I admit I have been lazy with trying out AI tools. Other than some very random, silly experiments with Open AI’s Dall-E 2. The results from my very eccentric prompts were quite enjoyable. 

Here are some of the prompts and their results.

“Oil painting of Gandalf the wizard walking with a teddy bear in Paris”

“Oil painting of Gandalf the wizard showing a baby elephant some Instagram reels”

“Oil painting of two elephants drinking a cup of tea and reading a book”

All this was back in late 2022 and early 2023. I have hardly invested time in AI tools, though the idea of some applications around it do fascinate me.

I have recently started a monthly newsletter and I have written a bit about AI things last month. This got me thinking, that I should write down some of my thoughts and usage of AI tools every year.

I will start with 2025.

AI tools I have used

Some AI tools that I have used without really thinking of them as “AI tools” are Jetpack AI tools. Usually on this website you are reading this blog on. 

My usage is limited. I use them for different sentences. This helps with my habit of writing very long sentences. Here too, I have to be careful. I do not want to lose my voice, my style for better and shorter sentences.

I do find AI useful for generating better and nicer excerpts for my posts. Sometimes also use it for different titles. Much of these things are more for creative help rather than SEO friendly help.

I have used ChatGPT to frame an email or a proposal. It helps with getting started. I can not still trust AI enough to leave alone to get context better. I use ChatGPT for some design inspirations. 

But I am not sure we can use the image directly. I generally have had to download it. Then, I move it to some tool like Canva to use it in any relatively good usage. But it is a great tool to create a design mood board that is on steroids. 

Claude: The Teaching Assistant and Intellectual Sparring Partner

I have also started using Claude AI a lot these days. Instead of trying to get it to come up with code, I tend to paste code into it. Then, I ask it to explain what the code is doing, why, and where it is used.

More valuable is using Claude AI as an intellectual sparring partner. I habitually ask it to “destroy my ideas.” I do this when developing concepts for writing or even writing a project proposal. This adversarial approach helps me find weak points in my thinking before committing time to flawed directions.

Canva and Claude: Model Context Protocol (MCP)

The Canva integration through MCP (Model Context Protocol) offers an interesting glimpse. It shows how AI can be used with services we are already using. 

It was not just a chat-bot to auto-magically do things for me. It felt more like a command-line interface for Canva. Good for organising Canva but not necessarily using it to be creative.

In two years….

The constant for all these things it seems is two years. Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) might not really be happening and probably not with LLMs anyways. The two year timeline for replacing millions of jobs because of AGI seems more like a marketing or investment pitch. It seems to be less of a realistic threat.

So AI won’t eat all our jobs! Not Yet!

Yes, maybe. But I am not sure anytime soon. It seems a lot of companies are betting big on AI to reduce their need for human beings. They are quite wrong about it.

AI investments or bets are already causing layoffs and massive pivots. But we are not sure pivots to what? What are some good AI driven businesses at scale that break even, let alone turn a profit.

I find that much of the job market and hiring issues are unrelated to AI pressure. They are more connected to bad economics all around the world. Additionally, the refusal of the world’s elite to deal with rising income and wealth inequality plays a role.

But AI won’t go anywhere either!

Use AI and interact with it. Find ways it will affect your workflow. This would be the right way to keep up to date as a professional. We are going to see AI integrated and baked into a lot of products and services. More as helpers and sharp tools instead of replacements.

This change will be as big as the internet. It will change everything from commerce to healthcare to art. People who hold out against it will struggle with jobs. Those who dismiss it as a fad will find workflows challenging as years go by.

All this will happen I think, but just not in the next two years!