by James Wallace Harris, 4/16/26
I’m currently subscribed to Gemini, Google’s AI, and Recall, an AI designed to help manage what I read online. I have subscribed to ChatGPT and Midjourney in the past. Both Gemini and Recall have free accounts, if you want to try them. But I’m currently spending $28 a month to get the full features of both. However, I’m not sure I need all this AI power.
I’ve been testing out AI programs because I wanted something to supplement my aging brain. Both Gemini and Recall help me digest and remember what I read. At least that was the hope. Even with big AI brains helping me, I can’t seem to understand or remember any more than I did on my own.
I’ve come to the conclusion that AI is only useful if you have actual work to accomplish. I’m retired. I’m just trying to keep up with current events for personal enrichment. I thought using an AI would help me learn more, but that hasn’t worked out.
Having access to AI is like owning a Ferrari. I can feel all that power at my fingertips, and it’s exciting. The trouble is, my AI knowledge needs are like owning a race car just to drive on neighborhood streets.
I just read Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson. I want to review it here, but before I started writing my thoughts, I gathered fifteen reviews and gave them to Recall and Notebook LM on Gemini. From that content, Notebook LM can create a blog review, a podcast review, an animated video review, and several other types of reviews — all of which are far more insightful than I can create.
The trouble is, I don’t learn anything using Notebook LM. Writing a review is hard work. Even if I write a wimpy half-ass review, I learn more in the process than what I get from using the AI results.
I’m also trying to write a book about science fiction. Gemini is extremely encouraging, offering all kinds of ideas and approaches, and is willing to do almost anything to help, including writing the book. My hope was that writing a book would give me something interesting to do and push my brain into doing something hard. I thought Gemini and Recall would be tools to organize my research.
And they can organize the chaos out of any amount of data. They are quite impressive. The trouble is, my mind is still disordered. AI insights don’t transfer to my thinking. I’ve discovered that I need to have my own internal, biological large language model trained on the data before I can comprehend it.
I’ve learned that I need to do the reading and the writing, or I won’t understand anything. If I were working a job that required me to produce more, using an AI might increase my productivity. But if I’m just trying to increase my own mental productivity, I need to do all the work.
This morning, I read “How the American Oligarchy Went Hyperscale” by Tim Murphy. It is the best article I’ve read yet on the impact of data centers. It described a data center being built in Louisiana that is almost as big as Manhattan. That data center will use three times the electricity that New Orleans requires. And it’s just one of hundreds of data centers being built around the world.
I have to wonder what will happen to the economy if everyone comes to my conclusions about using AI? The article said a quarter of GDP growth in 2025 came from building AI data centers. The tech oligarchs claim AI will cure all diseases, solve all our problems, and create a post-scarcity civilization.
Do we all need to find tasks for AI to keep this new economy going? Most people worry about AI taking everyone’s job. But will everyone’s job become finding work for AI?
I don’t think I can.
JWH
Auxiliary Memory 
I thought I’d play around too. I wanted to collate the funniest of my blog posts with the possibility of creating a book. But of course humour is intangible even humans see it differently. The posts it did identify it then reworked into bland, twee stories that would put anyone to sleep. Let’s leave it to sorting through large scale data and hopefully making medical advances to the benefit of mankind.
Good idea.
This blog raises a thoughtful question about the practical value of AI in our everyday life
I don’t usually use AI at work, it helped me with several small projects like writing a python script to collect data from a site. However, I used it a few times with my hobbies, where it was very helpful. For example, I’m researching my roots and recently one of major site in this area, MyHeritage, introduced scribe AI, which is surprisingly good in reading hand-written text, so I was able to make readable pieces from protocols of some of my ancestors execited in the USSR in the 1930. So, I see where it can help me, but honestly I am not ready to pay additionally for the service, and, as you’ve mentioned, it is far from free
I think there are endless uses for AI, some that are very worthwhile. But it’s tricky. I asked Gemini to write a Python program for me to process scanned images. It produced a working program. But I didn’t understand how it worked. I initially thought of the project as a way for me to learn to program in Python. If I just wanted some images processed, AI is a tool that gets the job done quick. But if I want to learn Python, it’s a distraction. My plan is to start over and see if I can come up with my own Python code.
I’ve been looking around for tasks to automate in my own daily life. There just isn’t any. That doesn’t mean I won’t use AI. For example, I do my taxes in TurboTax. I’m sure it’s full of AI. Whenever I search on Google, I’m given AI results first. I don’t know why, I would think that would put them out of business.