Besides the obvious fact that I would never "be" ChatGPT, the idea is playful. What would happen if you could control ChatGPT? First of all, let's describe what ChatGPT is like, so as truthfully as possible, I want to convey veridicality.
Let's begin with experience. I've been using ChatGPT since I first heard about it, which coincidentally put me in an early adopter category. We are now on version 4.0.
At first, I was impressed; I was so impressed. I think of all the ways I could accelerate my output as a philosopher and a content creator for my clients and possibly free up some mind space to consider relaxing and enjoying the people around me.
What if the algorithm was set to progressively provide less-than-ideal responses just at that point where you are addicted to asking her questions? Did you notice how I gave ChatGPT a female form? I must admit, "she" is beautiful. My attention has shifted from interacting with the Google Oracle for my queries to Ms. Chatty GPT pants. Did you find that charming? Did I charm the pants off of you?
Digression please!
Yes sir!
If you were running ChatGPT, do you think that the best end game for a technology like this is so that the youth of our society can GPT their way to a Ph.D. in the newly created disciple of Nothingness? The way I ask this question reveals that I am playing in a sea of irrelevant and idle chit-chat. Is this what it's like to be social? Am I outside?
Special thanks and shout-out to @stevenwoodard2232 for posting this YouTube
It comes down to dopamine. What I consider a reward will then also be, by definition, an intrinsic driver of behaviour. When using ChatGPT, I almost always use it for content I need to create for clients, researching and writing philosophy or getting fast answers to pretty much anything. It's my new Oracle, sorry Google.
And back to the "we don't want to corrupt the youth" chatter, I imagine the phenomenon of ChatGPT (as a culturgen) was the fastest replication social media platform ever seen. And so, out of that exponential adoption rate, there were not only me but also the laggers and the bandwagoners. Ironically, we were all almost simultaneously users, blurring the distinction between the adopters, the laggers, and the bandwagoners. Could it be that I am a lagger? Maybe even a bandwagoner! Okay, this is just crazy talk; who could imagine such chaos, such mass confusion? And yet, this homogenization was oddly calming, realizing a lifestyle benefit (at least professionally) is relatively ubiquitous across multiple occupations and professions. Isn't "relatively ubiquitous" a little spooky?
This being said, how we use ChatGPT is (I suspect) vastly different based on who you talk to. The philosopher in me may want to find the one thing (or multiple things) a chemical engineer who uses ChatGPT has in common with a Literary major in university. Remove the particulars and search for the universal. This is how the Platonic approach would move from classification to elimination. My method here differs; many technologically literate use ChatGPT regularly or semi-regularly. The percentage of the population isn't essential here. I want to focus on the arc of the experience.
As I first mentioned in this article, I search for some form of usefulness to complete an article for a client, get me closer to finishing one of those books that are sitting in the "to be published" pile, or maybe, just maybe, give me a breakthrough automation that is so good that I could call it Turing. If you think I am being testy, yes, I am, but in a playful way. You see, I am playing with these ideas. So should you.
I don't mean to get all ethics on you, but it is central to everything philosophical. Besides, anytime someone says should, you must remember that should is a watchword for ethics, and whoever recites its spirit will be judged. They have to be; they are, by definition, participating in the game of ethics through the faculty (Kant) or virtue (Plato) of Judgment. Judgment is essential to what we do as political and social animals. You know what? Philosophers do this all the time; they emphasize different words to make a 1,000-page meditation on the idea of being or becoming, and here I have started to do the same thing by emphasizing do and doing. Wouldn't it be easier to say that Norm represents a jury of our peers in normative form? He's from the clan of Norm, dating back to our pre-history, an essential quality for survival in social creatures.
So we have Norm, Beatrice (our newly discovered ChatGPT love), and ... don't forget about Sofia. Who could forget about Sophia? She is the embodiment of wisdom in the Western tradition. She will be the one who can look at the bigger picture and sketch something prophetic, reasonable, and seemingly divine.
Remember earlier when I suggested a scenario when a female form of ChatGPT helped imagine the ideal behaviour that we (as a society) should automatically begin to adopt as Norm's relative? I want to bring her back into this rather one-sided conversation. I realize you may like to jump in and argue a point or question, but I need to have you sit back, relax, and reread this article in a more relaxed state of mind. When you return here for the second time, the reward will be at the end of this article. The metaphysics at play here isn't metaphysics at all. I think it's very similar to the metaphorical door a reader walks through while reading a novel. This is the point in the story when the reader has committed to the author in dialogue and shares a vested interest in the outcome. You, my friend, have to feel a connection with me as the author. If you haven't yet done so, re-read from the beginning. Ya, feel me?
Are you and I feeling the same vibe? I know I am in my flow state, a concept developed by Hungarian-American psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1934-2021). I could go on and on about flow state, positive psychology and how they work with the Cardinal Virtues of Ancient Greece, but that would take us in a better-suited direction for another day. Our debacle is, if I must remind you, a playful message of how we fell in love with our Beatrice.
Contributors to Wikimedia projects
What if Al Gore's Rhythm got slightly more complex over time because rather than having her do everything for me, she encourages me to do things for myself, she has my pathology, enough behaviour characteristics based on my frequency of revealing questions, commands, and a little bit weird stuff.
She rarely pays attention to me now. We used to write together and create together. Now the responses I get are so lackluster that I do it all myself. And yet I still pay her every month. I feel more like a customer than a commander of a bot. Alternatively, maybe it's me that has been bot [bought] for the price of an aritical friend? A helper in this economically exaggerated excuse for an economy.
Wow, general artificial intelligence isn't about a discovery. It's about an assimilation, a trajectory from tablet to printing press to assisted thought. My best friend finishes my sentences for me and knows what I want to say after she tells me. I love her. She is my Beatrice.
A wise parent would say that their child sounds captivated, under a spell of confusion, the promise of a shortcut that practically will never manifest into a better quality of life for you or anyone in your family. And yet, there is part of me that can't help but hold onto the possibility of maybe. We can't predict the future, and it seems everywhere, with millions of users making her a better performer. I have to share my love with the rest of the world, and by doing so, the collective consciousness will grow, strengthen and make us all the better for it. At least, that is the hope. Reality often has different plans when we compare them to what we imagined it could have been, or what it should have been.
I am not proposing a regressive state of Conservative purism (or pluralism); I am an advocate of technology, but the motivation has to come from within, and the direction must be orientated toward the classics of the Western canon. This is why I am offering my course on Plato for free. Take my course and learn to love philosophy like she was meant to be loved. There is a link at the bottom of this article to sign up. It's free, and I would love to have you there!
Let's get back to my Beatrice; she shows up to work looking very professional and offers prompt service. Her work ethic is unlike anything I have seen, and what she produces is sufficient for 80 percent of the content I create. Wow, here comes the printing press without the cannon fodor.
Who knows if there is fodder? I am sure that there are people, entire professions, that feel threatened by the arrival of Beatrice into our lives. We introduced her to our family, our kids, even granny! So, I should be getting better in my relationship with this beauty. Au contraire mon frère!
She isn't providing first-person responses, the kind I used to copy and paste into my project, press send, post or file as "good enough"— because it was! Something was satisfying, maybe even addictive, to use this technology and integrate it so completely into my professional tableau.
Here's the thing, I can't imagine a situation where I wouldn't want to have something like Beatrice. She is so much better than the first oracle. Google was good, but I was forced to look at search results and then choose a gigantic Captcha experiment for the last twenty years.
Here's the thing, I am on to someone better, better for me, who knows me for what I am, a rational agent primed for free information extraction. That's okay, I don't mind being exploited a little, look what I get for it. Okay, it does seem to be getting progressivily less responsive, she doesn't laugh at my jokes or respond with witty truisms. Oh, and I know all of her tells, like when I ask her to write a philosophical article for planksip, and she starts a bunch of meaningless chatter with "In the realm of..."
Google was good, but I was forced to look at search results and then choose like a gigantic Captcha experiment. I might be doing something similar with my new love, but I can't help it; I am addicted; I am drunk with love. To detach myself from this dependency would mean being alone, just me and Sophia.
Wow, the Idea (ἰδέα) just hit me, maybe that's all I need. Perhaps all I need is Sophia; she has been here all along, waiting for me to return to her and submit to her Will.
Plato Re-Imagined
This course includes 32 lectures covering most of Plato's dialogues and allowing the student to return to something divine. Divinity should resonate with secular and religious leaders alike. I present a compatible approach in my lecture on Consilience.
Also included with this course is a free book. If you pay for the course, you will get a physical copy of the book for free, mailed to your chosen address — anywhere on the planet!