The Seven Stages of ChatGPT
Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the A.I. Bot
Stage 1: Disbelief and Shock
Holy crap, social media is blowing up with ChatGPT posts. Let’s see … AI-powered chatbot that can write — like everything — blogs, news articles, summaries of reports, homework, short stories, emails, TV show scripts — all of it. It can be a personal tutor — teaching math, science, history; practically anything. It can write computer code in seconds! It can respond to any Latin alphabet language. You just chat with it and it listens to your feedback and improves its response — how is that possible? It’s a better search tool than google. It can be funny, heartfelt, sad, persuasive, empathetic. My TikTok “For You” page is in tatters — it’s impossible to keep up with all that ChatGPT can do. This can’t be happening!
Stage 2: Denial
Wait, hold on, hold on, hold on. What really is all the fuss about? LOL — can’t believe this ridiculous hype is happening yet again. Let me guess, another Sentient A.I. … or perhaps yet another racist chatbot like the one from Microsoft or Meta? This is going to blow over in a week.
Stage 3: Anger
How can they do this? This is incredibly irresponsible. And who the hell are “they” — I have no clue. They are forcing me to learn about A.I. by letting anyone use ChatGPT. So, all these people who have SO MUCH EXTRA TIME on their hands can figure this out while I have … um … real stuff to do! They should be sued. They should be prosecuted. It is monstrous!
Stage 4: Bargaining
God, just let ChatGPT be a hoax. Please, let this just be a little joke by Elon. I promise to stay on Twitter and even pay for the little blue checkbox if he just comes clean and it all goes away.
Stage 5: Depression
OMG, this will cost millions of jobs — it will cost me my job! This is the beginning of the end of everything we know and understand life to be. The A.I. revolution has started and meatbag humans are on the way out. Is this Kurzweil’s Singularity come sooner than expected? The best we can hope for is to be the pets of artificial intelligence. I hope they are nice to us.
Stage 6: The Upward Turn
We are all in the same boat, I guess. Perhaps, just perhaps, we can use A.I. to do what we already do — but better and faster?
Stage 7: Acceptance and Hope
This is happening. This is real. What is ChatGPT? It describes itself this way:
I am capable of generating human-like responses to a wide range of questions. This allows me to provide interesting and informative answers on a variety of topics, making me a potentially valuable source of information … I am not capable of taking anyone’s job, as I do not possess the ability to perform tasks or engage in activities in the same way that a human can.
Humans may use ChatGPT in ways that will eliminate jobs by streamlining what they do — but hasn’t that happened throughout human history?
ChatGPT is just a tool.
I can work with that. It might even be fun.
Author Notes: The outline for this blog was written using a piece of graphic stuck in a slender tube of wood by pressing it onto a thin sheet of pulp and fibrous materials. Then I wrote the full piece on a modern silicon-powered tool with a keyboard and mouse. Images were created by DALL.E 2. I tried to get ChatGPT to help write it, but even after five attempts and numerous suggestions for rewrites I gave up. It just didn’t get it.
