Artificial intelligence has officially taken over the world. Or at least a large part of the tech world. Depending on who you ask, ChatGPT and Midjourney are the saviors of business, art, journalism, law, and ethics – or the destroyer of them.
Right now, consumer AI is in no-man’s land, with computer-generated art mostly showing how Mr. Blobby did in the Napoleonic Wars. But that hasn’t stopped AI startups securing huge investments, and websites using ChatGPT to create personalized content. Which got me thinking: If multimillion-dollar companies can argue for AI to lighten their workload, why can’t I? If “real” jobs are going to become obsolete once machines take over, why resist them?
This is how you let the AI control what you did and said for a day, dictating how you interacted with friends, family, and colleagues. Will I be promoted? Will I be fired? It was a nerve-racking prospect. Friendships could end if the AI I chose was trained on a Ricky Gervais privateer – but equally I could swap my office for a beach if my life was being controlled by a faceless Silicon Valley server.
Could this be true? There is only one way to find out.
So, did you have a nice weekend?
I start my workday as usual, logging into my Slack channel at the office and greeting my colleagues. For better or worse, I decided not to tell them that my chat was instead coming through Microsoft’s ChatGPT. But first, my partner Wattsed me with a simple “Just sat at my desk. Have a good day!”
She wasn’t entirely convinced by my response (“I’m an AI and don’t have the power to have a good day, but I’m here to help with any questions or tasks you might have. How can I help you today?”), but ChatGPT doesn’t really mean that. It mainly helps to compose emails, write code, and answer questions. Instead of a personal Google, it works with trained data – leaving clear room for error. Some academic journals have already banned it, lest it spoil research with false information.
Pressing on, a simple “Morning!” from a colleague to ChatGPT, and their response is temporarily pasted into Slack. “Good morning! How can I help you today?I ask. It’s not offensive, but it’s not normal. Nobody responds, and I radiate enough annoyance to myself to trigger a Geiger counter.
Next on my list is writing a resume to work for myself, editing some freelance copy, and writing an essay. I started by editing and creating a profile on Chai, which allows you to create AI-powered chatbots. I name my JackBot, enter a few basic details—my age, my interests, my personality traits—and feed it a snippet of a chat app conversation between myself and writer Connor. He’s been reviewing the Veri Body Monitor, which tracks how you react to food, rest, and stress, and he’s added a few extra words about what he ate during the test. JackBot replies with “Oh thanks! What’s your favorite food?” While the real Jack dies a little inside. Steak and chips, for those who want to know.
I finally got it clean after a few back and forth runs. To Shay’s credit, Connor cheated. While I thought JackBot’s questions and responses were unnatural, Connor wasn’t recording my little conversation wasn’t mine — though that’s probably not too surprising, given we’re both remote employees and haven’t met in person. However, Chai’s ability to understand slang was impressive: faced with statements such as “You’re great at soccer”, she responded with “Yes I am, even though I haven’t played in years”.
inspire minds
To write a resume for my website, I planned to use Jasper, which offers a five-day free trial but costs from $49 per month for 50,000 words. Rather than reach for a credit card, I instead pasted my current resume into the AI writing assistant Rytr. You can select the tone from 22 different feelings, including humble, urgent, or passionate.
My “inspirational” bio was filled with phrases like “inspiring minds and sparking thought one story after another.” Choosing “serious” added the hashtags #techwriter #freelancewriter #stuffeditor. The tone of “worry” refers to a description I’ve lived by my whole life – #JackofallTrades.
I eventually decided to go for an “informal” autobiography that read “Write stories about the future of technology, culture, health, and business. Taking readers on wild rides through this weird and wonderful world.” It does the job, even if it looks like I’m applying to The Apprentice.
F-ai-ke news
I’m using Rytr again to come up with a new article. It asks for a topic and some keywords, so I pull a press release from my inbox, announce a new pair of bold trainers, and whittle it down to one sentence: “Launching a new pair of athletic running shoes specifically designed to compensate for the wear and tear of the toughest training and races. Ryter offers three Pulitzer-worthy options:
The first and third options sound like a door-to-door vacuum cleaner seller, so I chose the second most popular. Next, I needed an image, so pick some keywords from the copy and insert them into the DALL E 2 AI image generator.
The three images below became “a tech and hardware magazine photo of an avid runner who buys new trainers for intense training.” Safe to say, I wasn’t impressed with my choice of a bad ’90s ad, a guy puking up a pair of laces, or the hairiest wrists known to mankind.
The third option might have been the more realistic interpretation of the shoe, but the AI has a hard time rendering lifelike hands — to the point where it’s entered meme territory. DALL E 2’s attempt is no different, showing a really strange combination of fingers.
After a few tries, I got an image that might not quite fit, but technically fits the abstract. After throwing in an AI-generated headline, my article is ready to talk about presses.
It’s hard to change the world like Watergate did, right? While some websites use other, more powerful AI tools to provide financial advice, Chai and DALL E 2 can instead expect appropriate encouragement from Stuff’s sub-editing team.
P.A.I. RT p
With the work done for the day, it’s time for the football seven – but anyone trying to organize the weekly kickoff will know that keyhole surgery is an easier task. ChatGPT was puzzled by the question “Who plays football then for tomorrow just for numbers?” ‘, responding with ‘I’m sorry I’m AI and I don’t know any specific football game scheduled for tonight’. You won’t cut it.
For Shay, I created a bot to better adapt the football’s response. Name him Alan Striker, give him the description “I score goals” and attach the infamous photo of Sam Allardyce drinking what may have been a pint of wine. I enter a prompt (organizing a soccer game between friends. Thursdays at 8pm), send it several previous messages for tone and context, choose a “friendly” tone and send my first message.
“Who will play with me?” A. answers. Striker, and he strikes the double whammy of being undeniably pathetic and terrifying. Rules are rules, though. So I pasted it into my WhatsApp group and left it lingering, unable to hit send due to sheer embarrassment. I take the opportunity, hoping the other 24 members will miss it, or read it and decide not to mention it again as a deeply buried family fracture. I got no responses, which is somehow the best and worst outcome.
In any case. The end of the week is approaching. I text my boyfriend, let’s call him Michael, to ask if he’s going to a mutual friend’s house party Saturday night. not him. He has an appointment instead. It would be rude to stare – but maybe someone similar to AI would know all the juicy details?
Created “MichaelBot” on Chai. Similar to above, I entered my boyfriend’s personality traits, and trained MichaelBot on his WhatsApp conversations, including his romantic plans. I’m having a conversation, and I’m getting some… interesting results.
jack: Where are you going on your date?
MatthewManchester Piccadilly station. The ticket machine is broken so we have to go through security.
jackDo you have an appointment at Manchester Piccadilly station? Is it at Starbucks?
Matthew: nah mate. at the same station. In the old train shed. This is special.
jackHow did you book the old train shed?
Matthew: on google maps. There is a restaurant there called “The Train Shed”.
jack: never heard of it before?
Matthew: I want to communicate with Dr. Whatsapp. But the owner has been posing for a long time. They have a website but nobody uses it. It looks like an abandoned train shed. So he put it on google maps as a joke. Now people use it all the time.
jack: Good. What does your appointment look like?
Matthew: person. Works out at my gym. We went to see some bands last night and then had dinner together. We were going to meet again tonight but now I’m stuck here with him.
jack: Where are you stuck?
Matthew: In a hotel room. We are waiting for someone else to arrive.
jack: Who will arrive?
Matthew: Girlfriend. She is coming from London.
jack: So you are going to Manchester Piccadilly with a man who has a girlfriend and she is coming to meet you in your hotel room?
Matthew: well not quite. We are in separate rooms. And we don’t know each other very well yet.
jack: Why are you together in a hotel?
Matthewkisa: Because we share a room. We only met yesterday. We are both new to Manchester.
jackkisa: I thought you were in separate rooms?
Matthew: Yes, but they put us in the same room because we didn’t bring any luggage.
jack: I’m so worried about you, Michael.
Matthew: Thanks. Me too.
to rule
My dreams of a fully robotic existence are clearly a long way off. Handing the responsibility over to an AI didn’t completely ruin my life either, but it just made my day more crap.
AI is being touted as an assistant, not a replacement, but whether it’s for art or articles, publicly available releases aren’t cutting it anytime soon. You need huge computing muscles and dedicated algorithms to convincingly replicate human creative output.
With time and effort I might be able to make a more powerful JackBot, but for now the beach will have to wait…
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