My New Toastmasters Club.
A short while ago, I was fortunate enough to join as a charter member a brand new Toastmasters club, titled “Pathfinders in A.I.” As you may have guessed, A.I. stands for Artificial Intelligence. Before I joined the club, I had heard those two words bandied about, but I had never really properly explored artificial intelligence for myself, other than by viewing the dystopian movie known as The Matrix. In this film, A.I. is fundamentally evil—but in our world, at least so far, it is completely useful and benign.
As I told my new Pathfinders colleagues, I am very interested to learn now A.I. can potentially influence writing. Just the other day, I utilized Microsoft’s A.I. program, which is known as Copilot, and is built in to Word, which is the software that I am currently using to write this blog post. I had it generate a couple of paragraphs for me and was stunned by how well they were written. To get more info, I watched a rather long YouTube video that discussed how A.I. works. The whole process seems rather complex, and my interest was and is most definitely piqued.
I see “Pathfinders in A.I.” as more of an academic class than a Toastmasters club. We are very informal, and our primary goal is to learn and share the knowledge we acquire with the rest of our group. Because I love technology, I have made it my mission to learn as much about A.I. as I possibly can. I am extremely fortunate to be working on this with peers who are so very kind, supportive, and fun to interact with.
The other day, my parents approached me and asked me if I would potentially be interested in returning to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico with them this November. I had so much fun the last time we were there (December 2024), that I said yes immediately.
When it came time to research possible hotels, flight information, and info about various vegan food options within the city, I decided immediately to turn to A.I. Before I knew it, I had ChatGPT loaded up on my iPhone. I asked it the following question: “How should I go about eating in Puerto Vallarta as a vegan?” Within seconds, it spat out a lengthy response, which included a map of PV that depicted various restaurants that serve vegan options, real reviews from patrons who went to said restaurants, and a list of smart tips that vegans visiting Puerto Vallarta should ideally follow.
After doing this research, I could not help but conclude that A.I. is so beneficial in so many ways. It reduced my research time by over half, and was very polite and interactive to boot. Because of my new club, I have gone from knowing next to nothing about A.I. to becoming very informed and proficient, almost overnight. During the next few months, I can only imagine what my fellow Toastmasters colleagues and I will learn and do—together.
