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Artificial What?

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(Header photo by Word Press’ Artificial Intelligence, version 3 !)

My summer Padawan is always telling me “I asked Chat GPT about…”

I just can’t get over that. He’s asking a computer for relationship advice. I guess it’s faster than asking Ann Landers… And then he tells me he likes it because it’s giving him the answers he wants to hear. Well of course it is! I am just so astounded that he’s taking relationship advice from this thing…and because he’s asking it ‘why doesn’t she love me’ questions, of course it gives him reasons she’ll come back. I told him to ask it ‘Why won’t this girl leave me alone’ and see what it says? I get the typical teenage “Yeah, but!” answers from him. 

Man, am I glad I’m not 19 anymore! Mostly.  

So I asked Chat GPT to write a blog and I gave it some pretty general guidelines; farming, theater, and teenage love. 

It did pretty good! I had to laugh, it wasn’t at all like I write, because why would it be, but it was a very nice short story of “…slipping into a classroom still smelling faintly of hay and diesel that makes you feel both out of place and perfectly rooted at the same time.” 

Then boy meets girl, they go to a show, and, “ We slipped into seats near the front, shoulders brushing, her laughter lighting up the dim room like a sparkler. I couldn’t tell you much about the plot of the play—something about family, love, mistakes—but I remember how she leaned in during the quiet moments and how the stage lights reflected in her eyes.” 

Oh my gosh. I’m gonna start asking this for sweet nothings to whisper in Kelly’s ears! 

So I refined the request a few more times. I asked for more humor and less metaphors. I hate metaphors like a hole in my head. 

It gave me this: 

Being nineteen and in a relationship during winter in Southeast Minnesota is a test that should earn college credit. The farm turns into a frozen obstacle course, the wind rearranges your face, and every chore takes twice as long because everything metal turns into a hand-freezing punishment device. Romance does not thrive in these conditions.

My girlfriend says we need to “communicate more,” which is hard to do when the chickens start yelling at dawn and demand full attention. She thinks the chickens respond better to her voice, which is true only because she gives them treats and I hand them feed like a government-issued ration. She insists this is evidence of my lack of warmth. I insist it is evidence that chickens are extortionists.

The grain farm does not help our relationship. Every time we plan a date, something breaks. This week it was the old tractor. The tractor has the personality of a stubborn old man who refuses to stand up without complaining first. I spent three hours crawling under it, dropping tools, and discovering new ways to swear. She sat nearby on a bale of straw, scrolling through her phone, occasionally offering advice that made sense only if the tractor responded to positive energy.

The real villain of December is Christmas music. The month starts, and suddenly every speaker in existence blasts nonstop jingles. She says it “puts her in the spirit.” It puts me in a state of irritation that could power the whole farm. The worst part is that she sings along. She sings loudly. She sings off-key. She claims my dislike of holiday music is a sign of emotional instability. I claim her playlist is a threat to public safety. This topic has caused more arguments than the chickens, the tractor, and the weather combined.

But we’re nineteen, so we keep trying. Some evenings we sit in the shop, surrounded by tools, feathers drifting around, both of us exhausted. She talks about her day. I talk about which piece of machinery betrayed me. Sometimes she laughs at my tractor stories. Sometimes I almost tolerate her humming.

Our relationship may not be smooth, but we are still standing, even in January temperatures, even with demanding chickens, even with that cursed playlist. And honestly, surviving December together might be proof we’re tougher than we thought.

Not bad. But I want to know why there are feathers in the shop?? Are the chickens living in the shop or did I drag that many feathers in there on my clothing?? Sometimes walking around the college and I’ll find a dry chunk of “dirt” in the hallway with a chicken feather sticking out of it. Yeah, that’s probably mine. But how did the computer know that?

THINK ABOUT AUTOMATION IN YOUR LIFE. WHAT WOULD YOU HAVE NEVER EXPECTED? 

ASK AI (OR ANN LANDERS), TO WRITE SOMETHING. 

32 thoughts on “Artificial What?”

  1. i was a big jetsons fan and im so happy that everything today is straight from there. im still waiting for the flying cars. i think my relationships may be improved with a great psycholigist like chat. with the 200,00 online therapists charging for their best ann landers imitation like they are real i think chat may be a better option. i wondering how many girlfriends you go through with chat vs on your own.

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  2. I engage with disembodied entities as seldom as possible. Any intelligence you get from me will be authentically mine.

    I remember, near Christmas sometime in the late ‘70s, walking through the basement of the old downtown Powers department store where toys and games were displayed. There was a talking chessboard and somehow I found that disconcerting. I still don’t like machines that talk at me.

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    1. Also, writing for me is a pleasure. I enjoy choosing words that express my thoughts and I would hope that what I write conveys that. Why would I abdicate that pleasure to a soulless entity?

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  3. Virtual Reality has always bewildered me. How can anyone think that going to a fake tropical island and pretending you’re there is at all comparable to actually being there? Or a fake anything? We have five senses, yet VR only allows us to use two of them (do they have sound in those goggles?). I’d rather spend the time and money to get to a real place and experience it fully in every way. Also, planning a trip to anywhere is half the fun.

    I’ll pass on asking AI for something. I tried it enough for some writing tasks to know that I don’t like it at all for artistic endeavors. Research and mundane tasks? Okay. It can save some time and effort. But I’ll never publish an AI novel. Promise.

    Chris in Owatonna

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  4. AI is not something I aspire to using …. mostly I don’t trust it. About a month ago I saw something on Facebook that some celebrity was dead (I don’t even remember who at this point). So I went to a search engine to look it up and I actually got several different answers: yes dead, no dead, no but in coma, yes but no cause of death…. worthless.

    But mostly I just don’t see how we’re going to sustain AI, power-wise; I don’t want to get sucked into a technology that may morph significantly, if it survives.

    The AI story above didn’t sound like any 19-year I’ve ever known, even though it’s quite nice.

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  5. At the college, a few years ago, all the teachers and faculty were in a tizzy over the students use of AI and how could they prevent them using it to write stories?
    There are clues that something was written by AI. And teachers often use something called ‘Turnitin.com’. It will check for plagiarism, and AI.
    But lately, I’ve heard of several teachers taking their sabbaticals to figure out how to incorporate AI into the classroom. Because that Genie isn’t going back into the bottle, may as well figure it out.

    But the bigger issue to me is the electrical usage, the water usage of those plants, and all that infrastructure. We’re overloading the electrical grid.

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    1. If I were a teacher assigning a writing project to a class, I think I would instruct my students to write their original piece and then have Chat GPT write a similar piece based on their instructions and prompts. The comparison would be illuminating and it seems unlikely that students would try to present two AI productions.

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  6. I have never used ChatGPT and I don’t intend to, and I much prefer Carolyn Hax’s advice to Ann Landers’.

    Not only does Carolyn Hax get, or select, much better questions, but her answers are much more thoughtful and nuanced. As an added bonus, she has a dedicated following who often feel compelled to chime in with their opinions as well. Of course, you only have access to that if you have a subscription to the Washington Post, but considering how much I’ve learned over the years from reading her excellent column, it’s been way cheaper than seeing a therapist.

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  8. Agree that the writing is kind of impressive, but doesn’t sound like a 19-year-old. I’ve read that AI can get a lot of facts, etc. correct, but there are often errors in the conclusions reached, in the complex reasoning and taking everything into account. It scares the sh__ out of me to think how much is being turned over to this entity.

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  9. Having had laser robotic surgery today, which left much blood on my clothing and a blurry right eye, I am ambivalent at the moment. We will see tomorrow. The eye is not related to the robot and the blood may be expected.
    Clyde

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  11. I was dragged kicking and screaming into computer use in the early ‘90s. I only learned how to use WordPerfect because I was taking classes as an adult, and the young students at St. Olaf all had word processors. They turned in their research papers way before I did, but I laboriously typed mine out on a manual typewriter. I got an A, but I really did have to consider learning to use a word processor.

    So, obviously, no AI use here. I avoid it, even when it seems to be begging me to try it. I’ve got all the technology I’ve ever needed.

    Besides the general “dumbing down” of a society that is too lazy to think for itself, AI’s water and power demands are unsustainable. When making decisions, I tend to weigh the needs of our planet. We really only have this one. How soon do we want to burn it up? AI will hurry us along on that course. How about future generations? I’m sure the genie really is out of the box, but when are we going to think of sustainability instead of our immediate desires?

    I like the indigenous tradition of considering the impact on the next seven generations. If we indulge in this intriguing technology now, how will it impact future generations? What looks like “progress” to us might be harmful in the future.

    Like I said before, I’d like to be a ray of sunshine, but I’m not.

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  12. Better Late Than Never, Baboons,

    With each technological development, people are at first enthralled, then when the device is accepted, they start to take it for granted or lose interest. I remember hearing big debates about the effects of TV on my generation. I knew people who refused to have a TV. Those arguments were very similar to the AI arguments. Each time something new emerges humans adapt to it and move on.

    I also always remember that the Amish decided to not allow technological devices in daily life. However, those policies seem uneven and inconsistent, because they do use some technology and I cannot find out who decides that? God, I suppose. Aside from all that, I just find myself pretty disinterested in AI. My son says it is just faster computing and more data. After a very busy I would rather just sit here and knit, than figure out AI.

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    1. BiR, I’d never used it before. So I googled “Chat GPT” and it gave me the website. Chatgpt.com of course.

      And a blank search box. I typed in some ideas, Enter, and there was the story. Then I refined the ideas. It was surprisingly easy.

      I know it can take the tedium out of creating spreadsheets or templates, I’ve heard people talk about that.
      Our music secretary told it to create a poster for the holiday concerts with these dates and these colors and it gave her a really nice design.

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  14. I have to ask: is today’s blog an attempt to mess with the minds of the elderly baboons? I have checked and rechecked, and I’m fairly certain today is not Saturday, so this is not Ben’s usual weekend farm report. I suppose there’s no rule that Ben be restricted to weekend blogs or farming updates, but, jeez Louise, this feels like a curve ball to me.

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      1. perfect…..

        i think ai is a tool for consideration. my time constraints just kill me and i can see using it for perform tedium and free me for chosen paths

        i have wished i could do this amd that and ill reprt back. i plan to learn

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  15. I am rather impressed that Chat GPT came up with “hand-freezing punishment device” and “chickens are extortionists”. I wouldn’t be surprised if it churned out a few movie scripts.

    I appreciate have certain things written for me, such as a resume or an Internet security plan, when I am required to come up with such a thing. Then I become editor, rather than writer and editor in one. I’d find it hard to just accept what the AI wrote, though.

    I wouldn’t mind having a car that knows the snow emergency rules and moves itself when necessary,

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