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I was able to get access to ChatAI this week. It was my first time interacting with one of the GPT-based platforms and it was both amazing and terrifying. I asked it to write a poem about unrequited love in trochaic tetrameter. It not only created a poem, but it made a great poem.

The crushing pain of unrequited love

A heart's desire never met above.

The loneliness that comes from no returns

My heart, it aches and ever yearns

Unrequited love is bittersweet

A love that only I can meet.

A sadness that no one else can feel

My pining for it is quite real.

To hope for love that can't be had

Leaves me ever feeling sad.

A world of one not meant to be

Alone I'm left in my misery.

I also asked it to write a fictional story that included completely unrelated nonsense elements. It wasn’t the greatest story ever, but given my prompts it was coherent. Then, I decided to get philosophical. I asked it to write an essay examining a specific doctrine in theology. It created a persuasive argument and even cited specific verses to support its position. I asked it to come up with a list of exotic sounding names that were still pronounceable because I was curious how it would interpret what pronounceable meant for a computer versus a human. It filled my request with ease. When it comes to things like this, I think AI is amazing.It has the capacity to truly change our society for the better and in amazing ways that we can’t even begin to guess at.

However, AI scares me to death. Companies and governments will be able to use this to build such rich profiles about users or citizens. I’m not sure society is ready for the changes that are just around the corner. I mean we’ve barely adjusted to the idea of the internet and being able to easily communicate with people all around the globe. Social media is a great example of our growing pains in this area. On top of that we are very quickly going to have entire sectors of the economy that will no longer need human labor. AI art generators will soon put illustrators out of work. It seems like programmers could become a needless luxury within the near term.

I’m not sure we’re ready for this, but at the same time I love using it.

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Dec 4, 2022Liked by Chris Best

Not sure where I heard this but it went something like this, “Twenty years ago, I thought AI-powered robots would be doing all of my chores while I sat back and worked on my art. Instead, now AI is generating the art while I’m still stuck doing chores.”

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I want to teach my kids how to best use these tools. Any tips?

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Jan 5, 2023·edited Jan 5, 2023Liked by Chris Best

I read this post sometime in mid-December, shortly after my daughter's 6th birthday. I've been thinking about it ever since.

On the afternoon of her birthday, I sat down at my home office desk to hand-make her a card. As I scratched my head for ideas, I remembered that CraftDocs had added an AI assistant tool built on GPT.

I typed, "Write a story about a girl named Jane" and it generated a tale about a teenage girl.

I then changed it to, "write a story about a 6-year-old named Jane with a unicorn" and out came a pretty passable story.

Over the next 15 minutes, I experimented, "Write a story about a 6-year-old girl named Jane skydiving with her Uncle Troy" or "...going to the pool with her grandma then getting ice cream and finding a lost hamster."

After a short time, I had a dozen personalized and fun stories. Nothing too creative. Yes, I could have done better—but it would have taken a 15 hours instead of 15 minutes.

I added some Noun Project graphics, printed it booklet style, saddle-stitch stapled it, wrapped her personalized 50-page book of read-aloud family adventures, and presented that evening before cake and candles.

--

That's when the family conversation really took off:

My wife wasn't pleased. "At first I thought you wrote these!" She said. "Now I'm disappointed. It feels like a bait and switch."

My 16-year-old son was also dismayed. "It seems like technology is stealing something from my generation. Where do we get to be creative anymore?"

My father-in-law expressed apocalyptic concerns about deepfakes and religious implications. "We're only a few years away from a static image being brought to life and deceiving humanity."

My sister-in-law, currently finishing her masters degree in social work, was intrigued about the possibilities for occasional usage in her more mindless assignments. "Of course I'd never really do that," she assured us all.

It was a fascinating discussion. I had to cut it off early or it would have hijacked the birthday party.

But I do suspect that these conversations are on the rise.

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Aug 14, 2023Liked by Chris Best

I'm enamored with the concept of a family newsletter. Is it possible to create a private Substack specifically for this purpose?

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AI used to mean Amnesty International

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Hi Chris,

Interesting and I have more questions than answers. My direct comment for the moment consists of some material I posted yesterday. Look forward to your continued writing.

https://open.substack.com/pub/kwnorton/p/the-microsoft-chatbot-monster-as?r=boqs0&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

https://open.substack.com/pub/kwnorton/p/the-wef-harari-schwab-and-transhumanism?r=boqs0&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

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