✅ How to Keep an AI Life Balance: 4 Steps

📌 Introducing the Practical Use Guide for AI

Summary: Today’s post gives four guiding principles for keeping AI use in check.

I often get asked when it is okay to use AI, especially in the workplace. So, I spent the last week mulling over the pros and cons of daily use and decided it might be helpful to create a set of personal principles for people to follow.

Introducing the a new idea: The Practical Use Guide for AI

This guide is meant to help you maintain an AI life balance. These four principles remind you not to rely too much on AI but to keep perspective as robots become more entrenched in the workplace.

1: Use AI as a Helper, Not a Co-worker.

Let AI make your life easier by handling tasks like organizing your schedule or giving you new ideas and planning strategies, but don’t let it make all your decisions. Keep yourself in the driver’s seat and let AI handle the small stuff so you can focus on what matters.

The reality is that robots can be your co-workers and most likely will be at some point soon, but you should never have the mindset that they are your equals. Why? Because then we normalize their replacing humans, and then this becomes a slippery slope.

Robots are tools. Treat them as such.

Not sure when it is okay to use AI? You can use the guide I created for AI and writing to help you decide.

Read now: AI for Writing - When is It Okay? (Or is not okay?)

2: Stay Curious, Not Dependent. (Nor addicted!)

Using AI for quick answers or ideas is great, but don’t rely on it for everything. Keep your curiosity alive by learning and thinking for yourself—AI is a tool, not a replacement for your own brainpower.

It is far too easy to just allow the robots to do the heavy thinking for you. We can look to the ancient Greeks for a little guidance here.

Did you know the epic The Iliad by Homer has a word count of roughly 152,00 words and would take over 10 hours to read aloud? It’s a poem is made up of over 15,000 lines and is divided into 24 books. It is written in dactylic hexameter. 

I bet you most likely did not realize the ancient Greeks had this epic memorized, word for word. The Greeks had “memory schools” where mnemonic devices and other ways to effectively memorize oral history were taught.

So when the idea of writing down these tales became more mainstream, many Greek scholars were against it, including Socrates, who had a famous argument against using writing as a tool:

If men learn this [writing], it will implant forgetfulness in their souls. They will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks.

He was insistent writing would cause people not to use their brains, and become forgetful. This same argument can be made for AI.

Obviously, we are still using our brain power 2,500 years later, but do we lose a little by depending on such tools as writing and AI? That’s not for me to judge, but I can safely recommend to not become addicted to AI, right?

There are plenty of tools (and more being developed daily) to help make our life easier. The trick is not to become too dependent on them, though.

Read now: 💡 15 Tools to Make Your Life Easier

Fortunately, if you are feeling overwhelmed or addicted, AI can help with that, too! 😅

Listen Now: 🧠 7 AI Tools for Mental Health

3: Keep It Real, Not Robot.

AI can be super helpful, but it’s still just a machine. Make sure you’re using the robots in ways that feel right for you, and don’t forget to step back and live life without them sometimes.

Also, remember your boss, clients, and co-workers expect answers and deliverables from YOU. If you consistently deliver AI work, then there’s no need to keep you as the middle-man!

4: Protect Your Data and Privacy!

When you use AI, be aware of what data you’re sharing. Be smart about privacy settings and don’t hand over more information than you’re comfortable with. Remember, you control your digital footprint!

I have an entire guide on protecting your data, so be sure to read it if you haven’t yet.

Read Now: Protecting Your Personal Data Guide

Here’s my disclosure for today’s post: no robots were used or harmed.

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