ChatGPT Saves the World
Oh my, what, me worry? What do any of us have to worry about? The world is on the brink of destruction, we may be entering WW 3 at any moment, the economy is collapsing with Evil Orange Man tariffs, the Evil KGB Man in Russia (aka Soviet Union) is about to invade Europe because he and Orange Man are ensconced in a supernatural bro-love relationship.
Zelenskyy is the new hero of the world for taking on the Orange Man in debate, with his eye-rolls and bitch-shaming body language. We are doomed!
No! Call in ChatGPT to set it all straight for us! He/She/It knows the answers! She/It/He can answer any question we put to it! Just like God used to do for us, ChatGPT can now do! All knowing, all wisdom, all perfection! Problem solved!!
Although I am certain all this has faded into the blurry and diaphanous past by now, at the time, it was a common sight on social media to see people singing the praises of ChatGPT and its take on the Zelenskyy/Trump/Vance debacle, which is now ancient history. Excitable comments like, “They ran the whole thing through ChatGPT, and it unequivocally said Trump was an incorrigible bully and Zelenskyy was a consummate hero!!” It was as if someone had conjured up Jesus himself to hear his take on the debate. How lovely.
First of all, I seriously doubt if the entire interview was input into the great AI Oracle. And even if it was, it would have only been a transcription, devoid of any visual cues to include in the analysis—the body language between all parties would be quite important in achieving any sort of reliable results. The tone of voice would have an impact as well in determining some pretty key elements in the demeanour of the participants. And who in hell trusts computer AI to make assessments of human behaviour and character? I sure as hell would not. What a complete piece of crap idea.
But it is so typical, isn’t it? Considering these people who share the idea that Trump is an evil bully, what better way to verify their rather loony perception of Trump’s behaviour than with a piece of crap AI contraption that isn’t even given the proper or complete information to make an assessment.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I do believe that ChatGPT is brilliant (I have now discovered Grok 3, which I am even more impressed with), but I would never fall back on some system that could so easily be manipulated to give biased answers (just program it to hate Trump and there ‘ya go). Also, how could anyone with a sound mind rely on a computer to tell them who is a bully and who isn’t? Anyone who would, seems a bit out of touch with their own humanity.
This all just solidifies my belief that the whole AI chatbot thing is going to be the first bit of technology successful in destroying what it means to be a human. Most people probably think it is the physical robots that will end the world, the Terminator types with their physical strength and ability to walk through walls, jump over buildings, and kill anything they come into contact with. That will be the end. Maybe there is some truth in that, but superior physicality can be fought with bigger weapons, stronger defences, and maybe even wittier minds.
A computer that competes with the way we put words together wields the mightiest weapon by far—the pen is greater than the sword, as they say. It is our loss of mind, loss of wits, and loss of communication through the written word that will kill us quicker than a germ. The chatbots that can research faster than light, come up with detailed facts quicker than they can type them out and actually have a conversation with you are going to make the human mind obsolete over time—and probably a very short time at that.
I think this will be quicker than losing our soul, which is also being chipped away at with art and music AI and in a plethora of other technological advances. The loss of human wit and human intellectual ability through chatbots I think will be, to our awareness, a slow death—and probably a fairly painful one. It will go fast, though, in the long run.
Soon all manner of writing will be handed over to the bots. Not just nonfiction (that will be the first to go, of course) but fiction as well. All styles will be artificial. (I am sure one of the next things we will see are novels written “in the style of.”) Classic artists in the public domain will be stripped of all decency first—Dickens, Shakespeare, Hemmingway—then the contemporary litterateurs such as Danielle Steele, Stephen King, John Grisham, and the like. Nothing will come out that can be described as “human style”—lost forever will be human opinion, human thought, and human literary creation. And the funny thing about this is no one will notice, and certainly no one will give a gnat’s butt hair of concern over it. Boom. Done.
If you were a nihilist (as I am quickly becoming), it would all be rather humourous watching it all go down. People complain that God is dead, that if there were a God He would never let this happen. The greatest gift God gave his human creation was free will, and the mind to determine what best course of action free will offered us. I don’t think God is a nihilist, so I don’t think He is laughing, but He is probably shaking his head, wondering why His creation is so stupid.
I had a dream once where rats took over the world. There were so many that there was nothing left but rats. In fact, the planet itself didn’t exist because the rats ate all of it in its entirety. There was just this enormous round ball of pure rats writhing around as they drifted through the cosmos.
Obviously, they started eating each other, and finally, over a bit of time, there was nothing left but one rat. And it died of loneliness. Poor rat. God didn’t save it. God just figured He would start over again. “Maybe I won’t give humans free will this time,” He thought. That oughta do it.
