Forgive me, for I have sinned.

08 Aug, 2025

It's Friday, we're entering the weekend, and I have a guilty secret. I feel I need to expunge myself of this toll.

In my defence, the circumstances in which the sin was committed are genuine, and the result made my Friday task list that little bit shorter in time for the weekend.

Please sit, and hear my confession.

I used AI, for real.

And relax. Everyone breathe, and let's calm down.

I am not a fan of AI. I consider it basic data theft. There's no real intelligence, just a massive pile of data, that a super-computer wades through at the speed of light, to spit out a result, while consuming enough power for an entire city.

I've previously berated AI with a test on sibling count, and how to spell strawberry. I've mocked these mega-computers.

Yet today I had a task and I wondered if AI could actually be of some use.

The problem

I had a list of 203 companies. Name and address, and awards they had received in a specific industry. I wanted to report on this by region. Easy enough; I have the address. However, the thought of wading through the list manually was time consuming, and I could see the weekend approaching. I visualised the wine swirling in my Friday evening glass.

The solution

Yes, you know what I did. I asked AI. Now, I have no skill on how to use this wizardry as I genuinely do not use it. I believe it is all about constructing the correct prompts.

As an AI virgin i just decided to wing it. I created a new spreadsheet containing the minimum of data, as I have no idea what the heck these machines will do with the data. I then went into Kagi, which is an awesome search engine -- and has some kind of AI assistant you can jump onto.

I clicked the button for the Assistant and typed: Can you look up the region in Scotland for each row in the spreadsheet. I uploaded the s/sheet and pressed Enter.

Five second later, after consuming about a gigawatt of electricity in San Diego, I was given a spreadsheet to download.

The results

I did what every self-respecting professional sceptic would do.... I randomly checked a few rows, and then a few more and more. You know what, it did exactly what I asked it to do and it was 100% correct.

It would have taken me probably the best part of an hour to do that manually.

And finally

I felt dirty. I had betrayed my own standard. I washed my hands, felt smug, and poured a glass of wine 🍷 ☺️

#AI #blaugust2025