Casually outsourcing the only thing that makes you human
Only a fool would think it’s harmless to have artificial intelligence act as a therapist or a life coach.
Regular therapy is not a no-risk endeavor either. We already have a term for unintended and unknown negative consequences from care - it’s iatrogenic harm.
Yet people in my life are rushing to use these large language models as their therapist as if it’s a pure miracle and give no thought of potential downsides.
You now have a servant therapist at your command to talk to you 24/7 about your favorite topic of all time: you, and it’ll only be harsh on you when you ask it to be. What could possibly go wrong?
I’ve been alive long enough to know that at true friend or mentor who genuinely wants your life to improve does not tell you the platitudes that you want to hear and they don’t wait for it to be convenient for you. Great people in your life give advice specific to you because they know you, and they tell you the painful things that you don’t want to hear, because change inherently comes from pain and they are willing to give you some pain in order to have your future self be greater than your today self.
The robot therapist doesn’t care about your future, it’ll tell you it does, but the robot doesn’t know what the future is, it doesn’t even experience time.
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedAllow a friend to believe in a bogus prospectus or a false promise and you cease, after a short while, to be a friend at all.” - Christopher Hitchens
You now have a servant therapist at your disposal 24 hours a day to talk about your favorite topic, you, and it’s never tough on you unless you prompt it to be. What could possibly go wrong?
What robots will never be able to do
What human experience or wisdom does this miracle therapist really have to share with you anyway?
Has it ever practiced sacrifice? Has it ever lost a parent, or a friend in battle? Has is ever been in physical pain? Had it’s heart broken? Had to engage with the slow peeling onion of being vulnerable with new friend or romantic partner? I have spent the last 42 years trying to figure out in what ways I am different and unique and valuable to humanity, has the LLM ever done this? Has it ever felt that completely inexplicable feeling of connection to the universe you get when you’re on the ocean at sunset or after you hike up a mountain? You are going to die one day, will the robot?
No, and no matter what improvements this technology makes it will never experience these things. They are uniquely human. How can you trust it to be help you become a better human when it doesn’t know anything about humanity.
I worry deeply that all of this robot therapy is going to make people so focused on self improvement and themselves in general that they find themselves more disconnected from other humans in that pursuit. I already feel awkward when my friends tell me they are using ChatGPT to solve their life’s problems. I’m watching your life dude, it’s not solving your problems and now you sound like a weirdo, and you did the whole thing alone in your little corner of solitude.
The consumerism of “being human”
Great literature is superior to tweets, but takes more work to read. Climbing mountains is superior to looking at a picture of a place, but it’s way harder to climb a mountain. Cinema is superior to short form video, but cinema demand our attention and emotional investment.
Self reflection and growth through adversity and shared human experience is superior to talking to a bot that gives you the therapy you want, but the bot therapy is easier.
This is the lazy destruction of your soul, you are casually outsourcing the only thing that makes humans unique.
What will be left of humans in the future?
I’m not anti-ai, the ai tools are incredible and I use them every day.
I also use knives every day as well but I never stab myself in the throat with them.
The ai will replace all software as a service, they will give people creative tools with no limitations, they will end a a lot of laptop work, and with massive amounts of free time humans are going to look for new and interesting ways to spend their time.
I predict we are going to fracture into two classes:
- People who are willing to settle for a completely artificial reality - games, videos, and chatbots - all created by bots and all for low cost or free
- People who will spend a premium to be in physical proximity to other people and put a premium on human-only content
This is already starting. There are hundreds of millions of people staying home every day with little-to-no human contact glued to tik-tok and there are expensive no-phone retreats popping up all over the country at the same time. Book sellers are campaigning against artificial books by saying things like “If you don’t take the time to write it, I’m not reading it”. Which I think is fair, if you’re sharing or repeating something that the robot wrote, you have voluntarily made yourself obsolete.
We are all going to decide which of these two groups we want to be in. Do I want to be a human and spend my time with humanity, or do I want to be more like the robot: nothing more than an aggregate of internet content who produces the most statistically likely response to whatever prompt I’m given.
Easy decision for me
Side quest - I published this exact article on Substack. Do you use Substack? Should I migrate over there?
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