KQED's Forum AI is Changing Fast. How Are You Using It Now?
Feb 26, 2026
Maxwell Zeff, WIRED AI writer explaining coding tools. Heather Kelly, tech reporter on everyday AI uses and risks. Nitasha Tiku, tech culture journalist on ethics and human-AI interaction. They discuss AI moving from search to doing tasks. They cover coding agents, household automation, risks like deskilling and privacy, and practical safety tips for new users.
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AI Excels At Computer Tasks Not Human Creativity
- AI models are poor at human creativity but excel at “computer things” like summarizing large datasets and connecting services.
- Alexis Madrigal highlights AI's strength at pulling summaries, finding outliers, and automating internet connectors when given ground-truth data.
Engineers First To See Fundamental Workflow Shift
- Software engineers are the first group whose daily workflows materially changed: they now prompt AI agents to implement features and review the results.
- Maxwell Zeff reports engineers often ask plain-English requests and review generated code instead of writing everything themselves.
Host Automated Household Membership Tasks With Claude
- Alexis used Claude Cowork to automate updating a Google Sheet when a membership is created, eliminating a recurring household task.
- Claude walked him through deployment, required APIs, and cloud hosting so he no longer manually assigned member numbers.