Great read!! Really want to put a 🚨 on people asking ChatGPT to tell them what to have for breakfast, where to go on vacation, what shows to stream, etc. Organic discovery has already taken such a hit in the past few years with the algorithms™️...now people are literally offloading all their taste-based decision making to a bot, and it's really scary that they don't seem to realize how much dimension that removes from their lives.
I found this fascinating thank you. I agree that the world is becoming a lonelier place due to technology. Your article has triggered a lot of thoughts but the main one is something that’s been on my mind.
On a couple of occasions recently I have been involved in conversations with people that to me seemed quite normal but afterwards was told that by the other person how extraordinary it had felt to them to be able to talk about things in such depth. We discussed life after death and peoples belief systems about what happens after they die amongst other things. These topics have been uppermost in my mind as my brother recently lost his wife and I’ve been surprised to hear his beliefs about what has happened to her now she’s dead.
One of the people I was in conversation with told me how delighted he was to have been part of this conversation because in his words - people don’t normally talk about this kind of thing. In turn I was shocked because fundamentally I will talk about practically anything. Maybe this is the attraction of AI that they will talk to talk to us about anything, which if my recent experiences are anything to go by is something that people clearly struggle to find.
All this has led me to think that a useful response would be to set up conversational groups called something like Let’s Talk. I’m seriously thinking of starting this up where I live. I can see that it would help in many arenas. Thanks again - I will probably put something more coherent on Substack about my ideas.
I agree that people are offloading decision-making, but never in the history of mankind have we had so much freedom to choose everything we do. In 1400 you were just gonna become a peasant like your father, your whole life was traced... Now the world is so unpredictable you don't even know if you'll be able to breathe fresh air in 5 years. No wonder we're overwhelmed
Great read as always. I'm sure I'm not the first person to make this comparison but using ChatGPT for travel planning, grocery lists, making decisions, writing emails, etc. feels like Spark Notes for your life. Sure, it might help you pass the proverbial test, but you miss out on the process of learning! the prose! Maybe that comparison could be tighter but I won't be asking chatGPT to help me...
I had to pause and put on the Kate Bush song, it played softly as I read this.
Great article, as bad as a the example of the person saying “I stopped taking my pills is” I think a really bad part about this is how subtly this happens all the time, it won’t ever challenge anyone’s thinking. Bot are programmed to be “friendly”, so you can be terrible to it and it still confirms everything you say and think and defers to you. Which makes for an awful friend, but is what people who don’t know about actual friendship expect it to be.
Also importantly these apps are free … because users are the product … for now.
I feel like I'm the last person in the world (except my husband) who has never asked Chat GPT a single thing. Like, I still have a Yahoo email and use Google, so I am clearly behind the times, but I think I'll stick with it as long as it's not forced on me by Elon or whoever.
Really interesting! It seems like the smartphones in general and LLMs in particular help us with so much we don't feel very inclined to ask each other for help.
What really surprises me is that, for lack of needing each other, our _wanting_ to be less lonely is not a good enough reason to talk to one another.
Really great article.
This line struck me, because it seems to be starting to take on the sound of a catechism over the last decade:
"the models could never generate something original, surprising, innovative, or unique. The failure of imagination is inborn, it’s quite literally built in."
How can this ever be shown? I can have a computer program make original and unique sentences with a dictionary and a random number generator. By definition they'll be surprising. I suppose innovative is kind of in the eye of the beholder.
There was a paper that caused a bit of a splash a few months back where ChatGPT was used to generate poetry, a set of people were asked to compare several poems, some generated by AI and some created by humans.
You probably know where this is going.
The humans preferred the poetry ChatGPT made.
We can protest that this wasn't "true" creativity all we want, but at the end of the day, it's not the actual poetry that we really object to, it's the authorship.
In other words we believe ChatGPT can't be creative so we deem everything it generated uncreated.
If we can't, in advance, define a sentence ChatGPT could write that would change our minds, then it's simply an article of faith.
i think what ppl react to in those chatgpt poetry/art is still projection. the point of art is that it's not just that you're resonating with an object or an idea, but that you're resonating with the spirit of the person who made it. their intent, however you interpret it. with chat gpt there is no intent. even with art that's made of existing objects or readymade, choices were still being made by the person assembling it
I think you can still have a legitimate experience with something even if it turns out not to be intentional!
At any rate, if a machine is ever truly creative how will you tell? Unless we just intend to say forever that human brains have magic electricity and chips are powered by un-magic electricity.
If you aren't going to judge the art in and of itself all that seems left is chauvinism.
i honestly do agree with your first sentence! i'm not denying the reaction the human is experiencing with what genAI spits out or other non-art experiences (like awe at a mountain for example)because that's still coming from what the human brings/projects on to the Thing the generative AI model made. i contest that, that human rxn constitutes as LLMs and genAI being Creative.
chatGPT can't create new modes of doing something, only recombine existing forms — so it can't come up with the next cubism, post-modernism, or any other movement — it's just approximating the ones that have already happened. that means there's a mathematical limit to the amount of combinations of a thing it can come up with, which is definitionally uninnovative and not unique.
your example of making a program that generates random sentences could be art because you're a human in the loop, building that program for a reason. the art isn't in the sentences that it makes (although they can be fun or interesting!), it's about understanding your motivation as the artist in creating the program to begin with
I have been surprised over and over for a decade now about what gen AI has been able to do. I'm now very skeptical of blanket claims about what it definitely can't do. How would we know? I've asked deep research to generate a new artistic movement. We'll see what it outputs. Perhaps I should attempt to create one too and you can decide which one was the AI and which was me?
Hopefully I still count as creative!
If the bar is that it has to be a movement that sweeps the world, well, that'd take decades to figure out. One of my favorites, art brut, is fifty years old and still not completely accepted as art!
In that case most humans wouldn't count as creative. After all, only a few were capable of creating new movements!
But I am being unfair. This is what I mean by "article of faith". You have concluded that AI cannot generate new movements, not because you've tried to create new movements with AI, but because it is important to assume this is the case.
The second bit, that the humans imbue it with creativity could be used to argue that credit for an artists achievements really go to their parents. After all, they created the source of that art.
This is what I mean by chauvinism. Regardless of the images, poetry or literature, you have decided already that it's only creative if a human made it. You need to know the author, the art won't stand for itself.
The problem with that definition of creativity is that rather than saying "creativity is something unique to humans" we're instead saying creativity is defined as coming from humans.
Maybe that's fine. No serious person thinks that the camera is to credit for beautiful photographs rather than the photographer, after all.
I'm just cautioning a little more uncertainty here. Whenever AI comes up I see very confident predictions from people about something they didn't know existed only a few years ago.
Maybe this is a little harsh, but aren't these people embarrassed? I know I'm being reductive because there is a lot of nuanced mental illness at play here but.....people should be embarrassed if they are depending on AI bots because they can't form personal connections. Bring back being embarrassed.
I always tell people that Gen AI especially for research is no better than the predictive text on your phone. They can “read” but essentially it’s all a guessing game w them to they’re like right 85% but that’s not good enough (imo)
The story of the 14 year old boy is so, so sad to me. I can’t even search “Virgin Suicides” on Pinterest without a pop up asking if I’m okay and I need help.
Like, AI is not only making us more isolated from community, it's making us strangers to ourselves. This is just step 1 in a Wall-E oriented future. ChatGPT will be our demise.
But, at the same time, given the ever evolving niche and technical requirements that our increasing global population requires for operational sustainment, LLMs and AI are an assett.
Like the nuke, like language, like sex, even like a knife, AI is a double edged sabre.
I loved this essay. I think what makes ChatGPT so scary is that is negates ones ability to research. The internet is already such a tool, but it still requires us so sort through information and bridge the gaps. ChatGPT lets people forego this process without properly doing it itself. As you said, it only knows what it has been told. What is someone or something whose only conclusion can be the limited (and possibly wrong) thoughts of others rearranged?
Great read! I think it’s also hard w social media from the outside it seems everyone has it together (ik ik don’t believe everything on insta but I’m at work they’re at the beach I’m sorry I’m jealous lol) Like you said in here instead of building on community and real life communication to learn about ourselves we go to AI. AI like all things in the future is just about convenience. We want everything to satisfy our needs immediately we need to know ourselves and feel safe immediately and unfortunately AI does that.
I read this yesterday. I just found an article by The Economist named "Why economists should like booze" that made me curious, and while reading it I thought about this piece and how you have talked about the loneliness epidemic, because they correlate that loneliness with the decision of abstention that many young people are increasingly taking. It basically says that we all should be drunk at all times in order to keep our society going (? so my first thought was that it's nonsense but then I'd like to know if you've encountered any evidence about that correlation or what are your thoughts :)
Not to be both meta and earnest on main… but finding you on TikTok and now here has made me feel less lonely and insane. Thanks for writing this and examining the world the way you do!
Great read!! Really want to put a 🚨 on people asking ChatGPT to tell them what to have for breakfast, where to go on vacation, what shows to stream, etc. Organic discovery has already taken such a hit in the past few years with the algorithms™️...now people are literally offloading all their taste-based decision making to a bot, and it's really scary that they don't seem to realize how much dimension that removes from their lives.
I found this fascinating thank you. I agree that the world is becoming a lonelier place due to technology. Your article has triggered a lot of thoughts but the main one is something that’s been on my mind.
On a couple of occasions recently I have been involved in conversations with people that to me seemed quite normal but afterwards was told that by the other person how extraordinary it had felt to them to be able to talk about things in such depth. We discussed life after death and peoples belief systems about what happens after they die amongst other things. These topics have been uppermost in my mind as my brother recently lost his wife and I’ve been surprised to hear his beliefs about what has happened to her now she’s dead.
One of the people I was in conversation with told me how delighted he was to have been part of this conversation because in his words - people don’t normally talk about this kind of thing. In turn I was shocked because fundamentally I will talk about practically anything. Maybe this is the attraction of AI that they will talk to talk to us about anything, which if my recent experiences are anything to go by is something that people clearly struggle to find.
All this has led me to think that a useful response would be to set up conversational groups called something like Let’s Talk. I’m seriously thinking of starting this up where I live. I can see that it would help in many arenas. Thanks again - I will probably put something more coherent on Substack about my ideas.
I agree that people are offloading decision-making, but never in the history of mankind have we had so much freedom to choose everything we do. In 1400 you were just gonna become a peasant like your father, your whole life was traced... Now the world is so unpredictable you don't even know if you'll be able to breathe fresh air in 5 years. No wonder we're overwhelmed
i was waiting for your take on ai. another great read. tysm!
Great read as always. I'm sure I'm not the first person to make this comparison but using ChatGPT for travel planning, grocery lists, making decisions, writing emails, etc. feels like Spark Notes for your life. Sure, it might help you pass the proverbial test, but you miss out on the process of learning! the prose! Maybe that comparison could be tighter but I won't be asking chatGPT to help me...
I had to pause and put on the Kate Bush song, it played softly as I read this.
Great article, as bad as a the example of the person saying “I stopped taking my pills is” I think a really bad part about this is how subtly this happens all the time, it won’t ever challenge anyone’s thinking. Bot are programmed to be “friendly”, so you can be terrible to it and it still confirms everything you say and think and defers to you. Which makes for an awful friend, but is what people who don’t know about actual friendship expect it to be.
Also importantly these apps are free … because users are the product … for now.
I feel like I'm the last person in the world (except my husband) who has never asked Chat GPT a single thing. Like, I still have a Yahoo email and use Google, so I am clearly behind the times, but I think I'll stick with it as long as it's not forced on me by Elon or whoever.
Really interesting! It seems like the smartphones in general and LLMs in particular help us with so much we don't feel very inclined to ask each other for help.
What really surprises me is that, for lack of needing each other, our _wanting_ to be less lonely is not a good enough reason to talk to one another.
Really great article.
This line struck me, because it seems to be starting to take on the sound of a catechism over the last decade:
"the models could never generate something original, surprising, innovative, or unique. The failure of imagination is inborn, it’s quite literally built in."
How can this ever be shown? I can have a computer program make original and unique sentences with a dictionary and a random number generator. By definition they'll be surprising. I suppose innovative is kind of in the eye of the beholder.
There was a paper that caused a bit of a splash a few months back where ChatGPT was used to generate poetry, a set of people were asked to compare several poems, some generated by AI and some created by humans.
You probably know where this is going.
The humans preferred the poetry ChatGPT made.
We can protest that this wasn't "true" creativity all we want, but at the end of the day, it's not the actual poetry that we really object to, it's the authorship.
In other words we believe ChatGPT can't be creative so we deem everything it generated uncreated.
If we can't, in advance, define a sentence ChatGPT could write that would change our minds, then it's simply an article of faith.
Maybe it's a faith we should keep.
i think what ppl react to in those chatgpt poetry/art is still projection. the point of art is that it's not just that you're resonating with an object or an idea, but that you're resonating with the spirit of the person who made it. their intent, however you interpret it. with chat gpt there is no intent. even with art that's made of existing objects or readymade, choices were still being made by the person assembling it
I think you can still have a legitimate experience with something even if it turns out not to be intentional!
At any rate, if a machine is ever truly creative how will you tell? Unless we just intend to say forever that human brains have magic electricity and chips are powered by un-magic electricity.
If you aren't going to judge the art in and of itself all that seems left is chauvinism.
i honestly do agree with your first sentence! i'm not denying the reaction the human is experiencing with what genAI spits out or other non-art experiences (like awe at a mountain for example)because that's still coming from what the human brings/projects on to the Thing the generative AI model made. i contest that, that human rxn constitutes as LLMs and genAI being Creative.
chatGPT can't create new modes of doing something, only recombine existing forms — so it can't come up with the next cubism, post-modernism, or any other movement — it's just approximating the ones that have already happened. that means there's a mathematical limit to the amount of combinations of a thing it can come up with, which is definitionally uninnovative and not unique.
your example of making a program that generates random sentences could be art because you're a human in the loop, building that program for a reason. the art isn't in the sentences that it makes (although they can be fun or interesting!), it's about understanding your motivation as the artist in creating the program to begin with
I have been surprised over and over for a decade now about what gen AI has been able to do. I'm now very skeptical of blanket claims about what it definitely can't do. How would we know? I've asked deep research to generate a new artistic movement. We'll see what it outputs. Perhaps I should attempt to create one too and you can decide which one was the AI and which was me?
Hopefully I still count as creative!
If the bar is that it has to be a movement that sweeps the world, well, that'd take decades to figure out. One of my favorites, art brut, is fifty years old and still not completely accepted as art!
In that case most humans wouldn't count as creative. After all, only a few were capable of creating new movements!
But I am being unfair. This is what I mean by "article of faith". You have concluded that AI cannot generate new movements, not because you've tried to create new movements with AI, but because it is important to assume this is the case.
The second bit, that the humans imbue it with creativity could be used to argue that credit for an artists achievements really go to their parents. After all, they created the source of that art.
This is what I mean by chauvinism. Regardless of the images, poetry or literature, you have decided already that it's only creative if a human made it. You need to know the author, the art won't stand for itself.
The problem with that definition of creativity is that rather than saying "creativity is something unique to humans" we're instead saying creativity is defined as coming from humans.
Maybe that's fine. No serious person thinks that the camera is to credit for beautiful photographs rather than the photographer, after all.
I'm just cautioning a little more uncertainty here. Whenever AI comes up I see very confident predictions from people about something they didn't know existed only a few years ago.
Maybe this is a little harsh, but aren't these people embarrassed? I know I'm being reductive because there is a lot of nuanced mental illness at play here but.....people should be embarrassed if they are depending on AI bots because they can't form personal connections. Bring back being embarrassed.
I always tell people that Gen AI especially for research is no better than the predictive text on your phone. They can “read” but essentially it’s all a guessing game w them to they’re like right 85% but that’s not good enough (imo)
The story of the 14 year old boy is so, so sad to me. I can’t even search “Virgin Suicides” on Pinterest without a pop up asking if I’m okay and I need help.
Great essay.
Like, AI is not only making us more isolated from community, it's making us strangers to ourselves. This is just step 1 in a Wall-E oriented future. ChatGPT will be our demise.
But, at the same time, given the ever evolving niche and technical requirements that our increasing global population requires for operational sustainment, LLMs and AI are an assett.
Like the nuke, like language, like sex, even like a knife, AI is a double edged sabre.
I loved this essay. I think what makes ChatGPT so scary is that is negates ones ability to research. The internet is already such a tool, but it still requires us so sort through information and bridge the gaps. ChatGPT lets people forego this process without properly doing it itself. As you said, it only knows what it has been told. What is someone or something whose only conclusion can be the limited (and possibly wrong) thoughts of others rearranged?
Great read! I think it’s also hard w social media from the outside it seems everyone has it together (ik ik don’t believe everything on insta but I’m at work they’re at the beach I’m sorry I’m jealous lol) Like you said in here instead of building on community and real life communication to learn about ourselves we go to AI. AI like all things in the future is just about convenience. We want everything to satisfy our needs immediately we need to know ourselves and feel safe immediately and unfortunately AI does that.
I read this yesterday. I just found an article by The Economist named "Why economists should like booze" that made me curious, and while reading it I thought about this piece and how you have talked about the loneliness epidemic, because they correlate that loneliness with the decision of abstention that many young people are increasingly taking. It basically says that we all should be drunk at all times in order to keep our society going (? so my first thought was that it's nonsense but then I'd like to know if you've encountered any evidence about that correlation or what are your thoughts :)
Not to be both meta and earnest on main… but finding you on TikTok and now here has made me feel less lonely and insane. Thanks for writing this and examining the world the way you do!