How I use AI for writing

dynomight recently wrote an article calling for bloggers to state publicly whether and how they use AI. Here are ways I currently use AI in ways that might show up on this blog: I use AI to find papers and explain bits I don’t understand (generally vocabulary), and generally tutor me. I sometimes ask AI to find flaws in papers. I verify the flaws before citing them and don’t consider a paper flawless just because AI didn’t find anything. When I’m stuck I’ll ask AI to generate many ideas to unstick me. This could be anything from word choice to themes for a concluding paragraph. I don’t copy/paste beyond a word or two, the point is not to generate the answer but to unstick my brain. I use AI for feedback much the way I use friends or editors. I’ve coded tools to do data analysis, although I’m not sure anything from them has made it to print yet. I wrote this in 4 minutes so I may come back later with edits as new uses occur to me.