I have a nuanced opinion on AI – from it being an exciting and powerful tool when applied with a silo approach, through to horror and fear at the untrustworthy and irresponsible custodians behind the rush towards artificial superintelligence.
While the future of AI is not clear, I suspect its immediate impact will come from the explosion of the AI economic bubble. I hate to think how much of my retirement funds are locked up in AI related shares, what might be left after such a crash, and how long it will take to recover to something I can retire on again.
I look enviously at my colleagues and friends who are 5 to 10 years older than me and have retired and cashed out their superannuation at what is likely to be near peak valuations.
I know plenty of people who use AI at various levels of depth, but for me the primary direct interaction is in the measurably poorer search results Google now delivers.
On the weekend while researching my EVE fits, I decided to use Google Gemini and Microsoft Copilot to answer the questions I had. I started about 30 different conversations with a question, each generally going back and forth a few times.
One question was please list every ship in EVE Online that has an exploration role bonus.
It provided a list of about a dozen.
I pointed out it was missing some ships, and to please provide a full list.
It apologised and agreed it had made a mistake. It then listed just two hulls, naming them both destroyers and indicating they were more flexible to fit because they had more mid slots for fitting things like inertia stabilizers.
I pointed out one of those hulls was a frigate not a destroyer, and that inertia stabilizers were fitted to low slots. I then asked if they could please provide a full list like I asked in my first question.
It apologised and agreed it had made a mistake. It then explained the use of inertia stabilizers.
Not a single question chain was answered fully or with complete accurately.
As I have said for a while, to use the Google Search engine currently you need to already know the optimal way of asking your question, and what the correct answers are.
Evehermit 
Count your blessings, maybe? It took me until 41 to leave my parents’, and although I’ve never been as… peculiar… as your neuro divergent special ones, it took me 3 months to eventually start my way in life on my own. I was terrified to fail either by action OR inaction so I took no chances and made the landing as soft as I could come up.Then my rental ended and the housing market happened and I’m back at my parents’, this time until stupid life hands me a home of my own but no parents (technically, a catastrophic market crash could happen and return rental prices to a fraction of my income smaller than 100%, and also I could find a partner or some similar miracle).
To the point, now your son is out and once you clean up the mess he’ll come up with new ways to make you worry… but he’s our, and is tasting the sweet taste of freedom and adulthood. The bitter part will always be there, of course. But a place if your own is a blessing, specially when the road to there has been tough.
The market has changed a lot since we last rented over 25 years ago. It seems much more expensive and difficult to find accommodation.
Our son went into a share house. He was interviewed and vetted by the other housemates, real-estate agent and owner, and when approved signed on to the lease. He is living with 3 other people and his share of the rent is quite reasonable.
Now a share house seems more likely to be run by a commercial manager, with studies and spare living areas turned into extra bedrooms, and no input from existing tenants about who rents each room. They push more people into each house and charge more for each room. I am not sure that sort of place would ever feel like your “home”.