AI IS ADDICTIVE

From the title of this entry, I assume you're thinking I'm gonna talk about AI slop or that guy at your office who asks ChatGPT everything (even if his wife is cheating on him).

That's basically your average AI drug addict: someone whose whole life revolves around this new "commodity." People are losing the ability to search or think by themselves, bla bla bla. Same thing told for the 1000th time.

What I wanna address in this entry is the High Functioning AI Addict, because I think I'm one of them. It's very probable I'm gonna double-check this with ChatGPT.

I mean, English is not my first language and I'm writing this in English as I think, so it makes total sense that I use it, right?

Yeah. That's denying and rationalizing, for sure.

I wrote an entire master's thesis without AI, so how can't I do the same thing with a piece of text that's not even 1/6 of that?

So what is the thing I'm addicted to? What do I think AI is doing for me?

First, I think AI is gonna make this blog entry "better."

Under which standards? No idea.

Something about it also tells me that, productivity-wise, it will speed up my rewriting process. Which is probably true. But then comes the second part.

I like it when it gives me information or concepts I hadn't thought were relevant to the piece. I love it when it adds phrases I hadn't thought about. It feels so good. I want—I need—that yummy yummy heavy algorithmed anthropic sauce.

Cause it suits me so well.

I can see that for other people AI makes their work shitty, but for me? Mine just gets "better."

Sure.

Third and last: conversation.

Remember the first time you saw your friend programming or DJing and you wanted to try it too?

So you both talked about programming or DJing. You asked them questions. You showed them what you understood, they corrected you, you disagreed, they explained it again.

Back and forth, back and forth.

That's the main thing about AI for me.

It makes you feel like you're having an actual conversation with someone who is extremely friendly, receptive and patient.

You can bring it some half-formed thought and it will take it seriously. You can ask the same thing again. You can obsess over some tiny detail nobody else gives a shit about. It doesn't get tired. It doesn't get bored. It doesn't have somewhere else to be.

You think, it responds.

You doubt, it reassures you.

You write, it evaluates.

You get curious, it keeps going.

Maybe that's the actual commodity.

Not intelligence.

Responsiveness.

And it's probably gonna get better at it.

Or worse.

You already know I'm sending this to ChatGPT to see what it "thinks" about it.