AI and chat GPT won't fix your life

on the lazy-to-stupid pipeline, sponsored by chat GPT

My first introduction to chat GPT happened in a classroom setting, as my professor was explaining its purpose, utility and danger. As someone who had never used the website before, largely due to the fact that I can barely manage an amazon account and that I pride myself almost exclusively on coming up with my own sentences, I wasn’t exactly curious to hear the awaiting “using the website risks you being flagged for plagiarism”.

Instead, my professor shared his screen with us and used the site himself. He asked it to come up with a song that blended both reggae and opera music, which it failed miserably to do. No surprise there, he said, as he wished to emphasise that chat GPT is only capable of throwing up the patched-up words of others. While it may not be as noticeable when it comes to formatting emails, it could not be more obvious when it comes to creating from scratch.

As a creator or a lover of creation yourself, I doubt I need to regurgitate my professor’s lesson onto you - you get the message. But what I do wish to do, is highlight the lazy-to-stupid pipeline so many people are leaping into. No, I am not saying people who use chat GPT are stupid. But I am saying that people who use chat GPT to sign off an email are.

As there are many things we all do that contributes to the detriment of the environment, I am definitely not one to school anyone on that matter. All of us direct some energy to this - by eating meat, by buying books, by going on several flights, by using chat GPT… I do however think there are steps we can all take to minimise such energy. Taking a flight instead of a fourteen-hour bus rise somewhere? Fair. Using chat GBT for it to plan your ideal holiday? Stupid.

In pouring one’s energy into this one tool, people are loosing their abilities to use and excel in using every other tool. In continuing to use a short cut, people are unable to take the longer road successfully.

What begins as assistance builds into reliance. Necessity. People are becoming unable to write their own emails, find their own secondary sources, write their own essays, prep for their own interviews and plan their own holidays. And what hurts the most, is that they could find the answer to each of these by talking to their parents, friends, partners, acquaintances, coworkers, and so on. With the use of AI, people loose their sense of surroundings and their sense of self.

We see this with every generation. As someone who didn’t grow up with AI but who grew up with computers, I hold myself accountable for loosing my ability to write by hand for more than a few minutes and find my next book to read by dropping by the library.

Small habits that were once obvious are ruptured by convenience.

Convenience. It almost always comes down to the reality that we exist in a culture of convenience. In a culture where we “don’t bother” and we “don’t go out of our way” misinterpreted as we “don’t make it hard for ourselves”. We cease to maintain habits, to built on them and expand them.

Instead, we reduce. In cutting our time, we cut our thought process, our creativity, our critical thinking skills, our vocabulary, and so much more.

It’s come to the point where people will ask chat GPT to create a plan for their ideal lives. As if a computer knows more about your ideal life than you. People swear off creators for always selling them a lifetime, but are willing to buy into AI’s. People look down on wikipedia for the risk of it containing misinformation, but are willing to take AI’s word for it.

The belief that humans are flawed in a way technology isn’t has harmed social relationships beyond recognisance. And as a generation who so desperately wishes to gain a sense of community back, we must be willing to put in the work. To “bother” and “go out of our way”. Because the information shared and created by humans matter.

It is the reason for our literature, for our laws, for our music, for our art, for our philosophy, for our science. Humans saw the answers. And if that analogy doesn’t work for you, then think about this: humanity could create technology, technology could not create humanity. Not matter how developed the AI.

Love,

Anastasia