ChatGPT and Personality's Quest for Meaning

Since the advent of ChatGPT I have observed many a social media post where people ask it consequential life questions in sorts of Delphic oracle fashion. A pilgrimage to the oracle of our new AI god.

Why would one go for insight and wisdom to ChatGPT which is essentially a stochastic parrot? The latter means that ChatGPT, being a large language model (LLM), generates convincing language to the untrained user but behind the scenes it just pieces together words based on how frequently they collocate in natural language? Contrary to ChatGPT's certitude, philosophers have spent two millennia to understand the meaning of existence, knowledge, and morality and still have not produced authoritative answers. Well, because the point of philosophy is the act of fascination with the unknown and philosophizing about it thus creating meaning in the process, but let’s talk about this in another blog, shall we?

So, what will ChatGPT tell you when you go to it and prostrate yourself in existential agony? A rehashing of Plato’s thoughts on the immortality of the soul, or maybe some Rationalistic arguments from Descartes on what can be trusted to be real? Whatever it tells us, let us not forget the good dose of hallucination on ChatGPT’s part which will undoubtedly make its answer sound very creative and mystical. The sobering truth is that the ChatGPT’s Pythia will tell you something based on whatever OpenAI fed into the training data for its current LLM model (3.5 or 4.0 currently). It will be something, a true “something”, but hardly the life-changing wisdom you are seeking.

Anthropomorphizing ChatGPT is the new sin of the untrained mind. It is yet another symbol of the acceleration of the post-postmodern objectivization and de-individualization of our personality. We are letting go of our duty-and-freedom to forge our own existence, the freedom to develop our Self in unique, unpredictable, and tremendously beautiful ways. We are instead crossing dangerous boulevards looking into our smartphones, swiping away photos in the shower, thumbing up and down posts as we eat lunch, and the sad jokes apart, what we are essentially doing is validating someone’s else life content and stories but forgetting to train an authentic personal Self.

Think of one of your life-changing stories and tell me can it be shared in a post? How can the process of becoming a better you, an evolved Self be captured in words and images assuming you are not an artist? What is worse is that mindlessly shared content can now automatically generate new mindless content. Because all the newly generated Internet content this year will be poured into the training data of the next LLM or whatever comes in this extremely fast changing generative AI subfield. Then you will get an updated version of the bullshit oracle Pythia. All that wisdom from everyone else’s content and nothing you can call YOURS.

Tomorrow you, my dear reader might have a difficult day. A normally functioning personality will curb its derailers, leverage on its strengths, practice some mindfulness, and find meaning in a beloved activity or person. But a sign of dysfunctional personality is when you become dependent on someone else’s meaning and affirmation to fight your own battles. So, you go to create a story in Instagram expressing your profound existential agony to your followers and you expect their commiseration in the form of likes? Would their advice help you recover from your difficult day? Sure, it will help you to pass the day in constant instant gratification from their messages and well-wishes. Problem solved, day passed, a sleeping pill to turn off your overstimulated brain perhaps?

But what about tomorrow being a hard day again? Would you again write away your problems and therefore waste away the opportunity to challenge your personality, what works in it, what doesn’t, what you want to do more and what you want to do less so that the next day the chance for having a psychologically hard day be lower? Consuming other people’s objectified life experiences and seeking meaning in content suggested to you by AI, that would not build your personality’s self-efficacy. Eventually harder life experiences will hit you and you will have to act and neither Instagram or ChatGPT will make YOUR successful life choices.

Many years ago, a professor of mine told us that “Dear colleagues, the malaise of the future will be depression, a depression for meaning, and people will need psychologists more than doctors nowadays.” Technology might take care of your chores and universal basic income might get you pizza and drinks every day, and generative AI might offer you unlimited and fully customized orgy for your eyes and brain. But then my dear colleagues, then, you will be no one. You will be part of the matrix so to say and Neo won’t deliver red pills to your apartment. You would not even know how to think about meaning because you will lack the discursive thought required to think deeply about anything really.

But let us not end on such a grim note, shall we? In the spirit of great American cinematography, there must be a happy ending. Maybe for some the happy ending is that we are not yet there, we have still not fully objectified our personality and we have not lost our-Self-es. But undoubtedly with generative AI the temptation will grow to jump into illusory experiences and create false meaning to underpin what could potentially be hollow Self-es.

Has anything changed since antiquity with that alleged threat to lose ourselves? No, it has not. Where is the Greek stoic philosopher Epictetus from the first century AD to tell you that the Roman emperor can own everything, can even own Epictetus as a slave, can torture and kill Epictetus, but cannot take away Epictetus’ freedom to judge what is right or wrong? The realization that one’s Self is free even when one is not physically or socially free is the tremendous achievement and indomitable power of a fully developed personality. The ability to have that realization has not changed and we admire the stories of countless Holocaust survivors who found meaning to hold through even when Evil was their daily routine.

AI might become even more powerful, and it will! But the struggles of finding meaning and becoming an authentic Self will remain. Just the form of the struggle will be different. Epictetus had the emperor and the future generation might have the AI algorithmic god. Every historic time had its struggles and battles to fight. But emperors and their empires fall, false idols fall, everything of the flesh and matter passes. What lasts is that “after moment” when you realize that you have been through a lot and you have improved your Self, you have mastered and tamed your Self, you have been gracious and wise. Oh, how sweet is that moment, the thought of it passes through eternity …