Artificial intelligence, or AI, has become an increasingly useful part of my working life as a freelancer. I use it to bounce ideas around, help me troubleshoot website coding issues, develop ideas for blog posts and social media content, and create images when I’m struggling to get started.
I was introduced to the phrase Collaborative Advanced Intelligence, and that’s a much better description of how I use AI. As a freelancer working largely on my own, I find AI to be an incredibly useful collaborator. I don’t have a team of developers, designers, copywriters, and technical experts sitting in the next room; AI can fill these roles.
Of course, there is a lot of negativity surrounding AI at the moment, and I can understand why. There are concerns about companies using AI to complete work more quickly without passing the savings on to their clients. Creatives, artists, and musicians have also expressed understandable concerns about AI-generated work lacking the human experience, emotion, and soul that goes into something created by a human. These concerns are valid, and I certainly don’t think AI should be seen as a replacement for the people who bring those qualities to their work.
We’ve Been Here Before
Perhaps some of the anxiety surrounding AI is also a little familiar. New inventions and technological advances have a habit of making people nervous. And, looking back through history, it’s often not the technology itself that causes the real problems. It’s what people choose to do with it.
When steam railways began transforming Britain in the nineteenth century, they were revolutionary. The railways made it possible to move people and goods around much more quickly and changed the way people lived and worked. However, when they were introduced many landowners fought railway companies over the compulsory purchase of their land, and there was fierce opposition to railway development. There were even some wonderfully dramatic predictions about the terrible things railways would do to the countryside and society—vegetation would stop growing, cows would stop producing milk, and horses would eventually become extinct. It’s easy to laugh at those predictions now, but they remind us that new technology can provoke some very strong reactions.
The railway itself wasn’t the problem. It was how people used the technology, along with the power and the opportunities that came with it. I think there’s a lesson in that for AI too.
AI is a tool. A remarkably powerful one, admittedly, but still a tool. It can be used thoughtfully to help someone develop an idea, solve a problem, or extend their skills. It can also be used badly, carelessly, or simply to make more money while reducing the value of someone’s work. That’s a human choice.
And perhaps that’s why I’m interested in the idea of Collaborative Advanced Intelligence. I’m not interested in AI replacing the human part of my work. I’m interested in what happens when human experience, creativity, and judgement are combined with a tool that can give me another perspective, another set of ideas, and access to knowledge that I might not have on my own.
AI as the Team Member I Don’t Have
If you’ve ever stared at a screen full of code wondering why on earth it isn’t working, you’ll know just how frustrating it can be. You read it once. You read it again. You check the brackets. You check the spelling. You check everything you can think of… and still can’t see what you’ve done wrong. A few hours later and you’ve a little less hair than you started with, but you finally spot it: a missing semi-colon!
Of course, sometimes the answer is more complicated than that. That’s where my AI collaborator comes in particularly handy. I use ChatGPT and Gemini when I’m working on websites that stretch the limits of my coding knowledge or troubleshooting patience. I can explain what I’m trying to achieve, show it my code, and ask, “Why isn’t this working?”
AI is particularly useful to me when I’m working with PHP, WordPress plugins, and code snippets. It can suggest approaches, as well as troubleshoot problems and occasionally spot the tiny mistake that has been driving me slowly round the bend. It also produces much tidier code than I sometimes write myself; that’s a useful bonus for my clients. I can understand my own slightly haphazard coding, but someone else taking over a project in the future might not find it quite so easy. Having AI help me produce cleaner, more structured code makes the end result easier to maintain and adapt.
But I don’t simply ask AI to build an entire website while I do something else. I am still the person building the website. I know what the client needs. I make the decisions. I understand the wider project and, importantly, I check what the AI produces and make sure the code it writes does what I need it to.
A Sounding Board for Ideas
AI isn’t just somewhere I go to get an answer. Sometimes I use it as my very own brainstorming room. You know the sort of meeting I mean: a company books a room at a smart conference centre or posh golf resort, everyone gets a coffee (or something stronger), and before long the walls are covered in sticky notes. Ideas are thrown around, challenged, combined, and occasionally rescued from the bin. Thanks to AI, I can now do something remarkably similar from my home office.
Sometimes I know what I want to say in a blog post but can’t quite find the words. Sometimes I’m staring at a blank canvas trying to think of an image for a social media post. I’ll throw an idea at ChatGPT, see what comes back, pick at it, change it, disagree with it, and throw another idea back. It’s a conversation rather than a handover.
That doesn’t mean I necessarily use the first suggestion. In fact, I rarely do. Sometimes an AI-generated image becomes the finished illustration. Sometimes it gives me an idea that I take in a completely different direction myself. Sometimes a conversation about an idea helps me work out what I actually want to create. And sometimes it simply gets me past that dreaded blank page.
For someone working alone from a home office, that’s incredibly valuable. I may not have a boardroom with a team of colleagues and a wall full of sticky notes, but I can still brainstorm, explore ideas, and work out what comes next.
AI as a Building Block, not the Finished Product
I think this is the bit that sometimes gets lost in the debate about AI. For me, AI isn’t about handing over my creativity or expertise. It’s about having a smart resource available to me. I bring the human bit: my experience, judgement, understanding of my clients, knowledge of their businesses, and my own ideas about what the finished product should look like. AI helps me get there.
It’s like having an incredibly knowledgeable colleague who never gets fed up when I ask another question, doesn’t mind looking at my code for the tenth time, and is always available when I suddenly have an idea. That doesn’t replace my skills. It extends them. And for a freelancer, having access to that extra pair of eyes, that sounding board, and that technical knowledge can make an enormous difference.
So, if you’re a freelancer who has been wondering whether AI is worth exploring, my advice would be: don’t ask it to replace you. Ask it to collaborate with you. You might be surprised at what you can create together.
