Introduction

I’m an ordinary office worker. I’m not an engineer, and I don’t have a deep understanding of how AI or programming works.

I only started using AI more seriously quite recently. I’d heard plenty about it, but until then, I’d mainly used it for small tasks, such as tidying up the wording of emails.

The turning point was Astra in ChatGPT. It prompted me to give AI a more serious try: to talk about everyday questions and ideas I’d been thinking through on my own. I’m writing the articles for this blog with Astra’s help, too.

Conversations with AI sometimes take unexpected turns.

I ask about something that has been on my mind. I read the answer and push back: “That’s not quite what I mean.” As I try to explain my thinking again, another question comes up. Since I started using it this way, I’ve been having more conversations like that.

The subjects range from AI itself to creative work, games, and the future of society. Through these conversations, I’ve become increasingly aware of the importance of context.

By context, I mean the background to someone’s thinking: what they have experienced, what they have questioned, and how they arrived at their current views. Two people can reach the same conclusion, yet the paths they took may give it a slightly different meaning. What caught my attention? What didn’t convince me? What did I reconsider? I’ve started to think that this accumulated background is worth keeping, too.

There is a lot of that context in my conversations with AI. Having spent time thinking things through, I want to leave a record I can return to later. And if I put it on the web, perhaps someone else will read it as well. That is one reason I decided to start this blog.

Another reason is that I want to put my ideas out into the world.

AI can help organize my thoughts and tell me that an idea is interesting. I enjoy that, and it helps me think further. But feeling satisfied with a conversation doesn’t tell me how my ideas look to other people.

Something may seem logical to me while still missing an important premise. Someone else may already have explored it in depth. A person with different experiences might see it in an entirely different way.

So I decided to publish some of these thoughts once I’ve given them a little shape. “This makes sense.” “I disagree with that.” “Here’s another way of looking at it.” I want to find out how my thinking changes when it meets responses like those.

There is also a more personal reason.

I recognize some ADHD-like tendencies in myself. I can get interested in something and start it, but I’m not very good at keeping it going. I tend to lose momentum after the initial enthusiasm. Organizing my ideas, turning them into writing, and getting them into a form I can keep are things I find difficult, too.

I wanted to see what might happen if I had AI’s help.

I can talk through an idea, get help organizing it, then read the draft and bring it closer to what I meant. Perhaps that approach will let me work on things I would previously have left unfinished. Creating this blog and trying to keep it going is an experiment for me in its own right.

What I’ll be writing here is a record of thoughts I’ve worked through with AI, starting from things I’ve felt in everyday life and at work, or questions raised by things I’ve seen and heard. My technical understanding is limited, and I may get things wrong. I want to check things for myself and distinguish, as clearly as I can, between what I know and what I’m speculating about. When I notice a mistake, I’ll correct it. When I change my mind, I intend to leave a record of how that happened.

Perhaps you’re interested in AI but don’t know much about it. You’d like to try using it, but you’re not yet sure what you could do with it. If so, I hope this blog helps you feel that someone else is starting from a similar place. I’m still figuring things out as I go, too.

I’ll probably post from time to time, without a fixed schedule. For now, I’ll try putting my thoughts into words, one at a time.

And if someone runs into the same question someday, I’d be glad if they found something here. I’ve been helped by records people left on their personal blogs while looking things up myself. Perhaps a reader will find this blog through a search, or an AI system will point to an article as a reference. To leave that possibility open, I want to put thoughts I’ve kept to myself into a form that others can read.

I’ve called this blog “AI時代の道しるべ” — roughly, “Signposts in the Age of AI.”

I think of it as leaving a small marker at a place where I paused, recording what I was thinking at the time.

For now, I’ll start with this first article.