I thought it's about time i wrote another article on AI, in particular, AI services like chatgpt and grok.
I have been using AI most days for just over a year from chatgpt through to grok including duck ai, gemini, google AI and suno.
Some i have found more impressive than others and its amazing how fast and how good AI is becoming.
You might be asking, as a software engineer, do I use AI and is it cheating, yes i use AI and no its not. Was it cheating pre-AI to read software docs and look at forums no. Some systems and libraries in the early day had limited information on there system and made writing code harder as you had to understand a particular piece of software really well. Unless you go back the the realms of programming languages like BASIC which i used to use years ago as a child to make programs.
The big difference between writing code and using AI, you are more likely to understand your own code and this goes with out saying for AI. Sure you could get AI to create you some code and you could put it into and existing system and it may or may not work. But the real issue is not what the AI is giving you, like any coding, its understanding what you are being given and thats an art form.
For example during my degree i was given a module, where, with no IDE apart from windows notepad i had to create a 5 page website. A tough challenge but what it resulted in is I gained a really good understanding of HTML and to this day its like a second language I understand in side and out. Technically HTML is not a language but syntax within a brower.
This being said, if i didn't under take this, i may still have got good with time but would have taken a lot longer. Somethings you understand by reading text books, which i did alot of at uni and i was so great full. But its the same with AI and Digital Art, i spent a lot of time researching and trying to understand AI and Digital Art. In terms of Digital Art i wanted to give it a go. Im a trained traditional artist but could see the landscape was moving more towards digital so i decided to give it a go. I wont go on about it too much here as we are talking about AI and not Digital Art.
I was quite a late adopter of AI services like chatgpt and grok. It was only in this past month a friend told me about suno, the AI powered platform that can create whole music songs from prompts, much like chatgpt and grok can create images. But you don't need expensive music equipment or the likes of dance ejay or a DAW to create music. Suno can handle this and i was really impressed with what it turned out. Sure i did ask it to create an epic trance anthem of a cat eating KFC and it created a fantastic song and i was really impressed. The free version will work fine for the odd couple of songs but if you want full access then its costs $8 a month. Which if you compare this with spotify its cheaper and you get to listen to music you will like more of. But with anything like this, there is always a human cost involved. Would you still go to a rave or club, if there was no DJ but a couple of speakers and a tablet playing a glorified spotify playlist. Possibly not, as you go to, and what suno, can't do, is know the audience, the emotions, how they are feeling and what type of mood they are in. As Djing is more about this the human connection than simply playing music and dancing along. Sure you might listen to your favourite trance anthems on spotify but it feels lacking in that human connection. This being said it will only keep improving and depending on how you prompt Suno it could fill in that gap. But what does that mean for Djs, they might be very different in 10-15 years time, lot in society may have happened by then. Maybe human experiences will still be about but at a more premium price than before.
Its like any advancement in techhology from the industrial revolution through the the AI revolution, which we are living in right now. AI & robotics will be able to do more in the future and this may mean a change in industry and how people fund their lives. Would we eventually end up all being given a wage across the board or some other kind of system. Again look at the industries that have colapsed like when digital streaming services come along the VHS & DVD rental industry collapsed putting people out of work. Love film sort of tried to fill this gap but it felt like they were fighting a losing battle.
Again with online Shopping and emails v posting letters old ways close down and new ones come along. This is what brings me to the main part of this article and AI adoption as the old saying goes work smarter not harder. Does using AI make me less intelligent as per those studies that they have been doing. Nope, my view is that by working the brain less its acutally better human minds are not designed to be computers always processing and thinking they need rest and off loading as much as possible is important. I love to cognitively off load where i can. This includes some knowledge of computing old skool days a note book and a pen. I think by cognitivly offloading you are doing your self a favour in the long run.
I've been doing this for about a year or more by adopting AI to help take the leg work out of creating something in code as a simple experiement to see how clever it was. In that time AI has changed a couple of models and gotten slightly smarter. But how can you truely test suitablity of AI. Well the anwer is not to given it a simple question to answer but something that would require something slightly complex as well as a few silly random requests like image generation. But what did i ask it to create, well, its simple, and yes, it took several iterations and re-prompting and understanding the code to ask it how to refine what it created me.
Something i deemed on middle ground a word press style block editor. I felt this was something in the middle in terms of features and complexiting. So i set about with the same requirements on both chat gpt and grok, I won't mention google AI or co-pilot they still have a long way to go. But, with out spoilers, grok wins hands down. Let me explain, so under the experiment of chatgpt v grok. I found chatgpt struggled with certain re-prompts and if you have lots of code it limits how many lines of code you can re-prompt in a single file. Grok didnt have such an issue it just handled it. I also found that grok had a better consistent understanding of the problem at hand and had a better grasp of what you wanted it to do. Chatgpt on the other hand struggled randomly changing the output solution like a computer with split personalities it really struggled. Sure for simple questions without lots of re-prompts and general question an answers its better. When chatgpt did return suggestions and points on what to do this was not as consistent as grok. Grok seemed to understand and the points were more relevant it raised. I still see chatgpt as a toddler that has a long way to go, grok is more a young adult to seems to have its technical shiz together.
Whilst chatgpt is cheaper per month on sub, i can see why grok is slightly more expensive the solutions are loads better, feels a more natural vibe coder experience and its quicker. So what would i choose, for me grok over chatgpt. But again it all depends on your use case for what you want out of AI. What works for me is not necessarily best for you so i would suggest having a play like I did to find what best suits you. Run different ones side by side and see what works best. I've not even investigated deepseek yet and other AI systems but i may save that for another article. But like anything computer based please make sure you don't paste in sensitive information.
I hope you have enjoyed this article. Don't forget to like and subscribe, just kidding, i don't do that, enjoy the rest of you day or evening.
