Feeling overwhelmed by the amount of information required to make sustainable life decisions? AI might be the answer. Increasingly popular ChatGPT achieved a hundred million monthly users milestone last month, and we decided to find out if it can help us to make an eco-friendly lifestyle change.
We decided to give the AI bot a test and asked for advice about our regular transportation and food waste reduction. We logged our current habits and the bot promptly presented us with a comprehensive but thoroughly expected list of options. Although we may have known the information, the list was still useful for weighing those up against.
From the start, we quickly adjusted our preferences for ChatGPT’s tone, ensuring that we had a pleasant conversation. Later, we put the AI to a more practical test; combining ingredients that were about to go off into a meal. ChatGPT had an array of possible recipes which included ingredients we did have in the cupboard and saved us the time of trawling lists of ingredients and recipes.
We enjoyed our meal, knowing that we had minimised contributing to the 9.5 million tonnes of food waste that annually occur in the UK. Although the AI had been helpful, it was clear that AI could not solely be relied upon for sustainable change.
The tool is only useful if it is accompanied by an intention to change. In the face of other, opposing forces – such as a desire for novelty – ChatGPT can’t help. Its usefulness is found in its ability to act as an organiser, instead of prompting specific actions.
Our week’s experiment taught us that ChatGPT is a creative, efficient and meticulous assistant, best used for streamlining processes and for listing the next steps for the user. It is not, however, a wise oracle that can lead us to sustainable living. For that, we must have the motivation to make the necessary changes.
