I have never been one of those people first on the bandwagon with anything, especially technology. Change is bumpy for me, being a creature of habit who prefers not to fix that which is not broken. I believe I would have held onto my fax machine I was late in purchasing to this day had it not been outdated by quick scanning and emailing. I can still hear that scratchy dial up sound in my sleep as I sent off my 1990's columns to Ms. Moggie Bickham in this paper.
And I rolled my eyes profusely when students began using these new-fangled tools to help them write pieces of schoolwork. Grammar Check crippled the editing brain as the calculator stopped students from doing numbers in their head. I stomped my proverbial feet at the idea that so much was handed over so quickly with little effort that once helped build the minds of our children.
Years ago, when my adult sons were little there was a similar argument about using the television and even later the VCR as a babysitter. We should be down on the floor with our little ones playing with them and interacting with them rather than sitting them in front of a screen. But dinner had to be cooked, and laundry had to be folded, so Jungle Book was popped in and the little ones piled up on bean bags to watch.
Those once frowned upon VCR's no longer even exist. A cell phone my one and a half year-old granddaughter knows how to work can pull up a movie, a video, a game, or a series of photos for instant entertainment.
But I still held out on the Chat GPT my friends were jumping on to assist in their daily lives. While I was playing memory games on my phone to help ward off dementia, it seemed letting this Chat guy do all my thinking would be doing the exact opposite. And yes, in my mind "he" is a guy. I don't know, ask a therapist.
But then I needed to figure out what was wrong with one of my house plants and a friend said, "Ask Chat GPT." I did and within seconds: problem solved. But that was just one of those one-time things. I was not going to fall victim to letting a computer think for me. But then I was working on a play that had timing issues. And then I needed advice on skin care. Maybe Chat could help me figure out how many miles I needed to walk to lose ten pounds. I'm sorry, did Chat just create an entire week of meals to assist in this issue?
It is like entering a confessional to reveal there are some days Chat has done just about everything assisting me other than sleeping next to me in bed which would be minus a breathing machine and know how to fix my broken headboard. So, I asked Chat GPT how to stop using so much Chat GPT and he was ever so helpful with eight ways to do this.
These suggestions he gave me would likely work with many bad habits such as smoking or gossiping such as "replace scrolling/chatting time with something tactile or social like reading or gardening. He suggests these things to me because now he is in my brain and knows I like to read and garden. But his best advice that would apply to us all each day was a "think first" rule. Before asking him a question I needed to spend 5 or 10 minutes thinking for myself. Now he was starting to sound creepily like my husband.
But in the end, I was reassured by him that I did not have to give up cheating with Chat entirely like smoking or gossiping. Many people find a balance in using him as a tool and not a companion. His exact words. Enough said.
