Oh boy. How handy AI is nowadays, right? I’m not complaining it exists, but “everything in moderation“, or so they say. However, Dr. Daniel Amen would disagree with this last concept — and he’s not wrong about his argument. He says this is just one of the many lies we tell ourselves to soothe our self-consciousness.
When we pour another glass of wine… “it’s alright in moderation”. When we say yes to yet another unplanned event, because “why not?”. When we eat chocolate every night: “It’s just a few bites”. When we watch Netflix again and again: “But it’s just this one episode”…
There is this idea of ‘moderation’ we don’t quite grasp and that we empowered to control our lives. It feels alright, but deep down, we know it’s unreasonable. We just have this oneliner to make it go away.
Anyway. The new drug is AI. Who would have thought?
Well…
Now, we’re all guilty of enjoying it a little bit. Some of us even a little bit too much. Having a tool and using it effectively for our benefit is one thing, but having a tool reprogram our brains is quite another. Here are the signs you’re on the wrong side of the spectrum and the reasons you might want to turn it around.
Disclaimer: I’m well aware that there is an abundant amount of AI tools from which we can choose. Though, this article focuses on search engines and the power of LLMs, such as ChatGPT — which is one of the most widely used ones. Therefore, I’ll mostly use it as our example. Also, for my fellow techy ones, this article isn’t here to discuss the existence of actual artificial intelligence but a mere discussion of the previously mentioned tools. So, please overlook the unjustifiably used term “AI” for this purpose. Thanks a lot! 🙂
Let’s see the signs.
1. You use ChatGPT more often than Google.
I can also appreciate a well-formed, seemingly punctual answer, instead of the somewhat interconnected, clickbaity list of article titles that leads to a hunt for the answer I am looking for. Google has its flaws for sure, but it is called a search engine for a reason. It’s a tool for you to look for what you need. ChatGPT, on the other hand, is a large language model (LLM) that was designed to formulate just the right sentences for you. It will basically tell you what you want to read. This, of course, isn’t always a bad thing, but it can make us unpredictably biased to an engine which’s main purpose isn’t to grant the data you are looking for but to grant the phrasing you are looking for. Huge difference there.
I’m not saying it’s always wrong to provide the right answer, but we, humans, are more prone to fall for the nicer formulated answer, regardless of the content, which brings me to my next point.
2. You believe everything it tells you.
Further elaborating on my previous point: let’s not mistake the lovely phrasing of ChatGPT for factual knowledge. It’s a little like a well-trained salesperson. Knows well enough how to toss and turn the right words in front of you for you to think it is telling you facts, where, actually, it’s just a powerful algorithm and mad learning capacity of the code which doesn’t equal to saying the utmost truth.
A salesperson can also believe what they are selling to you if they’re deeply committed enough to the task at hand: to keep you buying their product. A salesperson will also tell you the truth – and, perhaps, hold other truths hidden. In some cases, even straight-up lies to your face. I rather think of LLMs the same way.
Now, you might argue that any search engine has the power to lie because it’s just listing the pages including the buzzwords which are not on them but on the millions of people writing that content. Yes, absolutely, we should not believe Google either. But Google was never meant for you to take its results at face value. It’s a search engine where you do the searching. What I’m seeing around me, though, is that ChatGPT has been accepted as a phenomenal response machine where, in fact, it is just trained to look for words and phrases – just like Google. Words that people had written. And, unfortunately, we haven’t even learned to dependably separate the search engines’ facts from their false information and now we have a more convincing machine at hand to know even less. So, be aware and always fact-check where facts matter!
3. The thought “I ask ChatGPT” appears before “I’ll figure this out”.
Then, there are certain tasks for which we do not need search engines, for they don’t require further information. We have all the data. Typically, these are concepts we have to plan with the arsenal at hand.
May it be a witty email response, a weekly meal plan or narrowing down dilemmas for our career path, ChatGPT can come in useful here, I don’t doubt that. Yet, we have a tendency to overuse it for such exercises and therefore take the essence of the results away from them. All emails turn out exactly the same, a meal plan that’s not particularly right for our family’s budget and all those in-between, diplomatic answers for our decision-making processes that don’t really get us closer to the solution. At the end of the day, you should be the one doing the thinking.
Here we give more credit to the engine again, for its beautiful phrasing. It touches something we couldn’t reach within our minds. (Salesperson skills level 99.) But is the response quite what we were looking for or just one of many that are more than acceptably phrased?
A fun exercise for you: give it tasks or questions but before reading the answer, do the job yourself. Compare and notice your worth. You might be surprised how skilled you yourself are!
4. AI is basically doing your job for you.
Well, what use is there for technological advancement if not to take the load off humans? It’s not wrong to use AI helpers for your job. But there is a certain boundary that would be wise to set up if you’re thinking about your job for the long run.
If you work in a field where your brain is your most required asset, an LLM can help you out, of course. However, I would strongly advise keeping these services at the lower end, meaning to ask for ChatGPTs answers only for repetitive, non-humane tasks. Why? To keep yourself sharp, of course! Relying too much on these tools will push our own value down, because, after a while, we might forget how to lift the heavy-weights. If you’d prefer to stay at your strongest, find that smooth balance between giving your best and tossing the boring side of your work to that AI assistant. Ultimately, you’ll benefit from it!
5. You recognize its patterns or ways of phrasing.
Guilty as charged. I’m a writer with two sides to my writings: one that is strictly mine and is my freedom— for my thoughts, poetry, creative outlet and eye-openers —, and one that is for informational or educational purposes.
For the latter, I’m happy to use AI assistance. And I’m OK with people using AI for writing as a helping “hand”: for editing, formulating ideas or proofing. I am strictly against using only AI and presenting it as one’s own creation.
Anyway. By writing this much and getting ChatGPT or Grok involved in some of it, I can often recognize AI-written text. When this happens, I also have the sudden urge to rewrite everything I’ve ever written, not to mistake them for an AI tool’s work. However, I know better than to spend my nights and days doing that and relax into the thought that my authentic work will stay authentic anyway. My work that I used AI for will still be authentic as ideas and they serve their own purpose.
Nevertheless, this absolutely means I’m overusing ChatGPT. (Writing is the least of it, by the way.) And if you understand my ramblings, you are guilty of this one as well.
Having said all those points, I truly hope you’re convinced that you should stay in the game by tossing your favourite AI tools to the side. Use them. But use them in a way they don’t destroy your own value. Be aware of how they are shaping your brain and say stop to the areas where they’re taking over.
People have been so afraid of that armageddon-like future where robots take over and kill humanity… I’m by no means a fan of that horrifying idea because that’s just not what is going to take place. ChatGPT thinking instead of us? Well… more like it. And I won’t be one to hop on that train.
It is crucial to realize that there is nothing wrong with using these tools, by the way. There is nothing wrong with you overusing them either. They were designed this way. And I’m an advocate for purposeful, constructive technological innovations. And I’m also an advocate for the beauty of humanity and our nature. Let’s collectively get passionate about that beautiful balance in our world.
P.S.: For the sake of our goal here, I did not use AI at all for this article. Not for editing, not for writing, not for the idea nor for phrasing or proofing. Also, I’m not against it at all. I use it too, as a tool helping to form my ideas in my ways. I just don’t like this homogenous way of creation that we’re headed towards with its contribution, so I’d like to open our eyes to that. I absolutely think we can do better than AI. For now, at least. Let’s use our human capacities and keep AI in its place: doing the non-humane side of things.