AI is set to change the world in some incredible ways. But as well as shaking up the way we work and potentially solving some of the world’s biggest challenges, it also creates opportunities when it comes to navigating the hum-drum of the everyday.
Understanding how it will affect us, though, is critical if we want to take advantage of the opportunities it offers to enhance our day-to-day lives.
In this article I’ll look at the ways we can understand how AI can help us automate routine and mundane tasks, enhance our productivity and prepare for the uncertainties that life can throw at us.
Just as importantly, we’ll highlight areas where uniquely human skills are always going to be irreplaceable.
Assessing the impact AI will have means we can balance our limited time and resources more effectively, hopefully giving us more time for the things that really make life worth living. So let’s dive in!
The Role of AI In Everyday Life
Most of us are already using AI extensively in our daily lives. Often it’s integrated into the tools, products and services we use in a way that makes it invisible unless we know it’s there!
Recommendation and search engines help us find information and products more effectively, and entertainment services like Netflix or Spotify serve up content that they think we will like, saving us the time it takes to browse and choose.
Today, when we deal with companies, we will frequently interact with AI-powered chatbots that can handle our queries and provide the help we need without having to wait for a human to be available.
And AI is quietly working away behind the scenes managing the spam in our email inbox, routing network traffic between devices in our homes, and monitoring our health and activity levels through our wearable devices and trackers.
If we choose to take a more active approach, there’s a lot more it can do, too.
Tools like ChatGPT and many others can help us write anything we might need, from job applications to appealing parking penalties. We can use grocery shopping apps to suggest meals for us to cook and even automate ordering and manage deliveries. There are tools for helping us plan travel and holidays more efficiently, as well as all manner of financial planning applications that help us budget, save and spend money in a smarter way.
So how do we understand which of these are particularly valuable to us, and how do we know which will just cause us to waste more time?
Measuring Impact
A good way to start is to list our daily activities. From walking the dog to working out, grocery shopping, household chores, checking and replying to messages and emails, and scheduling appointments and reminders. Make a note of how long you spend each week on each of them!
Once you’ve done this, you can start to think about how AI might be able to automate those processes. Start by focusing on the ones that are most repetitive and time-consuming.
Then, you can start identifying the tools and applications that can help you automate them.
For example:
Text-Based Apps like ChatGPT or Google Gemini – As mentioned, they can help with any tasks that involve writing. But they can also summarize news stories and articles to help us stay up-to-date, create personalized schedules, offer meal suggestions and create holiday and travel itineraries.
AI Voice Assistants – Amazon Alexa and Google Siri, among others, can help by managing calendars, controlling smart home devices, planning journeys and interacting with other apps and services on your behalf.
Smart Home Devices – Robot vacuum cleaners can cut down on the time you spend doing housework, smart thermostats automatically adjust the heating, smart sprinkler systems avoid the need to spend time watering the lawn. A smart coffee maker can even be programmed to have a drink ready for you when you get out of bed in the morning.
Navigation and Travel Planning – Route-finding apps can learn what journeys you take every day and issue automated alerts when there could be delays and hold-ups due to roadworks or other disturbances,
Exercising and Keeping Fit – Health and fitness apps can help us to optimize exercise and workout schedules so we get the maximum benefit in the quickest time.
Scheduling and calendar management – Popular calendar applications, including Google Calendar and Microsoft Outlook, as well as voice assistants like Alexa and Siri, offer automated scheduling tools.
Grocery Shopping – Services like Amazon Fresh, Instacart and OurGroceries use AI to create automated shopping lists based on your personal habits, make meals out of whatever we have to hand, and time deliveries to fit with our schedule.
Budgeting and Personal Finance – Apps like YNAB and Pocketguard automate calculation of day-to-day expenses so we know how much we need to save and what we can afford to spend on treats like days out and vacations.
Of course, everyone’s life is different, and if you think about it, you will probably find many other routine and day-to-day tasks that can be delegated to AI!
To assess how useful each of them is to you, take note of the time you save as well as any problems, issues or inefficiencies which prevent you from making the most of them.
But the real measure of AI success in day-to-day-life is the extra time we get to spend doing the things that we really love.
Balancing AI and The Human Touch
While it can’t yet do things like walk the dog, cook a meal or collect the kids from school, those are things that many of us enjoy doing anyway. They give us the opportunity to explore the world around us, express our creativity and spend time with those who are most precious to us.
With AI managing the routine and repetitive, we;ll have more time to spend on those things, as well as many others that involve building interpersonal relationships, engaging in strategic planning and problem solving, and pursuing rewarding hobbies and side-projects.
We also have more time to educate ourselves and build new skill sets to help us adapt and grow in an ever-changing world.
Remember, combining the efficiency gains that AI creates with our unique human skillsets – imagination, empathy, creativity – is the key to achieving a balanced and rewarding AI-augmented lifestyle.
If you find that you have more time to spend with friends and family or on hobbies and pastimes that bring you happiness, it’s a sure sign that you’ve achieved day-to-day AI success!
