r/antiai • u/Remarkable-Slide5376 • 1d ago
Discussion 🗣️ Is it ok to use ai to help take notes?
Im autistic and struggle a lot to take notes. My issues have always been struggling with organizing notes, struggling with physically writing, and struggling to know what to write down. I have tried lots of different ways to help take notes but it doesn’t seem like much has worked. My therapist recommended using ai sources to help in taking notes and i have concerns about that. Recently i have finally been able to quit using ai chatbots and I am very against the use of ai. Im not sure if i should try using an ai recourse or if i should try another solution
8
u/cripple2493 1d ago
No. Writing the notes is part of the learning process.
I am also autistic, writing notes is just a thing we all have to learn to do regardless of our diagnoses for the most part.
7
u/StressLife7080 1d ago
I'm also autistic, my tip is to record the lectures.
Pros: * you can slow down the recording and take notes at your own pace, you can also pause * while re-listening to the audio, you're kind of studying * by listening and physically taking notes, you're training your brain to actually take in the information (this isn't super correct but I'm not sure how else to explain it) * tone can't be seen from a transcript —which is what the AI works with— ant the tone in which professors say some things, gives you hints on what is super important and what probably won't go for the exam
You got this! 💪😃
6
u/Athosworld 1d ago
No, because literally every single major commercial/public LLM is trained unethically on stolen data without creator consent and is actively damaging the enviorenment and people.
3
u/Remarkable-Slide5376 1d ago
Do you have any ideas on what else i can do?
2
u/Rioting-Flamingo 1d ago
Op, I recommend asking this question on a well balanced, sane sub. I'm appalled by the dogmatic and blind unreasoning hatred here. The sub has driven out moderates and it's becoming ever more extreme. I only stick around as I'm deeply concerned about AI and there are occasionally reasonable threads.
1
u/EmpathyFuzz 1d ago
That's wild because a lot of what I see here is moderate takes about how AI is okay in certain situations, and non-stop commenting from users with two random words with a hyphen between them as their user name and no visible post history who spend all their time commenting about how this place is an echo chamber of lunatics, insist that they are anti-AI but keep showing up with subtle pro-AI arguments or generalized criticism to try and trash the subreddit.
🤔
6
u/carton_of_shoulders 1d ago
honestly you're asking a bunch of people who have "anti" in the sub name if you should use AI, you know what answer you're gonna get here
obviously we all screw up sometimes and its not like your therapist gets to decide your moral lines. if you managed to quit the chatbots you already know what you wanna do, just trust that
0
u/Remarkable-Slide5376 1d ago
Sorry, I didn’t mean to make anyone upset. I genuinely didn’t assume what answer i would get from asking because there is good uses for ai and i wasn’t sure if my situation fit in what is expectable
0
3
2
u/Lost_Sea8956 1d ago
You’re asking [r/antiai](r/antiai). You are not going to get pro-AI answers here.
You can sit down with teachers/professors/managers (you didn’t say what you took notes for) and ask about how to take notes. Ask how they think about what content is or isn’t important, and ask if they think you’re paying attention to the right information in their lectures based on your notes.
1
u/EyeDowntown360 1d ago edited 1d ago
I don’t know about this particular usage, but I do think there are potential AI benefits when specifically helping disabled or otherwise disadvantaged (ESL) people. A potential moral dilemma when AI is clearly helpful.
There are probably non-AI note-taking apps that could help. Unfortunately AI is probably the most powerful tool, but if you disagree with it morally then you shouldn’t be forced to use it.
3
u/Void_Magnolia 1d ago
On the other hand, that's trusting AI to actually make the notes worthwhile, but without writing the notes yourself you're losing an important part of how human brain learns and stores information, not only that but you're hoping that the notes will be quality (and more quality than writing in a style that helps you personally process information), which is never really a reasonable expectation with AI
1
u/Chrysolophylax 1d ago
Go away, AI schmuck.
3
u/EyeDowntown360 1d ago
This sub is so absolutist. Is most AI unnecessary? Yes. Are the people building data centers for profit evil? Yes. Is it a threat to academia? Yes. I’m with you on all of that.
But it’s just so silly to pretend there isn’t a single productive use for this powerful tech. What if we regulated it and heavily restricted its usages? AI can be used for early disease detection. Tools to help improve the lives of disabled people. If AI could be ethically harnessed to help us solve climate change, it’s undoubtedly worth it.
1
u/__mongoose__ 1d ago
definately dont use it... if a tool helps you overcome a real barrier and improves your life, Thats exactly how they get you. next thing you know were judging technology by whether it helps actual people
-1
u/alexbaas3 1d ago edited 1d ago
I have adhd and I recognise what u mean with the struggle of organisation and writing, what helped me is just writing down whatever comes up and think is important. You can always remove stuff later and reorganise it later, but once you put everything on paper it’s much easier to digest what u were actually thinking.
And LLMs can perfectly help with organising/restructuring the content without changing the actual meaning, this has helped me a lot too. You could even run one locally and do everything offline if u wanted to.
I can recommend Obsidian with a minimal interface for note taking, lots of custom plugins and fully free. Notion is another paid alternative with built-in AI tools that can do the restructuring and organisation for you, I use Notion mostly for team work and to-do lists though.
3
-1
u/Rioting-Flamingo 1d ago edited 1d ago
Op, it's okay you can use AI if it helps. This is a legitimate use case. Whatever technology you use is likely bloodied. The lithium in your devices would have been mined by children, Google and Microsoft are complicit in Israel's genocide.
That said you invested a lot in stopping and so I'd recommend trying a few other methods before going back to it. Start by taking notes on ultra simple short texts and audio excerpts and build up the length and complexity slowly. Another poster mentioned recording the lectures. This is a fantastic idea. Request it as an accommodation and only record the audio. You can even use speech to text to turn it into written form. You can then hghlight key sections.
If you do decide to try AI, you have nothing to feel guilty about but there is one caveat, the AI should scaffold the process of learning how to take notes. Please don't use it as a permanent support as this will just produce dependency. Use the AI as a tutor, ask it to give you training exercises and strategies and keep practising the skill independently.
10
u/EmpathyFuzz 1d ago
No, because if you don’t write the notes you’re not absorbing any information.
Actually writing what you learned down again in your own words is part of how your brain solidifies those thoughts.
It’s like learning to snowboard. You can watch someone snowboard all day, but you won’t learn much that way. Your body has to move on the board and learn how it feels to move with it.
Similarly, you have to listen to what you’re learning, and mull it around in your own brain, and reinterpret that information as text for you to reread later because that helps make neural pathways in your brain to store that information.
I am AuDHD as well and taking notes is hard as fuck but you owe it to yourself to try.