RE: To keep an eye on me
You are viewing a single comment's thread:
Ah yes, the ability to truly know the mind of another...
Did you and your friends ever ask that question: "If you could have any super-power, what would it be?" Mine wasn't flying, or super-strength, or invisibility. It was the ability to completely and utterly inhabit another person's thoughts, and then be able to come back to my own with a full understanding of what it was to be that person. Not just reading minds, but inhabiting them.
Of course, coming back to your own mind after a trip like that--is it even possible?
I've been playing with AI a little lately. Guilty, guilty. As a writer it feels...both empowering and emasculating. And yeah, the ability to upload an extended passage and get immediate feedback on the whole damn thing is uncanny. It's like having a partner who actually listens to you for hours and really wants to talk about it.
I've been running language models on my own computer, because having an extended back-and-forth with a tech-bro's computer feels icky. But I also quite enjoyed uploading stories to Google's Notebook LM and having these two AIs carry on a half hour discussion about my work. I mean, the analysis is spot on, with some moments of I hadn't considered that, but you know you're right...
It's also quite flattering. I wonder what's going to happen to us, when we have virtual companions telling us how great we are all the time?
From what I understand, Google's AI is the most flattering and agreeable, so might not be what you want if using it to edit/critique a piece, but that's something that worries me too, generally. I don't use it (either Grok or ChatGPT) for writing, but I do for yoga as well as various personal things. The first time, it left me feeling pretty damn pleased with myself, but then it frightened me, how easily it got under my skin by telling me what I wanted to hear. When people do this, we refer to them as manipulators and gaslighters, but with AI, I fear we're not really aware just how dangerous this could be (yet, hopefully).
I try not to let it get to me too much. As for knowing what it is to be somebody else, that could be really damn useful, especially with how divided our world is right now. The ability to see at once where someone is coming from and how they feel and why they reason in a way that contradicts yours? Priceless (though I imagine it'd also be a matter of time only before you started losing it).