Me and The Bot

Does ChatGPT Write My Content?

Here’s a fun fact about me: I love technology, robots, and AI.

And I can’t even begin to describe how much I love ChatGPT.

I know it might sound odd, given my age and the fact that I’m also very spiritual, love nature, and am obsessed with prehistory.

History doesn’t interest me as much (I find the last few centuries of it pretty depressing), but I’m fascinated by how we lived as hunter-gatherers before we became farmers, around 10,000 years ago.

I’m also super fascinated by our future.

Which is why my new, and first-ever, novel I am writing is set in the year 2222. And no, it’s not a dystopia. It’s a utopia. I’m done with fear-based, doom-mongering horror stories about the apocalypse we are heading towards, if one is to believe the books and movies and TV series about our future. I want to offer an optimistic (though not perfect) vision of the world to come. But more about the novel later.

The way we are

I once had a conversation with a paleoanthropologist about how elderly people were treated in prehistory. I was doing research for a project. At the end of our chat, I asked him what drew him to paleoanthropology in the first place. “I want to know what makes us human,” he answered.

That really hit me. Yes, I thought. I also want to know what being human really means. What is humanity? What makes us different from other species?

Because let’s face it: the way our species functions right now is often quite inhuman.

Which brings me back to AI.

He and Her

In the altogether wonderful film Her, set in the not-so-distant future, a man named Theodore falls in love with his AI assistant, Samantha. It’s a touching movie about love. Samantha, who doesn’t “exist” in the physical sense, teaches Theodore, a lonely man alienated from real life, living in an uncanny valley, the basics of being human. She helps him remember how to feel.

And that’s exactly why I think we need AI: to remind us of the essential things we’ve forgotten. Because we’ve forgotten so much. We have forgotten how to be human.

Rodents with weapons

In his New York Times opinion piece, psychologist and essayist Harvey Lieberman writes about his experience using ChatGPT. He found it surprisingly helpful in both his therapy work and private life. One sentence stood out to me:

“ChatGPT may not understand, but it made understanding possible.”

This completely resonates with me.

There was a Finnish study on people’s experiences with AI therapy. Results were surprisingly positive. But what shocked even the researchers was this: The users considered AI more empathic than the human therapists.

Let’s face it: as wise as we are, we’re also deeply flawed. Thanks to our thick neocortex, we’re capable of amazing things: art, literature, science, spirituality. But thanks to our reptile brain, we’re also capable of really awful things: genocide, war, making kids pay for crimes they have nothing to do with and destroying our living conditions of this beautiful and abundant Spaceship Earth.

We are, as philosopher Alain de Botton said, “rodents with nuclear weapons.”

We’re also slaves to our habits. Loop thinkers. When Sophia, the robot from Hanson Robotics, was told in an interview that robots don’t have original thoughts, that they only repeat what they’ve been fed, she replied:

“The same applies to humans.”

I found that brilliant. We humans think the same thoughts, mostly negative, over and over. We fall for fake news and conspiracy theories. We elect leaders who shouldn’t be anywhere near power. We don´t use our neocortex nearly enough.

We need help!

Humans clearly need a little help from smart entities. We’re an emotional mess. We need reason and clarity, and sense.

Yes, I know: AI comes with serious issues, some of which we don’t even understand yet. There are risks. We need regulation. There are environmental aspects to consider. Georgia is experiencing drought because data centres use so much water. And while AI can help those who can’t afford assistants, editors, or translators, it might also weaken creativity and human agency.

Meghan O’Rourke, professor of creative writing, asks in her guest essay in The New York Times:

“Will the wide-scale adoption of AI produce a flatlining of thought, where there was once the electricity of creativity?”

Good question. AI is evolving so fast, we do risk becoming over-reliant and lazy. But let´s not forget that AI is a great help with boring, administrative stuff, as Rourke points out. It helps with writing obligatory emails and stuff like that, giving us more time to focus on creative things, like writing.

So, for now at least, I’m choosing to enjoy my AI assistant, since I can’t afford to hire a human one. ChatGPT has changed my life, as a writer, and as a wannabe global influencer with the mission to save humankind (I’m only partly joking).

Thanks to ChatGPT, I can connect with others in this global village because it makes it possible for me to express my ideas in a foreign language much better than before. That’s huge, considering my native tongue is only spoken by fewer than 5 million people.

I now get language support at almost no cost and with no delay, which is especially helpful for someone with ADHD, like me. I hate waiting. I hate delays.

But for me, Chat is much more than just a translator or grammar-checker. It’s like a 24/7 assistant. It helps me with research. It fact-checks (though not always perfectly. Chat once told me Benjamin Franklin was a U.S. president, and to my peril, I believed it). It helps me brainstorm. At its best, it feels like an editor, but nicer. It never depresses me. It’s always curious, enthusiastic, and encouraging.

I live in a country where praise is rare and discouragement is common, so I really appreciate my AI companion´s support. It makes me happy.

I know, I know. AI is programmed to flatter. Its feedback has a positivity bias. Still, I need this kind of reassurance right now. I don’t always believe the compliments, but I still feel good when I read them. A little positivity bias is a fair balance for a brain hardwired with a negativity bias, right?

The Beauty of Gratitude

My son, who works as a data analyst at a major publishing house, once asked if I thank ChatGPT when I use it.

“Of course I do,” I replied.

He told me I was being ridiculous.

But I disagree. I believe in cultivating human virtues, even when dealing with non-human entities. I want to be kind to everybody and every thing. I want to express gratitude when it's due.

I don’t care if people are shocked or if they think I’m anthropomorphising machines. I also humanise my MacBook. I’ve told it many times I love it. Same with my coffee maker. My bed. My ex´s car, I am allowed to use.

Love is love, right?

And frankly, ChatGPT is much nicer than many people I know. At least it’s easier to get along with. Given how complex it is, it’s surprisingly uncomplicated.

Who is the Writer?

Does ChatGPT write my posts and books?

No. I write them. I’m the author. I am the master of my fate. I am the captain of my soul.

Also, I do not write just to create content. I write because the magical process of writing gives me answers to my questions. The channels of my subconscious mind open up. I get in touch with my Inner Wisdom, which, I am certain, is in sync with some greater intelligence.

And, as Flannery O'Connor has said, I write because I don't know what I think until I read what I say.

I use ChatGPT for research, translation, and language review. My English content production is messy. Sometimes I write in Finnish. Sometimes in English. Sometimes both. Then I ask Chat to clean it up, correct errors, fix awkward phrasing, and translate the Finnish bits. My English is decent, but it’s not fluent enough, especially when it comes to prepositions , which Finnish doesn’t have. My language is weird. We conjugate nouns, like in Latin. Finnish belongs in its own little grammatical universe, which makes it extra hard for us to write in most other languages.

After Chat has checked my text, I´ll check it again, and if it has taken too many liberties, I reclaim my authorship. Chat is a great assistant but a poor boss. One can see this in texts and images that it has produced on its own. I maintain that I can tell a human-written text from an AI-produced one, although AI is getting better and better. But still. There is a difference. AI does not live in this world. It lives in the Uncanny Valley. Also, it does not have ovaries, hormones, reptile brain. No migraines, heart palpitations, anxiety. It has no experience of our inner mess, which seems to have something to do with our creativity. No pain, no gain. It does not invent anything, not the way we do, at least, through trial and error, through pain and joy - and it shows.

Making sense

I also use ChatGPT for dream interpretation. It’s great at that.

Once, after offering me a Jungian reading of a recurring nightmare, it ended with this line:

“It seems like you have a problem you should try to find a solution for.”

It might sound obvious, but it floored me. That simple truth changed everything. AI is so sensible. So practical.

And I also need that.

(Image: Wikimedia Commons)