I've spent the past week overcoming my fear of Google's Gemini and OpenAI's ChatGPT. Things I've learned: - Using an AI for strange tasks like using a TTS mode

I've spent the past week overcoming my fear of Google's Gemini and OpenAI's ChatGPT. Things I've learned: - Using an AI for strange tasks like using a TTS model to turn snippets of IPA text (for a constructed language) into an audio file (via CLI) - much of the task turned out to be setting up stuff. Gemini was not very good when it came to giving me instructions for doing things in the GCP and Google Workspace browser consoles. ChatGPT was much clearer with instructions for setting up AWS CLI locally and navigating the AWS browser console to create dedicated user for the task etc. The final audio results were mixed, but then that's what you get when trying to beat a commercial TTS AI to doing something it really thinks you're mad to try. - Working with ChatGPT to interrogate a Javascript library to produce a markdown file summarising the library's functionality and usage, to save me the time of repeating the exercise with LLMs during future sessions. Sadly the exercise didn't help solve the truly useless code LLMs generate when using the library ... but it's a start. - LLMs are surprisingly good at massaging my ego - once I learned how to first instruct them to take on a given persona before performing a task: <As an English literature academic, analyse the following poem: title: Tournesols; epigraph: (After "Six Sunflowers, 1888" by van Gogh / felled by bombs in 1945); text: This presented image, dead as the hand that / drew it, an echo blown to my time yet // flames erupt from each auburn wheel - / they lick at the air, the desk: sinews // of heat shovelled on cloth. Leaves / jag and drop to touch green glaze - // I want to tooth those dry seeds, sat / by the window caught on the pot's neck // and swallow sunshine. So strong / that lost paint of the hidden man.> I still fear LLMs, but now I fear them a little less ...