Although I don’t have much use for AI, and certainly have many concerns, I’m also quite curious about it. As an experiment, I pointed Claude at my list of blog entries on books I’ve read, asked it to identify any series from the list, and find the next book in that series. I sometimes lose track of which series I’ve started and wanted to see if I’d missed any.

Claude quickly and correctly identified all of the series I’d started. Other than a strange confidence that Alecto the Ninth had been released (I had to point it to the Wikipedia entry to get it to admit the mistake), it also correctly listed the next books in any unfinished series. Also, it helpfully noted that I’d read a few books in the Culture series, but had missed a couple of the most highly rated books. I’ve added these to my “Want to Read” list.

This isn’t using AI to code up my own blog engine. But, it is using AI to help me answer an actual question, based on my own information, that was important to me. And, although, it was quick and effective, the societal, political, environmental, and economic costs are all very valid concerns.