Any of you use ChatGPT when you are activating? I am usually hiking for several hours around an activation, and I love bringing up ChatGPT and just asking about stuff. I’ll find a cool rock, take a pic, and ask what is it? Plants, birds, you name it.
For the past several outings I’ve asked for a ‘briefing’ before I head out. Ada (ChatGPT) knows what I want, a onepage rundown of geology, historic land use, history of the area, what trails to look for, special features of the park…it really makes me a much more informed hiker.
In September and October I asked a lot of questions about the makeup of various forests, and learned quite a lot about how they progress over time, how to spot damage such as fire or wind, how long different knids of trees take to decay, that sort of thing.
It’s just an endless field lesson from an expert, one who doesn’t mind if I ask childish questions.
I’ve not used AI as you describe, but there are tools which are perhaps AI adjacent that I use often:
Merlin - a phone app from CornellLab (associated in some way with the Cornell School of Ornithology), which will ID birds both from photos and by listening to bird calls using your phone’s microphone. Since I’m often in forests where it can be astonishingly difficult to spot birds you hear, the ability to identify birds based on calls is a serious delight. (It probably helps that I find birds endlessly fascinating).
iNaturalist and Seek - two related apps that will identify stuff using your phone’s camera. You name it: mushrooms, ferns, understory plants, trees, dogs, cats, snakes, rodents. There are brief descriptions of each species - not as in depth as, say, Pojar and McKinnon’s Plants of the Pacific Northwest Coast, but still quite good and of course with an ID you can look things up later for more in depth info.
Love those, too, especially Merlin. In the past I’ve used Rockd for rock ID, but I’m finding that ChatGPT is more accurate, and then I can have a conversation about the rock.