We were recently featured on STV News when they visited one of our exciting sessions with the APRIL AI Hub, where our learners were getting to grips with the world of artificial intelligence. You might have spotted Mary on the segment, she’s the one who talked about using voice recognition. Read on to hear more about Mary’s experience and what she thought of the project.
Mary’s Journey into the World of AI
Mary is one of our regular learners at ACE IT. She lives with macular degeneration, which makes using technology challenging. “New technology scares the daylights out of me,” she says, “but that’s why I come to ACE IT.”
When she first heard about our AI project in collaboration with the April AI Hub, Mary wasn’t particularly interested. AI just seemed like another complicated thing to figure out, but, for reasons that she can’t explain, she changed her mind and she decided to give it a go.
She remembers the nerves walking up to the Edinburgh Futures Institute. “It felt like my first day at university,” she said. “No knowledge, just a bag of nerves.” Thankfully, the first session kicked off with an icebreaker, which helped everyone relax and get to know each other.
Before the sessions, Mary’s only real use of AI was voice recognition for emails but otherwise, she was starting from scratch. “I’m comfortable when I’m programmed, but until somebody shows me how to do it, I just am not,” she admitted.
Once shown, though, she was hooked. ChatGPT became the highlight for her, she uses it daily now, asking it about everything from recipes to things that help her with her condition.
She was blown away when her buddy from APRIL hub showed her how ChatGPT could write a poem in seconds. “It was more than interest,” she said. “Seeing just what AI can do, so quickly, was staggering.” She couldn’t wait to get home and try it herself. A few days later, she even shared her excitement during an appointment, and the other person was off to try it too!
What Mary loved most about these was meeting the younger people from around the world, and the experts who helped guide the learning. It gave her a sense of what the future looks like and that she could be a part of it. She described it as “a privilege to be able to touch it, to experience it and know what the younger generations have in front of them, this minefield of knowledge”. For Mary, AI is something that “stretches our own intelligence by opening up a whole new world of information.”
Reflecting on the experience, Mary says:
“I mostly want to say a huge thank you for what has been an exciting and informative challenge outside my usual comfort zone. From an initial sense of great apprehension about the unknown, I now feel confident enough to continue the exploration! I hope there may be other similar opportunities in the future.”
