What Do We Think About AI?

Join Sarah and Marie for this week's chat about AI. Do we love it? Do we hate it? How do we think AI will impact the fiber industry? Check out this week's episode for alllll the unsolicited opinions.

Learn more about Sarah here: www.knotanotherhat.com

Learn more about Marie here: www.oliveknits.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Welcome to We Tried to Tell You, a podcast full of unsolicited opinions about life, fiber, and everything in between. I'm Marie Green. I am Sarah Keller. And today we are going to talk about a real loaded topic. Tech and AI in our industry, which, if you're new here, our industry is knitting, yarn, knitting design, etc. All the fiber arts stuff. All the fiber arts. It's a big one, this topic. Yeah. Yeah. This is a big one. Yeah. It's so relevant right now, too. Oh gosh. And boy, I have so many conflicting feelings. But I thought maybe what we would do is start in the Wayback Machine and go back. Um, I started 20 years ago, and then you hopped in around 15 years ago. Around so substantially enough years that we have seen massive evolution in the role of technology in this industry from basically almost no role to a huge role. And as I was thinking about this in preparation, I was remembering I had two massive pieces of furniture in the store that were purely dedicated to stirring paper patterns. Yeah. And I would have to order paper patterns from various distributors and vendors and designers, you know, maybe three or six at a time, and keep them in filing. The two pieces of furniture were giant filing cabinets that people could browse through to pull their patterns out. You'd have to have a display copy and a binder. I mean, the physical space it took up is actually mind-boggling when you think about the dollar value that it represented, which was low in comparison to like selling yarn. That alone to me is a huge thing. That that just happened within the lifetime of my store.

SPEAKER_02 2:03

Right. And as a designer, I had to design my patterns in such a way that they would work for print format. Not just, and you know, yes, you can print them, but they had to work for being in the sleeves. So they had to be eight pages or fewer because of the price of that kind of heavier cardstock kind of paper. Um, I had to put the page that had all of the logistics, the needles, the sizes on the very back. It had to be the last so that it would show through those clear little slips. Yes. And I felt like the paper patterns dictated how I could write my patterns, like how much information I could provide. And I spent so much time making those damn coupon codes that went with those patterns because people wanted to be able to add the digital copy to their library, which I get. It's great to have that. But Ravelry would only allow you to extend the codes for so long and they would expire. And so then Deep South, who was the company I worked with back then, would email me. Oh, we need updated codes for all of these. So I'd have to go in and update the codes for everything. And then, oh, it was so tedious.

SPEAKER_00 3:17

That's so funny because when we opened, there wasn't even any digital delivery for patterns. It was no, there was none. I mean, it did come along within two years, so it was just right on the edge of happening. But that that, yeah, that's that's insane.

SPEAKER_02 3:32

We've come a long way, baby.

SPEAKER_00 3:34

Right. And I know there was a lot of people bemoaning the loss of the paper pattern um when we transitioned towards digital. I was like, Bye-bye, Felicia. Like, I get this out. I had I run inventory on those things. It was like a two-person job. One person sat at the filing cabinet, one person sat with like a you know, the the inventory pages, and we just went through and like how many were each. Oh man, I was so glad to be done with those. Um yeah. So now we have full circle come around to a digital only world where patterns are delivered via PDF download um right at the point of purchase. Oh my gosh, that just made me realize. Also, what goes along with paper patterns is shipping paper patterns. Like we used to regularly ship just six paper patterns. That would be one web order.

SPEAKER_02 4:29

That is so funny to think about. People will still like I don't offer any print patterns anymore. They're all digital, unless you buy my book, and then that's tangible. But people will put in the order notes to send them the paper copies. I'm like, you're not paying me enough to mail you paper copies. By the time I've printed and paid for mailing and my time, yeah, I'm paying you to buy knit my pattern. And but I mean it's not even available, it's not even listed that that's an exception. And they just put in the notes, send the paper copies, like a demand. Like, no, yeah, I'm not gonna send you the paper copies because I don't offer that service. Yeah, it's I mean, granted, I do like working from paper. I know that's I like to print things out and kind of keep them in my bag just in case, but at the same time, I'm the same way.

SPEAKER_00 5:20

Yeah, but I'm perfectly happy to print mine myself. Um I like we print for people in the store. Whenever, like, you know, we kind of do a little gauge. Um, do they seem like they're traveling and stopping in and buying something that that they need the paper copy with them, or do they seem like maybe they don't have a printer at home?

SPEAKER_02 5:38

And I was about to say a lot of people don't have printers anymore. Yes, yes, the Gen X folks, we still we're in like a weird space though, because a lot of like my parents' generation, they don't have printers. Right. And the younger generation doesn't have printers, but I think the elder millennials and the Gen X folks, we have printers. I'm sure we're gonna get messages from everyone saying, I have a printer.

SPEAKER_00 6:01

Don't tell me I know that like my daughter has a printer because we kind of were like, Well, you need the printer, my 23-year-old, you know, not because she decided she needed a printer, but we were like, Well, you need to have a printer.

SPEAKER_02 6:12

Right. My kids just print at my house. They are like, I need this printed. So I they just know that I have a printer. Oh man. Uh, I don't know. Lately I've been thinking about how we have this amazing technology, and yet there are certain things that are so clunky and old-fashioned, like the size of printers still. I'm trying to find just a sleek little that's not a pain in the butt. And I can't find one. Yeah. It's not.

SPEAKER_00 6:40

I know. I'm thinking of the one that's hiding in this closet right over here because it's so big it sticks off the closet shelf.

SPEAKER_02 6:46

But I don't want it like in this office space, taking up room. Mine is right next to me on my desk and it's half the desk. It's ridiculous. It's a joke.

SPEAKER_00 6:55

So yeah, I think you are you nailed something there by saying, being uh Gen X, that we definitely are sitting in the middle of this technological revolution where we grew up without internet, um, we even without PCs, then we came into the PC world and then the internet world, and then like just so much has changed in our lifetime. So that you know, that's logical that it's also changed within our business lifetime. Um so let if we transition into some of our current ways that tech uh works in our industry. Obviously, there's the big the elephant in the room is AI. And I think everyone, no matter where you are, um, is hearing more and more about AI on a daily basis. And when it first hit the scene, it was really, I think, or at least what I was exposed to was the debate about um AI in um in creative spaces, taking uh making bad use of people's personal artwork and writing and things like that. But that's not all it's about anymore. That is definitely still a big issue that's still present, but it's not the only thing we're people are talking about these days. Right. So do you have does AI play any use in your business? Maybe we can just talk about that.

SPEAKER_02 8:15

Uh but I think it would be impossible to avoid. It's everywhere, it's being shoved down our throats. You know, every app and device that I use is like we have AI function and you can't escape it. So I think to some degree there's no way around it. Um, when the open AI first came about and Chat GPT was out, and I was like, this is so fun. Well, actually, no, my original feeling was fearful. I was like, no, I'm not touching that with a 10-foot pole because I'm a writer and I'm an artist and I'm not doing that. Then I learned a little more. I was like, I'm just gonna see what it can do. And then I kind of thought, oh, this is really fun and it can do all these interesting things. And then I started to see the flaws coming through it that not everything that comes out of AI is accurate. It's not always through the lens of nuance that people that we can do with our brains. And just in general, as a writer, I'm seeing it's such a turnoff to me to see newsletters written by AI, to see the AI speak. It is so gaggy to me now that I cannot stand it. I have been unfollowing, unsubscribing, and there are writers using it, and I just cannot handle it. Yeah, that's fine. The thing is, I think there's a place. I I mean, I I don't know how anybody's gonna completely avoid it. And I, you know, I am concerned about the environmental costs. Yes, yes. And so I went from someone who was actively afraid of it, went to avoid it to super curious and this is really fun to now I'm I hardly ever use it. I am very, very, very sparingly. Um, and then the times that I do, it would be like to organize data, maybe, or uh-huh, but I do not want AI thinking for me. I think one of our benefits to being human is that we can think and I'm seeing people use AI to think for them. And what is the outcome of that long term? I don't think that's going anywhere good. Right. I want to be able to do my own reasoning and do my own thinking, but I'm not opposed to giving it all of my notes that I wrote out about something and saying create a little workbook with it with my own stuff. Yeah. Um, just to save me time because it's really just it's just the um organizing the information I already wrote.

SPEAKER_00 10:38

You just nailed something important there. It's just saving me a little time. Um I'm gonna come back to that.

SPEAKER_02 10:44

Okay. And so basically, my approach is I refuse to let AI think for me. I'm not gonna let it write for me. I don't want to use it to produce art. I just I did play with it in the beginning and think this is really fun. And I think a lot of us are kind of curiosity stand. And I'm also remaining open to the idea that I can change my mind at some point about my opinion on it because it's evolving and I'm evolving. But in general, it's it's less important to me than I think the AI gods want it to be. I'm choosing not to make it a big focal point, but I also think I need to be aware of how it works and what's happening because I work with writers and I need to recognize the AI speak so that I can say, hey, this reeks of we might need to do something here. This this is not gonna work, you know, and publishers are are more aware of it. So it's just something that I think is constantly being talked about. I also think more people are using it than are admitting it.

SPEAKER_00 11:46

Oh, I think a hundred percent that's true. Yep. Yep.

SPEAKER_02 11:51

What about you?

SPEAKER_00 11:52

Yeah. Um, so yeah, I've kind of gone around and around. I've been a little bit kind ignorant because I just never would remember to like experiment with it or use it when I had colleagues that were, you know, getting into using it more for aiding and work day to activities, and I would just not think of it. So um, every now and again I would use it and then I would be like, oh my gosh, yeah, this is really helpful. But I'm I would talk like for an example, I had a product that I needed a um a product description that um fully explained some of the issues with this yarn, but then also explained why these issues were made it unique and special. And I was just really struggling with how to eloquently say that. And so I, you know, I asked for help with making this description and uh it gave me three options. I took parts of each one and I wrote my own description. So it was like I didn't just copy and paste, but it immensely helped me. Right. With and I said I'm trying to get across this without saying, you know, whatever. And so that those kinds of things um in business, behind the scenes kind of admin work. I definitely am starting to experiment a little more. I've been using lately um Claude and still barely like brushing the surface. I there's just so much I don't understand. I'm trying to understand it better. It's like learning a new language, some of the the things about it. But saving time is such a big part of this for me because I know that I know there's detractors, I don't discred disvalue any of their arguments of why they don't want to get anywhere near AI, and I applaud them for taking a stance. Um I, as a small business owner that wears umpteen million hats, right? I just can't do it all all the time. And so if I can use like Shopify has an AI component where I can ask it to run a quick report for me on something. If I want to go to the Shopify tab, go to analytics, go to reports, try to page through the available reports, then try to figure out how to customize to get the exact piece of data I'm looking for. That's gonna take me almost a half an hour, but I can now ask its little AI guy to just in one sentence, can you give me a quick report on the you know, top sales in the lightweight category for the last three months? And it's gonna be able to give me that. So that's the kind of thing that I really value. And I'm I am okay with that. I do know that the like I I am frequently feeling guilty about, especially being somebody that lives here in the Pacific Northwest, uh, the water consumption issue. And um, I know it's a huge problem. I also believe, though, as a um a species, we can solve that problem. We have solved so many problems scientifically, right, that there's got to be a way to improve on the use of natural resources in data centers. So I I'm hoping that that can happen. Who knows? Um that might be a little bit too rose.

SPEAKER_02 14:56

The data centers are very concerning to me, but I also don't think that the average person's occasional use of CLOD or Chat GPT is the reason for those. So I I think it's such a hot topic because there are so many divisive aspects. Yes. But I do think that it's so pervasive right now in all of the different tech that we use that avoiding it entirely is challenging to do. Yeah. Yeah. But I do think I see in younger generations much higher resistance to it, which I think is exciting to see that they are, you know, the young folks are being much more concerned. They're concerned about the ethics of it and, you know, and they don't want to see generative AI, especially making art, you know, in place of artists. And that definitely speaks to me as someone, especially who's a writer and who runs the risk of my writing and my work being uploaded and then used, where that's thousands of hours of my life and my skill and my expertise that I've built up and for a computer to turn around and then make it available. Available.

unknown 16:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:10

And I have a huge problem with that, you know. And I absolutely do think it's possible that the day will come when AI will be writing knitting patterns and you know, but I've have always felt that my business is so much more than me being a pattern designer. I'm really a community builder and a teacher. And so I'm it can't replace a person. And so I've been the thing that I love and I've been focused on lately is thinking about constraints and how when we have constraints, it forces us to think more creatively, right? So if AI is able to reproduce what a lot of people do, what can't it replicate? It can't replicate building community and networking and you know, the human things. So I've just been really leaning more into what are the parts of me that I can bring to my community and to the people in the fiber arts that are unique to me that AI cannot replicate. So maybe it's gonna replicate pattern development. Fine. I mean, I love writing my patterns. It can't think like me, but maybe it can replicate patterns at some point, but it can't build a community the way I can. So yeah, so I'm thinking of it more as a constraint, like a creative challenge, right? So here's what AI is doing, and maybe it's replacing certain things, but it's not gonna replace me. So I'm just gonna figure out what can I bring that it cannot replicate.

SPEAKER_00 17:38

Which is how we have to approach any challenge that we face in our business, whether it's competition or you know, whatever is it's your business. What do you offer that nobody else can? Absolutely. Yeah, I like thinking about that. I really like that idea of constraints and what do they force us to innovate, create, think, work around. Yeah, that's a great one. Um it's so funny because so I was so one of the things I was gonna ask you is where do you think we're headed? But you know, you brought up the idea of AI writing patterns, and we've heard some nightmares already of AI written patterns, people buying download, or at least I have in the store. We've heard people buying a download and it's just nonsense. Like it's supposed to be, you know, some knitted item and it's it's clearly written by AI. And then there's a whole bunch of issues currently with um things on crafting e-commerce sites like Etsy, et cetera, where they might be selling a legitimate product, like say an embroidery kit, but they've used AI to create the image of their kit for their packaging and for their product listing, because then nobody has to actually stitch a sample to be you know finished with it, and how clearly it's not actual stitching, and that's really problematic. So it is.

SPEAKER_02 19:02

I just saw an ad from I'm pretty sure it was like Burpee or it was a brand, a gardening brand that sells Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh-huh. And the ad images for the flowers were a hundred percent AI generated. It was terrible. And I thought you cannot ethically sell a seed packet with a photo. I don't think it's on this seed packet. I think it's just in their marketing. But that is so misleading because I guarantee that that flower does not come out looking like that.

SPEAKER_00 19:32

It's probably not anything that truly even exists.

SPEAKER_02 19:35

No, it was so perfect and uniform and awkward, unnatural looking. I just thought, and it was a whole stack of flowers, and they were all exactly the very stiff and all exactly the same. It was just really obvious. But I thought, wow, that's pretty low. That's yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:52

Yeah, interesting. Yeah, I don't know how we, you know, walk the line. I do think, like you said um in the outset, that it's not going anywhere. No, it's not. So know your enemy, basically, is what it comes down to. If you are somebody who's against it, you need to still be aware of it, how it sounds, you know, if you want to combat that in use in your own creative life or in your creative business, you got to be aware of it.

SPEAKER_02 20:18

Um yeah, you do, and you don't know. I think that's one of the challenges, right? Is recognizing it. Like, how do we recognize it if we're not familiar enough? So there is something to be said for that, but I I just worry that we're getting to the point where it's now a reflex to make AI our thought partnership, like a thought partnership with AI. I've heard people use that language. I don't want AI to be my thought partner. Yeah, because AI can't think. All it can do is regurgitate information that already exists and rearrange data. So sure, it can do it in a pretty cohesive way, but I don't just want other people's thoughts. And and that's gosh, if I think about it, in my knitting career, I have almost never paid attention to what's going on in the world of knitting. I don't spend time on Ravelry, I don't subscribe to any knitting magazines, I don't pay attention to what anybody else is making or doing or what the trends are because I want to keep my ideas fresh and keep them in my own little creative box. Untainted by Untainted, right? Not because there's not gorgeous stuff out there, but I don't have time to knit anybody else's stuff anyway. Yeah. And so and so it's not really useful for me. I'm not gonna be buying patterns or anything. And so I I just really like to not be influenced. So it sort of would be counterproductive to be accessing AI to help me do my job when that's the entire thing I'm avoiding is right I don't want other people's ideas regurgitated and trying to make them mine. I just want to do my own thing.

SPEAKER_00 21:57

Well, and I do think also, and in along with that. what you were saying about um what did you phrase it thought partnership yeah like a thought partner it's your your creative I mean not creative um critical thinking skills are like a muscle that you have to exercise um and if you stop engaging those those parts of your brain they're gonna atrophy and so you'll lose this critical skill um and so that's true and yeah I in the the phase of my AI journey where I was like this is really fun oh my gosh you know and then I would ask it questions and use it as a thought partner to kind of see how does this work and what does it give me.

SPEAKER_02 22:41

And at first it seems so cool and so smart and so innovative. And then but if you really kind of get past that you realize like you said you stop using your critical thinking skills. And and I have seen in some folks who are using it this tendency to believe that AI knows better than they do that they will defer to the AI resolution. Right. And you're a person AI is not a person it's not doesn't have you know the nuance or the history or the you know life experience. And I think it's so easy to defer because it can come across as that it's human life and it knows. One of the things I like about Claude because that is the only one that I I made that switch a while back um is that it it doesn't act like it's a person with you. It shows you the inner workings like I'm gonna access this file this app and this file to to un unwrap this or to figure this out you know to answer this question. I do like to be able to say you know here's all this data can you organize the data for me and say show me which one is performing the best or you know from a st from a data standpoint. And that's nice because that just saves me time from doing it myself but I'm not going to have it decide how I'm gonna use that information or what products you're gonna create. Or what no, I I don't want it for that. But again I think it's such an interesting topic because it kind of feels like every single person has a different feeling about AI, a different approach to it. But like I said, it's like a dirty little secret. I think a lot of people are using it but they don't want to admit it because it feels kind of gross to some extent to be like yeah I used AI for this. That doesn't nobody really wants to say that.

SPEAKER_00 24:37

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm yes so Claude one of the reasons that I'm using Claude and probably you too and I'm just saying this for anyone who may not know is it's I believe the only um major agent out there that has um they have a staff philosopher who actively works on training Claude in morality. So um that is one of the reasons that I you know moved over to Claude. Now that does not mean that it's getting shit right excuse my language all the time. And there's been studies that show that you know all AIs will tell you to do immoral things eventually. But at any rate that's my the reason for my choice um and I think I've heard a lot of people moving to Claude that people that are openly using it or people that are um well versed in it and do like online trainings and things and where they're using all of the different major AI uh brand is what I want to say but that's not right. There it seems to be like it's leading the way right now but who knows where where that will go down the road. Um yeah it's tricky it took me a little to even figure out that there that Claude was different from chat GPT was different from Gemini was different from whatever like I I've I feel a little behind the curveball on this one. Behind the eight ball behind the curveball behind the curve behind the eight ball I think I'm mixing my metaphor one of those the curvy little eight ball.

SPEAKER_02 25:56

I I think because I in once I got over my initial fear and avoidance of it I started seeing what I thought could be practical applications for like marketing strategy or something. And so I took a few classes oh yeah and that was helpful early on because it it gave me a better understanding of of what it was capable of. But at the same time, gosh it feels like a dance a little bit like I'm you know oh this is an interesting facet of this well a great example of where AI has been beneficial not in the generative AI space but just in AI tools is in bookkeeping. Now you're lucky you have your mom to help you with your bookkeeping. I am not someone who naturally has an affinity for bookkeeping and I find it so stressful. I never have time for it so it piles up and I had I had tried a um like a really well-known online bookkeeping company and then that didn't work because my business is kind of unique and it was just really hard for them to track and I felt like I spent a thousand hours individually going through and categorizing and I was like why do I even have you guys it seems like you're doing nothing. Then I hired a person and I worked with her for several months and it was still so labor intensive it and I felt like we were never on the same page. She was great but we just could not really get it together. And one night I was thinking I had insomnia and I was like why AI is trying to solve all these problems that I wish it wouldn't solve but why can't it solve my bookkeeping problem? So I just thought I wonder if it could and I did I like did a search and I found this company called Digits and they're based in Canada and they have sort of an AI brain inside their bookkeeping system and it's amazing and it saved me one million hours it's way more affordable. But I tried all the other methods first and nothing was working for me and I was going completely crazy. And so to have this tool be a time saver, but again it's not like generative AI works generating data. It's just crunching data and and it recognizes transactions and it understands that when it sees yet another purchase it not another hat in Hood River Oregon it knows that those are supplies big red flag are you aware of what you're doing know how much money you're spending it no um but it knows like it recognizes my my spending and my profit patterns. It knows the patterns which has been really helpful.

SPEAKER_00 28:32

So yeah yeah I don't know. Yeah I mean that similarly um it's those kinds of like repetitive behind the scenes tasks that can suck so much of our work time away from us when we could be doing more creative generative work ourselves with our brains that it can be really useful. Like one of the things I've recently discovered is you can um you know I can so Claude you can um if you're on the paid plan and co-work you can integrate apps so I can integrate Shopify I could integrate QuickBooks et cetera but just ask it to go through and optimize my SEO search engine optimization meta tags et cetera in the website you know stuff like that that I know I need to do but it's just like that is the bottom of my to-do list on any given day or make sure all my images have alt text or you know those kinds of like really mind-numbing backside tasks. If I had a million dollars and I was running a million dollar business I could probably hire someone to stay on top of that but that's not my reality and I don't think that's most small businesses' reality.

SPEAKER_02 29:33

So one of the things you said earlier that I really liked is about wearing all the hats and as a small business owner I'm wearing all the hats you are wearing most a lot of hats you have staff but you still have to wear a lot of hats and it means that and because we are a small business there are not always options to hire somebody for every little thing that you want to do and even when I do hire people for that they're not at my beck and call every second it's not like I can just say to Chris my website guy like I mean I can I do most of my website stuff but he can fix an emergency or like rebuild something in a crisis. But if I want some data about or you know update all the the image tags or whatever he doesn't have time to do I couldn't even afford to pay him enough to do that. So it would just never be done. So yeah being able to to automate or systematize some of those kind of monotonous technical skills that's great. I just don't want AI to replace art and writing and thinking I want us to still do our own thinking and I guess maybe that's why we're proud to keep those things separate.

SPEAKER_00 30:50

Yeah right and it means maybe we can't maybe we in the end it's an experiment that doesn't work but or an experiment that destroys our entire society. It might I mean I hope not I hope not too but yeah who's to say at this point it's a big giant question mark I think it really is.

SPEAKER_02 31:07

But I will say that I see people being pretty thoughtful about their approach to AI. I I know a few people who seems like they're using it really gratuitously and like using it to think for them but I would say most of the people I know are approaching it in a healthy way you know with a little bit of caution you know figuring it out not necessarily attacking it without even knowing right what they're talking about. Like they're taking the time to figure out what exactly it is and what it's doing and what the impact is and then deciding how to judiciously approach it, which I think is good. Do you think that AI will have an impact on yarn stores down the road? What do you think that could look like if it becomes more prevalent what have you considered that like is there an I haven't that's a really good question.

SPEAKER_00 32:04

I, you know, I kind of tend to think that we're a little immune from some of the problems because I'm not I I write patterns but not like you write patterns. So um in terms of like generative AI being damaging is like I've kind of taken it to be like well I can avoid those things by watching out for them. Like I won't stock products that look like they were created by you know generative AI, et cetera. But I haven't really stopped to give pause to think about how it might affect even down to things like um yarn creation by you know Mills using AI to come up with new fiber that seems so hard to imagine but I mean I'm sure like 20 years ago even what's happening right now was impossible to imagine.

SPEAKER_02 32:48

So I don't think yeah somebody just I did a zoom yesterday for a yarn co-op and I think someone on that call just said something about a 3D printed yarn. Oh and I don't know enough about it so here I am spouting something I know nothing about but it does make you wonder if that is something maybe that I don't know what to be printed from.

SPEAKER_00 33:18

A lot of those um you know synthetics that are on the market right now the viscos types of yarns are created from reducing some material to liquid and then extruding it through really fine holes to make them into long fibers that then get spun together. And that is getting really close to basically like 3D printing the liquid is your your medium right um and they're doing that with things like bamboo and wood pulp and you know all kinds of um you know even cotton so wow um I mean we are already at the the stage of development where we've got yarns that are printed their color is printed by computers you know so that's how we get our self-patterning sock yarns and things like that. It's a computer program that has been you know set up to dye the the strands as it comes through in certain patterns. And so it doesn't seem like it's that much of a stretch to jump into the next computer programmed creation. Huh?

SPEAKER_02 34:22

Gosh so is there anything that you're going to do differently in your business as you move forward to either protect against it, embrace it? Like do you can you foresee any changes that you might make?

SPEAKER_00 34:40

I feel like right now I like you am in the um cautiously using AI stage and I don't see that really changing. Like I'm I'm very leery of anything that looks like it's generative AI. I don't want that. But um but I do think that there are a lot of advances that I can make as a business owner that our industry can make by using it for the data crunching side of things and um the reporting the the back end basically of business that it could be really helpful for I feel like that's probably going to be my status quo, especially since I'm still trying to figure it out.

unknown 35:18

Right.

SPEAKER_00 35:19

My husband and I were discussing it the other day and we were just talking about it and because um his work has been exploring using it because they do a lot of it's science data crunching things like that. And um it's funny how we are both dealing with similar themes of learning, trying to parse language it's learning a new language like what they talk about you know all of it. And um we're in two extremely opposite fields and here we are but we're both going through the same thing right now.

SPEAKER_02 35:50

Yeah I'm really curious how how it's gonna affect different industries and different businesses. And you know it's funny I just read something about it's completely peripheral to using it in business, but about people using Chat GPT to write their breakup letters and like a whole there's a whole bunch of that going on. And I just thought we need those skills the skills that come from figuring out how to say something really difficult and to another human and end of a relationship or a friendship we need those skills. Can you imagine outsourcing that and how that trickles into future relationships and you know it's so I don't know there's just it's it's an issue.

SPEAKER_00 36:38

If you could guarantee that somebody who uses it a few times for something like that is learning as they use it how to put their feelings better into words then it then I would be maybe a little more you know behind it. But I don't have the faith that anyone's learning from anything right and everyone's just copying and pasting.

SPEAKER_02 36:59

So yeah I think that there is an assumption and this could definitely change over time as AI becomes more dynamic. But I think there's an assumption that AI is going to be great at everything that you ask it to do. It's gonna be correct and that it's gonna do a better job than you would do. It's so it's almost like the idea of it is better than the reality of it if you're trying to use it as a in that thought partnership capacity. But like you said for those other data crunching things that's really helpful. So I don't know I mean I guess we don't have a specific we're in the middle of it right now I think yeah we don't know we don't know what we think yet. Yeah we're figuring this out like everyone else and I think there's a lot of hot feelings one way or the other about it.

SPEAKER_00 37:49

But I don't This might go under one of those um this might go under the category of we tried to tell you but we actually couldn't tell you one way or we tried we tried so hard but we don't have enough information yet.

SPEAKER_02 38:01

And you know it could change this episode is going to be so outdated in a year or even six months and it might be outdated by next week when it goes live.

SPEAKER_00 38:10

It might be outdated by next week and someone's gonna listen and be like oh my gosh what are they talking how dumb they are like it's almost like if we had stopped and recorded an episode back when the very first digital patterns were hitting the scene when Ravelry hit the market and we talked about like the PDF revolution it would be kind of you know like revisiting that now. And if you're somebody who's thinking to yourself well it just hasn't learned yet and it'll get there one thing I'm pretty sure it has learned and it still did wrong for me was I was working on the uh TNNA website for LYS Day and I was creating the page with the shop listings of shops who had signed up and I just asked really quick can you give me a um a listing of all 50 states in alphabetical order because I wanted to use that to list shops and then it it did. And so then I was putting that into this website you know formatting it into the website and I was like um Tennessee is not on this list. And then it was like neither is Kentucky like there was just like five random states missing. And so I went back and I was like you left off five states and the response was like oh you're so right I sure did like this is why you got to be cautious. And it is it's not just that it hasn't learned how to read knitting patterns yet and and and it will get better.

SPEAKER_02 39:28

I mean it for sure knows the 50 states has still left five out yeah that's a great example I love that well this was a good one Sarah a good hot button to I'm sure people have opinions about this. Oh I'm sure they do I'm sure we'll find out what they are too uh but I think by and large I think a lot of people are in a similar boat that we're in which is you know cautious and considering what that tool can do but also being wary enough to not let it take over your thinking and do your creative work for you. I would like AI to clean toilets for me and do all my weeding.

SPEAKER_00 40:06

If AI could pull my weeds for me so that I could just enjoy my flowers and plant how about maybe if AI could just hang out by my peas and keep the birds from eating the leaves oh darn it. I'd be happy with that.

SPEAKER_02 40:21

If AI could keep the slugs and cabbage moths out of my garden that would be amazing. Let's start our wish list now. Okay yes so I mean I think it could it has some potential jobs out there we just need to really rein it in um oh my gosh so looking ahead to next week oh what do we have we are going to kind of revisit the topic of burnout but from a different perspective we're gonna talk about how to avoid burnout like what can we actively do as creative people as women as business owners kind of all of those things how can we kind of shape our lives so that we're actively avoiding getting to a place of burnout so we're gonna talk more about that next week.

SPEAKER_00 41:04

I need to hear all about that I hope you have a good idea I'm working on it. All right well this has been a lot of fun and if you are pondering the pros and cons of AI just remember we tried so hard we tried to tell you emphasis on tried. We'll see you next week bye