I’ve seen a few comments now like “but without chatGPT I don’t know what to make for dinner” or “but character.ai is vital to my mental health” and those are not arguments for genAI. They’re signs that you need to sort yourself out.
An adult human being should be able to decide what to have for dinner. Yes, some days it’s rough and you don’t wanna, but the point is, you can do it. And if you can’t, you can learn. Hell, make post-it notes with dinner options, stick them on a dart board, and on days when you really can’t decide, throw a dart.
You’d really rather put these decisions in the hands of an AI? As in, a company? And you don’t see the issues with that? You don’t see how easy that makes it for companies to manipulate you, influence your choices and your spending and your entire life?
And if your mental health relies on talking to a robot about your issues “because it listens and cares” - no, it doesn’t. It can’t listen. It can’t care. It’s lying to you. It’s parroting phrases said by other people in similar contexts. It’s an elaborate predictive text machine.
And again, you’re just giving all of this information about yourself to a company. A company that wants to make money and likely has no compunctions about selling your data. You’re trusting a software run by a company. And you don’t think that’ll be used to manipulate you? I’ve got a bridge to sell you.
What you need is actual human connection with other humans. And if you don’t know how to connect with other humans then it’s time to learn. Start by caring about other people. Take a genuine interest in them. Listen to them. That’s how you connect. Not by treating others as entities to dump all your issues on or monologue at about your boring life. Sure, character.ai will put up with that and humour you, but there’s literally nothing genuine about it and you will never ever learn to make actual friends.
Relying on genAI for any of this means you’ll never learn, in fact you’ll get worse, and if genAI ever goes away or you find yourself without access to a computer/phone/internet or the people running chatGPT or character.ai take down the website or put it behind a paywall, you’ll be completely adrift. You are handing control of your life over to a piece of software run by a business. Instead of developing skills and independence you’re just handing control over to someone else, someone who by the way does not care about you, someone who’s only here to make money.
“But some people need–” to stop infantilising themselves, to start taking responsibility and control of their own life, to realise that they have agency and power, to learn that agency and control are not the same as blame and guilt and that someone trying to help them reclaim control is not trying to blame them for their situation.
People, yes even people with your exact diagnosis or background or medical history, were living and making decisions and dealing with their issues and going to therapy and learning and coping for millennia prior to 2022. As in, before genAI was even an option. You can do it. Trust me.
My podcasts when I’m by myself: what’s interesting about the legal precedent set by this case is that it was the first time this particular type of psychiatric diagnosis was introduced as a defense theory
My podcasts when someone else walks into the room: THE DISMEMBERED BODY WAS FOUND WITH SEVENTEEN STAB WOUNDS TO THE GENITALS
How are my competitors doing, the ones you all insisted students use instead of me? That’s right, they were supposed to go to the American Journal of Social Sciences, Powered by OpenAI. Or museums, like the Smithsonian’s Charlie Kirk Shrine to American Greatness. I guess they can still count on credible journalism, once they get past the paywall for Palantir Presents: The Washington Post, so they read the Pulitzer-Bezos Prize–winning work of coeditors-in-chief Bari Weiss and Grok.
