learns well with others

Are my symptoms perimenopause?

Does this shade of yellow suit me?

What size water heater do I need?

(Maybe, no and 40 gallons, at least.)

Doctor, stylist and tradesperson are only a few of the roles I have asked ChatGPT to take on since starting to use the app several months ago.

(Also: Unreliable fact-checker. Is tradesperson an accurate way to refer to a professional who advises on what size of water heater to select? Answers: Yes and no, in back-to-back responses. Enter human supervision, because the AI hallucinations and people pleasing are real.)

I haven’t always reached for AI as reflexively as I do now for just about any and every query. As a journalist-turned-communications leader, I was wary of a tool that circumvents the creative process and robs us of em dashes — if we let it.

It was my husband who downloaded the ChatGPT app to my phone. Despite his prompting, I stubbornly resisted for months. Until we went on holiday, he left his phone on the plane during the first leg of our journey and he got his hands on mine.

(He had planned most of our trip to Greece. Which was great until he lost his phone and his email held our itinerary and prepaid tickets hostage because multi-factor authentication. TL;DR: Asking concierges for help and using landline phones to confirm bookings still works.)

While I have gone from AI resister to avid user, I am not alone in having lingering questions about how the technology is being harnessed.

(Will AI jeopardize our privacy? Spread false information? Take our jobs? These are some of the concerns Canadians hold, according to a 2025 Leger poll, sourced via ChatGPT.)

At the same time, of course, AI is opening up endless new opportunities and possibilities.

(Canadians acknowledge this, too, according to the same Leger poll. They see its potential to improve everyday convenience and workplace productivity. Twenty-seven per cent of those polled anticipate benefits in education.)

Which brings me to the premise of this blog, Learns Well with Others. Here, I will explore what we gain and what we lose when practically all the knowledge in the world can be unlocked online, whether it’s through today’s AI prompts or the video tutorials that came before them.

The exploration will happen through three intentional acts of learning in real life (or IRL, as we say online): learning a family recipe, taking a weightlifting class and trying to keep a plant alive by absorbing as much information as possible from the person who sold it to me.

If the name of the blog belies a Millennial-coded nostalgia, it’s because I’m a card-carrying member of the generation that looks back on a childhood that straddled the pre- and post-Internet eras.

But this isn’t about should we or shouldn’t we use AI to figure out how to do things. It’s about not getting stuck in a vortex of chatbots and doom scrolling when we are both more connected and less connected than ever — a sentiment I am not the first to express.

Now that I’m a homeowner, AI has become the home economics teacher I never had in high school. Am I losing out by watching a YouTube tutorial to learn how to clear the drain filter on my washing machine? Probably not. It’s convenient, fast and free. 

But working in the post-secondary sector, I see vibrant examples of the value of learning IRL constantly. Aspiring firefighters conducting search-and-rescue exercises, culinary students putting on several-course tasting menus — lessons that require hands-on training.

For clarity, this blog is not a commentary on formal education or the role AI should play in institutional settings. (See also my disclaimer — this is a personal, not professional, blog.) Instead, I’m leaning into the realm of life skills and new hobbies.

As I embark on this exploration, I’d like to invite you, the reader, to share how you’re using — or not using — AI chatbots to figure things out. Please consider taking a moment to participate in a brief poll, which I’ll report the results of in a future post.