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Writer's pictureClaire Matuka

AI in our Day to Day Life

Updated: Sep 16, 2021



Whenever AI or Artificial Intelligence is mentioned, for some people what flashes across their mind is a bunch of humanoid robots taking over the world and eliminating all human life (big thank you to all the sci-fi movies).

What we fail to realize is that AI is all around us and I’ll show you with a “Day in the Life” of Serah. Quick background before we get started. Serah is a business owner and entrepreneur. She runs a boutique in Nairobi, Kenya, where she sells baby and kids outfits.


Day in the Life of Serah


It is Tuesday, 31st of August 2021. Serah is an early riser and so she often gets up before 7:00am to prepare breakfast for her family. As she does this, she likes to listen to some music in the background and her go to app is YouTube. Based on the kind of songs Serah listens to, YouTube recommends similar music which saves her the hustle of having to pre-select songs. She also gets to discover new music that she likes while at it (yeah guys, that’s AI).


Before heading to work, Serah likes to go through her emails just to make sure she is up to date with everything. She finds it quite interesting that spam emails are automatically detected in her inbox which saves her time. As she responds to emails, she keeps receiving predictions of what text she is most likely typing out (we call them “smart replies”). Talk about saving her more time.


Now, here’s the fun part. Serah drives a 2020 Mazda CX-3. Leave alone the sleek design, the car has adaptive cruise control that basically helps the vehicle maintain a safe following distance and automatically adjusts its speed. We consider this to be Level 1 autonomy in cars, but hey, just think about that.

Around noon, Serah realizes that she needs some help with her business bank account. She tries calling the bank’s customer care center, but her calls go unanswered. She goes to the bank’s website and instead of having to read through a whole bunch of FAQs, she engages with a chatbot that provides her with a solution in a matter of seconds.


It was a good Tuesday at work. Perfect end to the month of August. Serah goes home, warms up some leftovers, unwinds and turns on the TV for some Netflix. For some weird reason, she has been binge watching Christmas romantic movies and Netflix keeps feeding her addiction by recommending similar content. Before Serah goes to sleep, she asks Siri to set an alarm for 7:00 am the next day.


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Now, I hope you can all see the extent to which we use AI in our day to day lives. In just one simple Tuesday, Serah has been able to interact with AI in recommender systems, chatbots, autonomous cars, emails and a voice assistant. I know most of us get to interact with one or two of these daily (and I did not even mention social media). All I can say is; Welcome to the Fourth Industrial Revolution.


1 comment

1 Comment


Jason Gitau
Jason Gitau
Dec 23, 2023

woow! i really enjoyed the blog, thanks a lot

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