How ChatGPT helped me (counterintuitively!)

I’m laughing at the irony of one of the guides who’s assisting me this morning: ChatGPT.

You're probably unaware I’m writing a short series of poeticals and posts about AI – artificial intelligence(s) and definitely ringing a few warning bells! But a bumblebee, B. Lorraine Smith , ChatGPT and my mum Noelle (and by extension my father Eric Leigh ) have come to my aid.

These four ‘creatures’ – led by Lorraine’s inspiring article ‘How To be Ordinary and Do Extraordinary Things’ – meet my unusually sorry state. I'm as flat as my pea milk flat white and the café I usually write from feels overly familiar. To achieve the ordinary, let alone the extraordinary which is being called for - dogged by the threat of chronic fatigue at my heels - sounds impossible.

But as I type this up three hours later, the extraordinary is upon me! Here are the ten legs, four wings and brains mechanical and animal that ‘The Mystery’( as Penelope Mavor and I would call it) gave me by way of assistance.

Welcoming the Buzz.

First comes from remembering the buzz of a massive bumblebee landing on my phone recently. It rested on the camera’s eye, ensuring nothing could be seen but her! Thinking her message – she’s one of nature’s best examples of achieving impossible feats (defeating gravity by being able to fly) – was for a friend, it was delivered. But her extraordinary example returns, wanting to be welcomed in by me, too. Which I do. Now. And take the first of Lorraine’s four steps for doing extraordinary things – I invite ‘extraordinary’ in.

The extraordinary challenge is a six week period of physical, emotional, and mental activity: helping a farmer friend with lambing (that's a first) and dog-and-parent-sitting, all while being a loving presence. And also while structuring my next book, getting off two remaining proposals to agents, plus writing and publishing a series of poeticals and posts about AI. It seems extraordinarily difficult to me and I can sense the dog of chronic fatigue biting already. But the buzz of the bee tells me ‘extraordinary’ can do this. I muse that such a list may even seem ‘ordinary’ to some of you here...

Simply in the articulating of this with you and a couple sitting opposite me in the café in a bumblebee-ish way, I hear enthusiasm beginning to rise and words as to how exactly extraordinary will happen. Yes, it's time to invite this kind of extraordinary in.

I also see how health fears would try and scare me off with the thought of being ‘too busy’ and keeping my life small. The dog is brought to heel. Extraordinary has arrived! ?Then there’s a slip of the pen…

Embracing an ‘Elder Moment’

A ‘senior moment’ which I’ll re-frame as an ‘elder moment’ as they often point to some hidden wisdom, made me write ‘Artificial Imitation’ instead of ‘Intelligence’ in my morning journalling which turned into this. It brought the two words together and produced the real ‘aha’. How? By flagging and then marrying the third of Lorraine’s steps – ‘imitate other extraordinary persons (human and beyond)’ – to AI. How 'beyond' can you get with AI as something to imitate - surely it's doing that with us?! This third step (you’ll have to read her article to glean the second and fourth) produced resistance when I first read it. Not as much as to I've had towards this new AI creature called ChatGPT and his friends, but definite resistance. Resistance has become a great friend – always leading me to surprising conclusions if I examine him closely enough. Which is what we’ll do now.

To me, imitation speaks of ‘copy-cat’ strategies and following-in-the-steps of. I don’t like formulas. But I’d been reminded the day before by a priest who I ‘happened’ to bump into that we do what AI like ChatGPT does all the time – we draw on others’ influence, we use what’s useful, like writing a limerick with the taste of Edward Lear on our tongues. And it occurs to me that it’s what I’m doing now, with Lorraine B. Smith’s treasure. Suddenly, this AI creature delivers the most surprising metaphor and assistance!

Animated by the Inanimate

My first example for imitating ‘other extraordinary persons (human and beyond)’ - drum roll please - is ChatGPT. Why? How??Momentarily drop your scepticism and consider these elements as if 'he' were an animate creature:

• Extraordinary use of time – he accomplishes stuff in ‘no time at all’, treating the past and future in (almost) the present as he delivers in ‘real time. Yes, I’d love to be able to do that.
• Extraordinarily responsive but unreactive. Chatbot GPT’s adept irrespective of complexity or nature of the task, unconcerned and impersonal in his responses. The subject matter is irrelevant as is whether he’s done the task before or not. Yes, that would be an extremely useful way of accomplishing the extraordinary. ?
• Extraordinarily powerful. ChatbotGPT has huge capacity. He thrives on being given challenges which build up his reserves of knowledge rather than diminishing them, refining and honing its abilities at the same time. Wow! What a great example. Could I see myself as being energised rather than diminished as I expend energy?
• Extraordinarily easy on itself when he can’t do something, but no doubt alerting himself to gaps and where refinement is needed! Yes, that would be invaluable (speaks to Lorraine’s last step).

How extraordinary that this form of AI can function as an example and metaphor to remind me of my human capacity as a channel for the Infinite Mind or Mystery, which in ways unique and unforeseeable are accessible to all. Sweet irony here, especially as I have no intention right now of availing myself to his services!

Something apparently ‘inanimate’ becomes a conduit to re-animate me through analogy. And this technology has arrived in the world through the not-yet-fully-potentialized human mind. What a Mystery! Something softens inside and brings compassion to my perspective. Then a human example to assist me comes to heart, a woman still expanding her potential at nearly ninety: my extraordinary mum.

Mum’s the Word.

My mum has the last word as the other example and brings her own gift to this article. She and my father are still expanding their potential, step by extraordinary step as they embrace everything the world would say is crazy ‘at their age’ i.e., moving to a damp and demanding 16th century stone former inn, co-habiting with my sister and brother-in-law in an isolated country hamlet in a place they’d never been before. They simply do not accept the linear timeline. They do continually adjust (like the AI) to the context of their situation.

'Our mum' has put on a skirt before dinner every day of her sixty-four year young marriage, and cooked and cleaned as well as holding down full time jobs. She still gives talks about trees and is always learning. Both she and my father are continuing to have extraordinary lives. Recalling I'd been a bit harsh in something I said a couple of day back, I interrupt my writing and call to give her some words of encouragement.

But it’s she who does the giving.

No?lle - she's more than just a mum - shares yesterday’s insight – that the sunbeam and the sun are dependent on each other. She sees how essential she is to the sun, and yet is ‘fuelled’ by her Source (she’d call it God, I’d call ‘it’ Life). This refuels me and provides an insight which was out of sight until now.

Goodness, it’s lunchtime. Two pea-milk flat whites and a tea are down. The depression is gone. It is an extraordinary few hours’. An article deemed impossible to write in the time is wrote.

And what was irritating the pants off me – the monster of AI – is embraced as a metaphor, the larger absorbing the smaller. No, not AI absorbing us! The lesser cannot embrace the greater. The sunbeam is nothing without the sun (thanks mum). A dissolving and re-solving occurs. Resistance conspires to produce its opposite - flow. The gift of paradox accepted brings resolution.

AI – whether ‘artificial imitation’ or ‘artificial intelligence’ cannot do what Life, Source has done this morning. It can’t take the place of the Mystery and coming together of apparently unconnected spontaneous happenings, and yet it’s not excluded from being part of those happenings, albeit in a counter-intuitive way.

Thank you. Thank you, Lorraine, Penelope, ChatGPT, bumblebee and mum for turning my ordinary into something extra ordinarily beautiful and progressive.

p.s. A fifth element arrives to tie a bow on the marriage of apparent opposites as I watch Dr Iain McGilchrist’s latest yarn with Alex Gomez-Martin on ‘The coincidentia oppositorum’. Worth a watch if you’re interested in the idea of ‘opposites attract’!

p.p.s. How will this extraordinary period flow? I’ll let you know. If you feel the urge, you're welcome to subscribe to my occasional email 'News Pouring'.

But much more importantly, in these extraordinary times which we all sense are upon humanity; how are you embracing the extraordinary? It matters. Because you are an essential part of ‘my’ being and make mornings like today remarkable. Thank YOU.

Final repeat link to Lorraine's article which led the way to this one. Who can deny our #interbeing?

Photo credit: ?Angie Ca Ro | Unsplash

#productivity #spirituality #artificialintelligence