One of the simple pleasures I enjoy when traveling is tracking state license plates on my phone. There are several apps available that allow you to track license plates as you encounter them in your travels. I have been tracking state license plates over the last year and I am proud to report that there are only two state license plates that I have not encountered in the past year – Hawaii and Nevada. (I have also seen Alberta, Ontario, and Quebec from Canada).
Despite my best efforts scouring the web, I have been unable to find a similar app for tracking license plates of Kentucky’s 120 counties. So, I’ve wondered if I could somehow create a program or application myself that would allow me to track Kentucky county license plates as I see them.
I set up a basic checklist in Evernote which I have been using but still wanted something that was more of a dedicated app than a checklist. For the curious, I’ve seen 34 counties in about two months.
I debated finding a knowledgeable person who might be able to create this for me. For those of you who aren’t aware, there are websites where you can hire freelancers to accomplish various tasks for you. For example, Fiverr https://www.fiverr.com/ markets itself as an online marketplace that connects freelancers with people and businesses looking to hire them for digital services. You can hire someone to design a logo for you, create a website for you, create a jingle for an ad, write an ad copy for a digital marketing campaign, develop an app for you.
This seemed like a bit much to hire someone, but I’ve kept the thought in the back of my mind. I’ve gone down Google and YouTube rabbit holes on how to create a program to make a Kentucky license plate tracker but my familiarity with coding is limited to a Timex Sinclair computer I had as a teenager, some rudimentary html web page design, and Markdown markup language in Obsidian.
As someone who has experimented a good deal with Artificial Intelligence, I decided to see if ChatGPT could help me create something to track Kentucky license plates.
Using the following prompts in ChatGPT, I was able to generate a program in Python that I was then able to successfully run on my home computer, transpose to also run on my phone, and host on GitHub so that others could access my program:
Write a program that I can host on Github that will allow me to track the license plates of Kentucky’s 120 counties as I see them.
Provide step by step instructions on how to create this in python
Add code to show counties already seen as well
Is there a way I can upload this for use on an android phone
Modify the program to where it shows a map of Kentucky with county license plates seen shaded in
It is a pretty basic program, and it lacks the graphical aspects I would prefer but it provided proof of concept for using AI to allow someone with little to no coding knowledge to create a basic application. This took me approximately 40 minutes of time in total from beginning to end.
You can see the results of my work at the following link: https://github.com/drslude/KY-License-Plate-Tracker (Note that I did not implement the map aspect listed in the last instruction I gave to ChatGPT)
I don’t see myself becoming a computer programmer or coder anytime soon, but this does show both the fascinating (and possibly frightening to some) nature of Artificial Intelligence programs.
I attended a training at Eastern Kentucky University this week where they demonstrated the use of AI to re-design an undergraduate course.
The training also highlighted an interesting loop that is happening in education where instructors are using AI to create course assignments which students are using AI to complete which instructors then use AI to grade. Perhaps we just need to eliminate the middlemen and let AI perform all the roles. I’m joking but it does raise an interesting dynamic at play.
There are programs that instructors use to try and determine if students have used AI in the completion of assignments but many of these programs have unacceptable rates of false positives that make them problematic to use. For example, there is a finding that often comes up in discussions about the use of these programs that a program designed to detect the use of AI found that the Preamble to the Declaration of Independence was likely generated using AI https://decrypt.co/286121/ai-detectors-fail-reliability-risks
I’m in an online group of psychologists dedicated to assessment and someone recently asked for assistance in identifying an AI program that would review hundreds of pages of medical records and summarize them as a time saver. There are programs that will do this but depending upon the parameters of the program, some AI applications will have hallucinations which result in seemingly incorrect output and summaries. AI hallucinations are similar to how humans sometimes see figures in the clouds or faces on a piece of toast. In the case of AI, these misinterpretations occur due to various factors that I won’t get into here as it can get pretty technical.
However, the main concern I would have with using AI to summarize medical records is that AI programs often use the data they are fed to continue learning and modifying their outputs. Unless the program has specific safeguards against this, it is possible that these hundreds of pages of medical records would permanently reside in the AI program’s database raising a number of privacy and confidentiality concerns.
Many of the AI trainings I have attended recently have suggested that you never share any personal information about yourself with an AI program. This is probably good advice but many of these programs require you to register or login with an existing account (e.g. Google or Facebook) so they probably already or will eventually know who you are by other means. One of the recent trainers I listened to noted that she had an AI program start mentioning things that suggested the program knew her identity. So, for kicks, I asked ChatGPT based upon the data I had entered into it over time whether it could identify who I was and any personal characteristics about me. ChatGPT responded with the following:
So far, based on what you’ve shared, I know that:
- Your Name: Jerome.
- Profession and Focus: You’re a psychiatric trainee practicing diagnostic interviews.
- Current Activity: You’re working with a patient character that has narcissistic personality traits to understand their background and personality.
If there’s any other information, you’d like me to remember about you or if you’d like me to forget something, just let me know!
certifiable 
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