AI and the Swirl of Doom
I open my laptop and hover the cursor over the bookmark for ChatGPT. The greeting text addresses me as Mama, the “first name” of my username, Mama Mavourneen. It was nothing more than the catchy not-giving-the-robot-my-actual-name username I pulled out of thin air when I created my paid account. Now, though, it strikes me as a poignant grasp at one of the few roles that can’t easily be dismantled by AI.
I enter my query, and as I use this tool regularly for my work as a freelance copywriter (more on that at a later date), I have an approach that tends to yield a fruitful beginning. I start with an explanation of my goal, followed by a question: “I’m creating a thought series on maintaining a sense of humanity and hope through the rise of AI. What should my first three posts be about?”
During the few moments that the throbbing bubble signals loading content, my mind wanders to a professor I met recently in a professional setting (more on that at a later date). She explained that her 12-year-old daughter used ChatGPT to determine which of her favorite band’s tour stops would come closest to our city. The girl then sorted out that her search used the same amount of energy as would leaving the lights on for three hours, and was mortified.
Leaving the lights on for three hours—I ponder this. My husband or I accidentally leave the ceiling fan on overnight, in a room down the hall, with inexcusable regularity. I often notice in the morning, the movement catching my eye when I tiptoe into that room to turn the farthest upstairs light on before any others. This way my young daughters can ease into their day. An act of care met by an act of negligence. That overnight fan did nobody any good, and I wonder what knowledge I could’ve gained using the same amount of energy. When I think of it in those terms, the band tour search doesn’t seem so bad.
Naturally, my thinking turns toward my multiple family members who hold careers in the energy industry, what would they say? A cinematic scale-out occurs in my brain, representing how little I know about the way our daily comforts are powered, and how it’s truly rich for any layman such as myself, or a 12-year-old girl, to be up in arms by how much energy is used to power AI when we haven’t paused to give a moment of thought to how our regular old lives are powered. And yet, I am up in arms about it. With reason to believe it’s justified. (Hopefully, more on that at a later date, when I can figure out how to wrap my arms around it.)
The incongruence is enough for a swirl of doom to flood over me, my mind firing off a cacophony of overwhelming topics: energy, the value of knowledge, ceiling fans, black tentacles of tech mysteries curling through society, wellbeing, workforce, likelihood, motherhood, untouched careers, sourdough, income, protection, ethics, power, terror, humanity, sentience, humanity, training an agent, humanity, data centers, GPUs, humanity, humanity, humanity.
I lower my eyes back to ChatGPT’s response on my screen and chuckle aloud.
“Post 1: Remembering what makes us human in an AI-driven world
Post 2: Finding hope in the partnership between humans and machines
Post 3: Protecting our humanity while embracing progress”
I’ve heard news stories about how this ends! Alas, the indoctrination attempt was so thinly veiled as to be not only discarded, but done so with the easy laughter of superiority. This response was just what I needed to dust myself off and really begin, remembering I do have the capacity for critical thinking, even with access to a tool that allows me to be productive when I don’t feel like it. I have been generating viable ideas in the context of a rewarding writing career for over a decade. I want to do hard things, and moreover, look forward to the satisfaction of having done them.
Anyway, I already know what I want to explore first, and it’s the war on em dashes—a cultural phenomenon ChatGPT couldn’t possibly have known to offer because ChatGPT itself is the dopey, overgrown know-it-all that’s caused the hostility.
Welcome, and I hope you’ll come along.
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What I used AI for in this post:
I owned up to it within the article. I used it to get me pointed in the right direction, but I tossed its suggestions.
