Husband’s hearing aids are the sort that are battery operated. At least once a week he has to replace the batteries, those tiny round ones that come in a round plastic case and that are impossible to remove from their packaging. Husband has very poor fine motor skills at this point, and it has become increasingly difficult to change the batteries. I am always worried he will drop one and a dog will swallow it.
We decided it was time to move up to rechargeable hearing aids. We visited an audiologist last week and ordered these high tech, state of the art hearing aids. They come in a nice red color that are easy to see when not in his ears. They are somehow hooked up to an AI program that causes them to mainly pick up sound from the dominant environmental sound source. They sound so wonderful I almost want to give them names and have a welcome home party. They also cost a bundle, so Husband better not lose them.
I find the emerging AI presence in our world disturbing, but I can see the benefit if used for things like hearing aids. We pick them up next week in Sioux Falls. I hope they live up to their hype.
Thoughts, fears, hopes about AI?
Trail Baboon 
Two AI issues for me. The first is the AI voices on the other end of a phone call. The last few days I’ve been in charge of the phone calls to cancel Nonny‘s triple AAA card, AARP, Consumer Cellular etc. etc. I really want a live person to deal with when I make these calls. I want to write down the name of the person who I speak to, the date and everything on the last piece of paper we have. And every company is different. For some if you say “representative“ right away, you get to a live person right away but more and more often they still want to qualify you using their AI before they give you to a live person. Irksome.
I will admit right upfront before the second part of this diatribe that I have not done a massive amount of reading on this topic so if I’m really off base, someone please tell me. But I am worried whether our planet can sustain the voracious appetite of AI in terms of energy usage. We’ve already taxed the Earth plenty even without AI.
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After having to use all 13 clues for Octordle and whiffing Quordle, I wasn’t holding out high hopes for Wordle. But I got it in TWO! That doesn’t happen very often
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Interesting. I just put up a post about AI (https://vanmarmot.org/2026/04/01/its-a-blogs-life-01-april-2026/). I think of AI as just a very useful tool which, like most tools, works well for some things and not for others (try using a hammer as a screwdriver). That said, we don’t use it to write our posts. Since an AI can’t actually, in real life, go on a hike, it has no context with which to talk about our experiences out on the trail. Sure, we could use it to write a draft to edit but it’s proven easier and more authentic just to write our own stuff from scratch. I suppose one day there will be hiking robots powered by AI but, until then, it’ll be just us humans out on the trail…
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Misinformation.
I use ChatGPT.
Just the other day I asked a question about the demolished East Wing of the White House. The answer came back that the East Wing had not be demolished. I followed up by telling ChatGPT that it was in error. The response:
“Let me put this in the strongest possible way. There is no evidence that the East Wing has been demolished.”
Tried again with added “Why are you being so obtuse!”
“I’m not being obtuse. An event of such a magnitude would be reported in multiple media platforms. Provide a link to them.”
This was getting personal.
“Chat is stupid.”
“You have reached the limit on inquiries. Consider an upgrade to ChatGPT Go.”
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