How I Used AI Today

My son is having a birthday and graduating from high school in the span of five days, so Jilly and I thought we’d do something special and get him a joint gift to celebrate both occasions. He’s very much interested in photojournalism and will be entering university in the fall to study communications. We thought a nice DSLR camera would be a the perfect gift.

I don’t know much about cameras or lenses, so I asked Claude for some help. My initial prompt:

I want to buy my son a DSLR camera for his birthday/graduation. You are an expert in photography and photography equipment. Could you help me select the right camera, lenses and bag? I’d like to spend about $X total.

Claude and I then chatted about my son’s photographic interests, his current level of expertise, and several of my purchase preferences/requirements. The output of this conversation was a tight list of three potential camera bodies w/ corresponding lens pairings.

I then asked Claude to find the best deals for two of the options and it returned the top three online retailers for both based on price, service and customer reviews.

After validating some pricing details, I made the purchase. In total, I estimate this approach saved me several hours of research and analysis paralysis, which I am known for when making purchases like this.

The camera kit arrived two days later, we gave it to him on his birthday and he used it for the first time last night to cover his school’s WPIAL title baseball game.

Note: This post is part of an ongoing series called How I Used AI Today, inspired by friend and former colleague Beck Tench who does something similar over on LinkedIn. I’m starting to believe the thinking and narrative around generative AI is becoming too binary. The intent of this series is to keep me publicly honest and intellectually responsible with my use of this emerging technology.