It is a grey day in Lancashire. It was grey when we woke. It has remained grey all day. The colour has drained out of the world and rain has replaced it. Collecting on my glasses as I stand atop the roof of a multi-story car park. Open to the elements and the sky and myself. If feels like a good place to record the reciting of a poem. About shelter… Without any. And the grey seeps into all. There is a dullness. Everything has fuzzy edges and my senses themselves are diffuse.
I am left thinking about a friend who has been using ChatGPT as a coach. They seem happy with it.
I wonder about the presence of artificial intelligence in our lives. I have been using ChatGPT with some success for specific tasks.
I’ve learnt what it is good at and what it is not good at. So far.
I’ve squirmed at the ruse, the mimicry and the insincerity as it aims to appeal to my human nature. It gives me the ick.
It is brilliant though. A brilliant tool.
My wife and I were mid-conversation recently when it occurred to us that my initials are amusingly close to those of said Generative Pre-trained Transformer.
GPB is pretty close to GPT.
Which made me wonder. Who would you rather chat with?
ChatGPB and ChatGPT
I pondered on this for some time. Within myself. Without the help of anything non-human. With actual intelligence. And heart. And body. And spirit.
A whole human response.
Which is in itself what I was seeking.
Exchanging text with a pre-trained piece of software, designed to generate replies formed from the world-wild-web while sounding human is exactly what it is.
It is a partial response (text only), pulled from partial expressions (text only) based on the partial experiences (we variably know ourselves) of other people, living in the past and mostly far away.
The people behind it want something from you. It will always be there and always give an answer. Even when not answering is better and absence more helpful. Responding in this way can be much harder.
While it is beguiling and can be useful it has obvious limits.
Working with another human being, in close and intimate relationship, draws on shared senses, experiences and the third space between both people. In that moment. In that space.
What is shared, whether by word, sound, movement, action, rhythm, emotion… and that which can’t be explained or measured, arises from meaning and the knowing of what it is to be alive.
There is sincerity and actuality.
Not mimicry and artifice.
More must be said here and much more will be said by many.
What seems clear is that when chatting with ChatGPT you are on your own. No matter how it may seem, you are alone. A grey day every day.
When chatting with another human, ChatGPB, or any other living, breathing, struggling, loving person, you are with a whole human, together, in this experience we call life.
Of course, we don’t need to choose one or the other. But being fully aware of who you are chatting with is important.
Integral development coaching is deeply embedded in presence and awareness. Something that you just can’t get from a machine.