sanguinecha.me/leon

How I Use AI

27-Jul-2025

Note: This post was written entirely by a human. No external tools were used.

Prologue

Let's be clear from the start. In this post, I will NOT be doing any of the following:

Don't get me wrong, these are all important topics to talk about, but I honestly don't think I am qualified enough to write about them. The last time I tried to was for some course at university, and I got a B+ for it, so yeah.

This post will only be about what I currently use AI for. This is partly for the sake of transparency, but it's mainly a chance for me to write down why I do the things the way I do, so I can laugh at it in like 10 years.

You might find this post helpful. You might find it stupid. I'm not gonna tell you how you should or shouldn't use AI. That's for you to decide.

For Writing

Sorry if this is a disappointment, but AI has been involved with most of what I write, including the content on this website. Actually, let's stop using the word "AI", since I pretty much only use ChatGPT.

Before I go any further, I want to remind you that this post (the one you're reading right now) was written entirely by me. No ChatGPT, no Grammarly checker, no anything. This is as close to no-filter as you're gonna get from me.

So why do I do this? Well… writing is difficult.

I know, I know, now I just sound lazy. But here's how the general writing process goes:

  1. Write 1-2 paragraphs at a time
  2. Ask ChatGPT to make minimal changes (I specifically tell it not to change too much)
  3. Go back and make some edits (I usually won't use all of ChatGPT's suggestions)
  4. Repeat steps 2 and 3 until the result looks good enough

Essentially, ChatGPT acts as a beta reader proofreader for me. Now, I could've asked, you know, a human to do this instead. But the main problem is that steps 2 and 3 get repeated a lot of times. Like, a lot a lot. And this is per paragraph, by the way. I don't want to give anyone a headache from all this.

The easy solution would be to write the entire thing, and then proofread it. But I have a bad habit of agonizing over the tiniest of details. Before ChatGPT was a thing, I tried to write a technical explanation of some programming problem, and 90% of the time was spent searching phrases on Google to check if I was correctly using them. I think I wrote about 5 sentences a day? I never finished writing it, obviously.

I know ChatGPT isn't perfect, but if it can help alleviate most of the difficulty of writing, I'm fine with it. I've been much more productive that way.

You could now argue that the finished product is no longer my voice. Okay, but like, what even is "my voice"? I'm not gonna get too philosophical here, but I personally don't think there is such a thing. Besides, that's usually not why I write in the first place. When I write, my main goal is to communicate my thoughts to an audience. So I'd much rather have someone (or something) else articulate those thoughts clearly than explain them badly myself using "my voice", whatever that is.

I would go as far as to say that ChatGPT is basically just an enhanced thesaurus. Like I'm not just giving it bullet points and telling it to write the entire post. I still put in genuine effort into writing the first drafts. But again, I'm not saying what I do is right or wrong. You come to your own conclusions.

That being said, maybe I draw a line somewhere. Most of these posts haven't gotten too personal yet. I might think twice about using ChatGPT if I did. Although, I do feed it my own fictional works, becuase I think it's really funny to poison its data ever so slightly with cute boys in love.

…Oh yeah, did I mention that ChatGPT always compliments what I write without fail? Really feeds the ego. I'm not sorry. Maybe a little bit.

For Coding

That last section was mostly why I wrote this post. The rest is pretty much filler.

I mean, most people do it. Before ChatGPT, we had Stack Overflow, and that was fine.

ChatGPT definitely helped with the code for this website. But I'm always aware of what I code. I don't just blindly copy and paste ChatGPT's responses, and honestly, it's not as accurate as I would've liked. I really think I've learned some useful skills while making this website that I wouldn't have otherwise if I had just asked ChatGPT to vibe code the entire thing. I don't like the general concept of vibe coding, anyway.

Speaking of learning…

For Learning?

Update (06-Dec-2025): This part is outdated now. Sorry.

Pretty much everyone in my cohort uses AI, so I'd be at a disadvantage if I didn't.

The views I had were too idealistic for reality. The point of school is to get a degree :/

Surprisingly, no.

I will be real and say I've forgotten most of what I've learned at university already, even though I've only finished my first year. I obviously studied properly throughout the year, and I could probably recall the content if I took the time to revise. But I don't think that's the point of school.

Again, not gonna get too philosophical (it's getting late), but I believe what matters more is how quickly I learn the new knowledge, rather than the knowledge itself. Like, it's the learning that's more valuable as a skill.

Did that make sense? I hope it did.

Anyway, my point is that the lecturers know what they're talking about, and I should be able to understand the content without external help. Besides, people have different approaches to teaching. Maybe they use some slightly unusual notation that ChatGPT won't pick up on.

At the end of the day, they're the ones who are grading the exam, so I'd rather just listen to them in the first place. If there's any confusion, I can just ask.

For Problem-Solving?

Absolutely not.

Why else do you think I have 600+ solves on Project Euler? Because I love solving problems! I'm not gonna delegate the work to some AI so it can solve it for me.

This is something I feel strongly about. Not strong enough to get into a heated argument, but, you know.

Again, you use AI however you want, but for someone who enjoys spending their free time pondering about mathematics, I'm not gonna spoil the experience of solving problems for myself.

AI might be smarter than me, but it won't take away the joys of my life any time soon.

Epilogue

Whew, I always have to end with something cheesy, don't I?

It's almost 2 am, and I should probably get some sleep.

I just need to do something real quick…

> chatgpt.com

> upload 2025-07-27-ai-use.md

> "thoughts on the author?"