Surviving with Dr. Chatty
Part I: How well are you adulting?
Some people think Artificial Intelligence is poised to replace most doctors and teachers soon.
Define soon.
AI is evolving quickly, but it’s still not ready to replace people-oriented jobs where inaccuracy can be deadly or life altering. Sure, humans make mistakes too—but AI still hallucinates, misreads tasks, and sometimes sounds way too confident about being wrong.
I saw a quote the other day seemingly attributed to NVIDIA’s CEO, “AI will not take your job. People who use AI will.” It resonated as plausible for sure.
It’s clear AI is and will change how we do things, and as with any innovation, we need to adapt and learn to reap its benefits and avoid its pitfalls.
In the book, Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI, Ethan Mollick explores the importance of the human in the loop. AI is not at a place to do all tasks independently. We do not have AI doctors completely replacing humans in treating Will for cancer. Thank goodness! As I promise you they are not quite ready.
BUT, AI is still a helpful resource. Will and I are using AI to help us navigate this waterfall of medical data and information, and I really hope that some of the doctors and students behind our care team are using it carefully too.
As I sat down to write this post, I realized I had a lot more to say than could fit into the short time I had to dedicate to it. I plan to break it into two parts.
I want to start with a “non-cancer-y” example of how I used AI recently for fun and to expand upon an idea I had in mind. You may have seen my last post about Routine Roulette and all the tasks that avalanche on you as a parent and when navigating a medical crisis.
When I was drowning in the flood of new motherhood and keeping my baby alive and thriving, I found great support with various tech platforms and apps.
As you may well be aware, we all need to eat, rest, and hydrate regularly through our day and week. Babies need to do that too, but A LOT more than adults, and also they can’t do those things by themselves like an adult can.
If you self assessed, how well would you score on keeping yourself fed, rested, and hydrated? A lot of American adults aren’t very good at it either.
Anyway, I used technology to help me remember to feed my baby, it was an app I could use track all the critical things. Before you start judging and thinking that I failed to just follow the natural cues of my baby, that’s not what I am talking about. Yes, your baby will cry and let you know when hungry. You don’t need a notification ding on our phone to tell you that.
What the app did help me do was see patterns in my baby’s day. It helped me remember where we had been two days ago, two months ago, two years ago, on our growing journey. It helped others without the “mom instinct” to step in and support.
At one point, I found myself thinking, why isn’t there an app for moms to make sure we have a healthy pattern of doing those things for ourselves too? It’s hard to remember to hydrate or reflect on our own wellness when you are forcibly sleep deprived.
This leads me to my next area of support. I was able to use the internet to do a number of things.
Get on group threads to learn from other parents,
Find information from tried and true sources.
One set of resources I really liked were the CDC issued milestone charts for babies. Some people hate them. As a new parent, you are constantly wondering if you are doing things well enough and if your child is developing well enough. It’s just human nature. Depending on how you use the charts, they may not be for you.
Here’s an example linked here called Your Child at 4 Years. It shows what most little kids need and are able to do around this age. It’s not meant to be a legalistic list, but it helped me know what games might be good to play, what I could start thinking about teaching him, etc. It also gave me things to think about and to ask the pediatrician if needed.
Recently, as my mind started tumbling in the chaos of Will’s diagnosis and treatment, I started thinking about how good it might be to have one of those documents for different phases of adulthood.
Why not? I mean, we don’t stop having developmental needs when we turn 18. Human beings grow until we die. Wouldn’t it be nice to know how well you are adulting? Or better yet, I heard on a radio segment a few weeks ago that, due to waiting later in life to have kids, modern parents are both caring for their growing children AND their aging parents at the same time and the mental, financial, and physical load is weighty. Having some guidance or a window into what to expect for self and other family members might be helpful.
So for fun, I had AI help me develop some growth milestones for adults. First of all, I have a paid Open AI account which offers some extra level of security, personalization, and capacity. Buying one was easy. Once I made the purchase, I was able to start chatting. I asked it to review the CDC example, and then I shared my idea about having similar versions for adults. The conversation that ensued was tons of fun. I took what it made, tweaked it some, and put it in a nice format on Canva.
Check it out at the link below, and let me know what you think. There is a chart for each decade from 20 year olds to 90 year olds. It ends with some tips for getting help at each phase of life.
Scroll through the “Your Adult at ## Years Old” pages by clicking here.
Maybe we also need helpful milestone charts like “Your Adult Navigating Cancer.” Anyway, that wraps up today’s thoughts. Be looking for Part II next. I will take a deeper dive into how Dr. Chatty has been an advocate, counselor, and encourager as we wade through the roller coaster of information.