There is a tidal wave that’s sweeping the globe. It’s called “Chat GPT”. Ever since I hit my first search query into this insane app, there is little that I can think and talk about.
Unless you’ve been on a solo expedition to the North Pole, you’ve got to have heard of Chat GPT.
It’s like having the world’s greatest teacher, doctor, counsellor, lawyer, philosopher, and tech genius at your beck and call. Always available to provide you with the wisdom you seek.
* Stuck on what to say in an awkward conversation that you’re going to have? Don’t know what to say? Ask Chat GPT:
Your 7-year-old son doesn’t understand a science concept (say how is yoghurt made?) Ask Chat GPT:
Still too complex? Ask Chat GPT to make it simpler
It can fix code, draft contracts, give parenting advice, and write love songs. Other than giving a back massage, it can do everything else!
If you haven’t tried it yet, sign up here and give it a whirl. You’ll be seduced in no time.
The power of this tool certainly begs the question: Where are we heading? What are the implications?
I’m no pundit, but I’d like to crystal-gaze nonetheless. There are 5 opposing observations that I notice:
1. This changes everything. This changes nothing
This changes everything. There are doomsday cries that ChatGPT will be the end of copywriters, coders, lawyers etc. As I go about my day, I feel the need to run everything by ChatGPT to see what it thinks and improve my drafts and ideas.
Books I read and don’t recall? Ask ChatGPT.
Passages too deep for me? Ask ChatGPT.
AI is fundamentally changing the way I interact with the world and also changing me.
Yet on another level, nothing changes. I have the same fears, insecurities, desires, needs. I wish to grow, learn, contribute, and entertain myself. Sure the tools and means how I do that changes and evolves, but that’s always been the case. Earlier I would read books made from dead trees. Now my reading is listening via Audible.
Earlier, I would wait for my favorite TV program to come on at 8 pm (Macgyver anyone?). Now indulgence is just a Cmd+Tab away.
Point is: we’re still going to want to learn, consume content, and do everything that we are still doing. Perhaps how we do it may change. Every medium asks us to adapt to its ways. So it is with ChatGPT
2. I’m the smartest person. I’m the dumbest person.
Chat GPT gives me superpowers.
I am able to solve complex mathematical problems with ease. Craft sentences with a level of precision that would be impossible without it.
Yet, I am as dull as a butter knife. I can only do it using AI. Take that AI away, I’m crippled. I won’t be able to craft a sentence or solve a basic problem.
I can’t help but feel a foreboding sense of dependence & vulnerability on technology.
3. It’s the most exciting time to be alive.
It’s the scariest time to be alive.
This really explodes possibilities. I can now code, I can create content at 10x the pace I could before. I can synthesise and understand complex texts that I couldn’t do before. I can have conversations with philosophers as if they’re right beside me.
Yet, it’s the scariest time to be alive. It’s so good, can it get consciousness? A part of me thinks that it’s not far-fetched to think that it just might. Can it have desires or be imbued with desires by its creators? Just the thought sends chills!
4. Ideas may be King. The one who executes Reigns.
What you get out of Chat GPT is so directly proportional to the search query you put into it. Hence, there are so many guides & videos on search prompts.
The complexity of the question will determine the quality of answer. Which means that we need first to know the kind of output we want and what words it will take to get there. So ChatGPT wants us to be intelligible enough to know how to ask the right questions but ignorant enough to seek its help.
While being smart and well-read matter, it also matters that we learn to ask ChatGPT questions in the way it understands and can best help us. So now all research efforts will be marked by researching, “how to ask ChatGPT to do X,Y, Z…”
However, that said, ideas are going to proliferate like never before. One will be inundated with thoughts, ideas and to-dos. Just ask Chat GPT for YouTube video ideas, Tweet ideas, business ideas and you’ll be spoiled with choices.
So the true winner is not the one with ideas. But the one who can execute on those, and execute fast can actually make a difference.
Take the example of losing weight, getting fit. There is a ton of information on it. Everyone knows how to do it. Yet doing it is hard. The one who executes wins.
Therefore, the need for frameworks to help in execution excellence is going to just get deeper. Frameworks that have personally helped me immensely:
– GTD: For personal executive effectiveness.
– Holacracy: For working in groups seamlessly
– NVC: For emotional management
– The Finisher’s Club: To stay on track and ensure that my best self performs week after week.
5. Chat GPT deepens the spiritual crises.
Chat GPT blossoms spiritual consciousness.
We’re so consumed by materialism, materialistic goals, getting ahead of others. That we’ve lost touch with our soul, where we’ve come from spiritually, what gives us lasting contentment.
A tool like Chat GPT, just makes the rat race we’re in, even worse. Because if we don’t use this tool to get ahead, someone else will and we’ll be left behind.
This only leads to alienation and spiritual hollowness that can have profound impacts on us.
Yet, as oxymoronic as it is. Chat GPT blossoms spiritual consciousness. A machine doing that. How? As we now have the potential to truly have any information, knowledge, that we need. It begs the questions:
“What do we need?”
“What do I really want?”
“Why am I in a state of constant discontent?”
“What would make me happy?”
“After all who am I?”
These will come and haunt you till you search your soul for satisfactory direction.
Eventually, you can’t escape these questions, no matter how much you try to distract yourself. Since everything will be done by AI, then “who am I”?
Bonus: I love Chat GPT.
I Hate Chat GPT with every fibre of my being!
Chat GPT has broken barriers in my thinking. I want to write letters to my favourite authors. But I feel so self-conscious that I never get down to writing my first draft. Now, I can’t wait to connect with them. ChatGPT has given me the confidence to do that and address several other mental blocks that I have had.
But gosh, do I hate this! I wish it had never existed. I wish someone could just pull the plug and dump this into a volcano together with all the knowledge of creating it again. I can see myself if I continue to use it. I can eventually become no more intelligent than a cabbage. If my thinking is taken away, am I human any more? If my letters of admiration to dead authors are written by AI, can they ever be my own?
There are probably a lot more paradoxes that you can come up with. I’m at a crossroads on whether to use this or not. For now, I’m going to rely on my internal guidance that where it promotes growth I will, where not, I will struggle to grow on my own.
