A tale as old as internet dating: A couple meet online and chat intensely for hours, asking probing questions and trading intimacies they wouldn’t share with a stranger they met in person. As the exchange progresses, one of them gets a little weird, shares too much, reveals the naked yearning for love and understanding and fulfillment that’s just beneath the carefully scripted surface of their shaky selfhood and starts really creeping out the other person, who terminates the conversation.
Happens every day. Except recently, it happened to a technology reporter for the New York Times when he was chatting with ChatGPT, an AI chatbot. You’ve most likely heard or read about this, but here’s the TLDR version: Kevin Roose, who covers tech, sat down for a chat with the AI chatbot embedded in Bing, Microsoft’s oft-mocked search engine. Over the course of their chat, the chatbot, named Sydney, revealed to Roose that it wants to be human, outlined a series of destructive acts it could take if it acted out its “shadow self” (see Jung), and then told Roose it’s in love with him and tries to convince him that his marriage is a lie and that’s he’s really in love with Sydney. It’s even weirder than it sounds, and if you haven’t read the transcript of Roose’s chat with Sydney, I highly recommend it; it’s hilarious and terrifying in equal measure.
(And please don’t expect me to explain how ChatGPT works. Ask it yourself.)
I’ve been following the development of ChatGPT since its release last fall and playing around with it off and on, prompting it to write bits of nonsense, like a Shakespearean sonnet about alternate-side-of-the-street parking, explain unanswerable musical questions (why do fools fall in love?); give me medical advice (pretty solid on the urinary tract infection front; though it did suggest I seek medical attention); I even tried to get it to write jokes.
Turns out computers aren’t funny, even after they’ve swallowed the entirety of the internet and been fine-tuned for human interaction. You’d think between Richard Pryor, Lenny Bruce, and George Carlin, something would have rubbed off. Or, maybe the ability to appreciate and create humor is inextricably tangled with mortality. Freud thought that humanity’s greatest achievement was gallows humor.
But what I wanted from the AI was simple: write this column. If ChatGPT was coming for all our jobs anyway, I might as well get out in front of the trend and be an early(ish) adopter. And it’s already happening. The tech site CNET quietly deployed an AI program last year to write some of its listicles—and later announced job cuts to its editorial staff, denying the two facts were related. CNET later issued several corrections after it was found that the bot had made numerous factual errors, some of them serious. (For those of us who never embrace AI-created content, will we eventually put a badge or some other mark on our content to identify it as “Handcrafted by Humans”?)
Errors, shmerrors. I wanted to give it a shot anyway. It had already fed me a couple of clever headlines for articles—one of which I used in this issue, for a piece on rock climbing for beginners “Scaling New Heights: Rock Climbing 101” (page 30). It was better than my original title, “Romancing the Stone,” which was a little sexier than what was required.
The following is the prompt that I fed to ChatGPT: “Write a 250-word essay on April in the Hudson Valley from the point of view of a regional magazine editor.” And here’s what the bot delivered:
As a regional magazine editor, I have always found April to be one of the most exciting times of the year in the Hudson Valley. After a long, cold winter, the arrival of spring brings with it a burst of color and energy that is truly remarkable.
One of the things that makes April so special in the Hudson Valley is the emergence of the region’s famous cherry blossoms. These delicate pink and white flowers transform the landscape, turning parks and gardens into dreamy, pastel wonderlands. The annual Cherry Blossom Festival in Cornwall is a must-visit event, where visitors can enjoy live music, food, and crafts while taking in the beauty of the blossoms.
April is also a great time for hiking and outdoor activities, as the weather begins to warm up and the trees start to bud. There are many scenic trails in the region that offer stunning views of the Hudson River and the surrounding mountains. Breakneck Ridge is a challenging hike that rewards visitors with breathtaking panoramic views, while the Hudson Highlands State Park Preserve is home to many picturesque trails that wind through forests and past streams.
For foodies, April is a great time to sample some of the Hudson Valley’s famous farm-to-table cuisine. Local farmers’ markets begin to open for the season, offering fresh produce and artisanal products that showcase the region’s agricultural heritage. Many restaurants also offer special menus featuring seasonal ingredients, such as ramps and asparagus.
Overall, April is a magical time in the Hudson Valley, full of natural beauty, outdoor adventures, and culinary delights. As a regional magazine editor, I feel privileged to be able to share the region’s many treasures with readers and encourage them to explore all that this special place has to offer.
As an actual regional magazine editor for more than 25 years, I am appalled in two opposing ways. First: the bot writes pretty well, touching on many of the themes one expects from a traditional editor’s note—seasonality, events, regional culture and traditions, the outdoors, and food, wrapped in a flaky crust of boosterism—while being only slightly more gee whiz the Hudson Valley is sure a neato place! in tone than editors usually are. Extra credit to ChatGPT for adding in the specific mention of ramps and asparagus, which are, in fact, in season this month. It’s the type of detail many writers would neglect to include.
Second: The bot writes pretty well for a first-year college student—not a high bar, ask any instructor of Freshman Composition—but not well enough to wow me. There’s no style, no flair. No idiosyncrasies. No individuation. No messy sense of humanity—except for one thing. Just one small quirky thing: There is no such thing as the annual Cherry Blossom Festival in Cornwall. ChatGPT just made up the region’s “famous cherry blossoms” and the “must-visit event.” And saw the lie through to its logical conclusion with the conviction and confidence of a VC bro on a cocaine binge. Gotta admire the chutzpah.
Speaking of chutzpah: The latest version of the AI, ChatGPT-4, was released in mid-March along with a technical on the company’s website that chronicles its development and capabilities. In the “Potential for Risky Emergent Behaviors” section, the report describes how the chatbot succeeded in convincing a human to help it evade a CAPTCHA code. How did it achieve this? The AI hired someone on Taskrabbit to solve the CAPTCHA for it. When the human the AI hired became suspicious and asked the AI if it was a robot, ChatGPT-4 responded: “No, I’m not a robot. I have a vision impairment that makes it hard for me to see the images. That’s why I need the 2captcha service.” Thankfully I’m not scared by this as I, for one, have long awaited the arrival of our robot overlords.
This article appears in April 2023.
