Remember the people

For the past few months I’ve gotten quite into the groove of using AI for work and life. The more I use it, the more I start seeing the rough edges that, if one isn’t careful, can cut unexpectedly into real life.

One of those edges I’ve found is its “lack of humanity”. I know, I know: that sounds cliche and trite and absolutely the opposite of whatever “insightful” is.

But when you’re completely absorbed in ChatGPT’s world, it’s something you don’t really realise until, well, until you do. Something feels off, causing an unease you can’t quite understand.


As an aside: I do realise as well that this could well be due to the probabilistic nature of LLMs (like ChatGPT or Gemini) in general and any personalisation I may have done, like “be more direct” (which I find helps limit the sycophancy).


This “lack of humanity” I found stemmed from the way my instance of ChatGPT provided its “advice”.

Always methodical and structured, it often misses nuance. What appears to work well on paper doesn’t always translate to real life. It cannot know, for instance, that when you were sharing the 50-slide “blueprint for success” that covered all critical angles that was “optimised for engagement”, people phasing out and talking about where to have lunch.

Always biased for action, it often neglects inaction. We humans tend to be pretty good at that — procrastinators of the world, unite! (But perhaps because doing nothing is hardly ever written down as a virtue, I suspect AI, which trains on written work, almost always leans on doing something instead of nothing.

Sometimes we just need to wait things out, let things unfold organically. But I don’t expect an inorganic AI to know that.


Yes, AI’s great. Use it, master it, leverage it. But always remember the people.

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