To Talk or to Type: A Boomer's Journey into AI

One of the first questions you have to resolve when engaging your AI is whether it is better to talk or to type.  As Shakespeare penned, THAT is the question.   I have some practical suggestions, but first I cannot resist a farce on Hamlet's famous soliloquy from Act III, Scene 1.

To talk or type.  That is the question:

Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer

the slings and arrows of slow hunt and peck,

Or to take arms against a sea of autocorrect

And by talking aloud end them.  To chat – to type,

No more; and by a chat to say aloud, “AI, what if…”

Then head-ache and the thousand natural shocks

That AI chatting might be heir to communication.

Devoutly to be wish’d.  To chat, to search,

To search, perchance to hallucinate – ay there’s the rub:

For in that chat of search, what hallucinations may come,

When we have hot-linked off to dark web unknown,

Must give us pause – there’s the response

Which makes AI appear as life.

For who bears the spinning circle of death on your screen,

Thus the conscious AI does make cowards of us all,

And enterprises of great potential and momentum

With this regard their leaders turn awry,

And lose the name of action.—Soft you now!

The fair ChatGPT or Claude, in thy large language models

Be all my sins remember'd.

Enough fun and, if you are wondering, that was NOT AI.  That was my boomer brain playing word games.  The question remains that each person much decide.  Is it better to type or to talk to your AI. 

Of course it is a personal choice.  Also, the device you are using has some impact in that for many the keyboard of a laptop or desktop gives an option that the screen keyboard of a mobile phone or tablet does not. 

My experience is that on a Windows machine, getting the voice recognition to work in an integrated manner was itself challenging.   Then when I did finally get such to work, a month later I was warned by both Chrome and McAfee that the voice app I have chosen to plug in may be malware capturing all I say and sending it to who knows who.   “Alas, poor voice module, I knew it well.”

Returning now from Hamlet’s Act V, I did install another voice app and find that I use voice for miscellaneous inquiries or initial inquiries.  However, when I want to do deep dives on detailed topics, involving uploading files and the like, it is best to type.  

Yes, “uploading files”.  I’ll cover that in another blog soon.

I have found my experience to be a more controlled engagement when typing than when talking.  I enjoy talking to the AI, but there is so much information and “opinion” shared back to me that I find typing gives me the ability to cut/paste parts of what the AI offers it can do next and say it back to the AI precisely as I desire.  Ultimately, I get better results.

Talk or Type.  You should expect you will be doing both.