Can Anyone Tell Me What ChatGPT Is? I’m Still a Little Fuzzy

Finally, the biggest fad since the invention of the typewriter is winding down.

ChatGPT!

It vaguely reminds me of Pokemon Go and Fidget Spinners.

But with a twist of doom about it. A sort of we’re all going to die soon if we don’t catch’em all or don’t spin the fidget in a certain fidgety way.

But John! ChatGPT’s so much more than that!

CHATGPT IS GONNA TAKE OUR JOBS!

CHATGPT IS OUR NEW GOD!

AI WILL SOON KILL US ALL WITH LOUSY WRITING AND RANDOMLY GENERATED IMAGES

Here are my thoughts:

*flaming hair intensifies

I KNOW! You know? I know. I got it! I got the concept!

I open Medium, and the first three articles are about the damned thing. I pop on LinkedIn, and what do you know, it’s carousel after carousel of AI-inducing funfair trauma.

I open the newspaper, and?bam!?“As a copywriter, I’m certain I’ll soon be unemployed.” Screw you, random Guardian Writer.

Well, as a new content creator, I probably should start looking for a?real?job—a nice, cosy one with lots of beeps and boops and would-you-like-a-bags.

I’m very tempted to block the next writer who decides this is a good topic to write about. And since I’m writing about it, I’ll block myself.

There. I’ve done it. I blocked myself from having to read my poor content. Happy?

But hear me out. Is there really any writer among us using this? Is any writer worth their salt allowing a computer to do their job?

Have artists become obsolete since Midjourey went online?

Last I check, no. Not really.

Who’s it for?

Let’s think about who could really use this.

Former President Donald J. Trump would have generally benefited from this. I’m entirely positive that ChatGPT has a larger vocabulary. But then, we wouldn’t have Trump.

Imagine that—a world without Trump. The pandemic wouldn’t have been the same.

Also, show me one example of a ChatGPT piece with anything similar to my voice. I’ve seen a lot of ChatGPT posts and examples, and they’re all noticeably not written by a human.

For example, I saw this the other day here on LinkedIn:

Oatly themselves replied to this:

Oh, Oatly, you see, that’s the true brilliance behind ChatGPT.

My Hooves?is something young cows say these days. The same way we say?peeps?or?my homies. ChatGPT has analyzed the cow’s speech intensely and knows what’s up.

How can any writer alive today compete with that?

I don’t speak cow. Imagine what will happen once ChatGPT decodes cats’ meows. How much money will OpenAI extort from Whiskas?

So why all the hype?

Well, maybe we wanted something new to talk about. You know, distract ourselves from pandemics, inflation, and war and replace all that dread with A.I. supremacy.

Happy thoughts... Happy thoughts...

Then, Jordan Peterson himself got everyone riled up after announcing that this A.I. had written an insanely difficult essay about politics and religion and had done so flawlessly.

And that it would, by year’s end, dominate the market, if not the world. (Yes, I know that’s not exactly what he said. But I’m not off by much.)

Hit D for Doubt.

I’m highly sceptical that ChatGPT could do such a thing when it can’t even do a simple Oatly ad.

Here’s an Oatly ad I made for you:

There, it took me about 25 minutes because I couldn’t find free pear vectors. I ended up spending a credit on VectorStock.

Was it worth it?

I had a good laugh. So, yes.

Here’s another iteration:

Is it better than ChatGPT’s Hooves?

Honestly, I don't even know; it's also not a haiku.

But at least now it’s readable.

Where does this leave us?

That’s the thing. It leaves us exactly where we were but with a lot more A.I.-related articles.

And scams.

Oh boy, the scams.

Just recently, I was reading about a lovely chap(may his mother forgive him) who asked ChatGPT to write a novella, slabbed a Midjourney cover on it, and made over 1000 bucks on Gumroad.

Not bad, hey. But once you start reading the thing, you might start feeling everything’s a bit, um, off.

Well, too bad. No returns.

The worst part was noticing the abundance of greed that festered in the comments.

I’m glad I was already sitting on the toilet for that one.

Will ChatGPT dominate the market?

Frankly, I don’t know. No one does.

I don’t think so. But I have been emphatically sure of many things before that turned out to be as certain as Russia taking Kyiv in three days.

The bottom line is that I don’t care about ChatGPT.

I’m not going to use it because I do enjoy writing. If I didn’t, I’d be on my way to beeps and boops and will-you-need-a-bags.

No offence to shop clerks.

However, A.I. writing isn’t the same. Tone, nuance, and creativity are hard to emulate. And so far, I haven’t seen any hard evidence that ChatGPT is that much better than its predecessors.

But, please, give me a heads-up when it starts taking over republics.

Until then, chill, my hooves.

Want to learn about writing or read more absurd stories like this one? Subscribe to my free newsletter,?Mute Cat Manolo, for weekly tidbits on writing.