy, convenient, fast, but still nutritious and tasty. I have lots of instant pot recipe books. I draw from that and adapt to make the preparation to be even more nutritious and tasty. Adaptations include adding lots of veggies or making it tastier by selecting the spices to use. For taste, I rely a lot on eastern spices. The key to releasing its flavors is blooming them. Not too concerned about the texture of the food or its looks, or striving for a lot of variety. I don't cook every day. We just decided we will keep cooked food in the fridge for a maximum of 4 days. I frequent Whole Foods, Down to Earth, Costco, Foodland, and less frequently, Safeway and Target for food shopping. I am shifting over to buying organic wherever possible and el...
Read more

How did the Hawaiian islands form?

Image
A key reference is Professor Michael E. Wysession of Washington University in St Louis. The Hawaiian Islands are far away from any continental land mass. The furthest such island though is Pitcairn Island. Hawaii took an exceedingly long time to be discovered. It was first visited by Polynesians around 300 CE. Polynesians’ origin is southeast China in the Fuzhou basin. Starting around 5500 years ago, they travelled progressively east to Taiwan, Philippines, Indonesia, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Samoa, Tonga, French Polynesia and eventually north to Hawaii. Hawaii is at one end of the Hawaiian-Emperor Seamount Chain, which is a mostly submerged mountain range in the Pacific Ocean. A seamount is a large submarine landform that rises from the ocean floor without reaching the water surface (sea level). The chain stretches 3,600 miles across the western Pacific Ocean. This chain has two parts. Starting from the Big Island of Hawaii, it mostly goes west-northwest in a straight l...
Read more