Recently, I was lazily swiping left and right on Bumble, a dating app, when I noticed something unusual.
Two strangers were sharing identical answers there. Two minds can have identical thoughts, but don't tell me they can structure an idea the same way, I thought. My worst fears were aroused. Was this AI playing cupid?
For me, the clock struck thirteen right then. Never again could I use dating apps or look at a well-polished sentence from a stranger online without wondering—is that a human or an AI out there? Everything seemed a kind of hyperreality. I was reminded of Jean Baudrillard.
Baudrillard was the French sociologist and philosopher, who in his 1981 book Simulacra and Simulation (the book which influenced the 1999 movie The Matrix) argued that modern society is dominated by simulations and signs that replace reality itself, a condition he called hyperreality.
In a digital world dominated by 'emotionally intelligent' bots generating social media content, fake narratives, fake news culture and deepfakes, Baudrillard's words feel eerily true today.
With the fear of making mistakes, of being left out, and an endless quest for perfection driving us, many of us are depending on AI tools like ChatGPT to even stitch together our daily personal conversations.
Have we lost our humanness in the bargain?
I spoke to a few people who use ChatGPT to understand how they saw it.
'I'm amazed by the results, but...'
Krishna, a 23-year-old, said her dalliance with ChatGPT began when she needed it for academic purposes. But lately she cannot do without it.
"I ended up unable to express myself clearly. I just didn't have the right words or sometimes my words were misinterpreted." Hence, Krishna said, she started using ChatGPT to frame sentences better.
"I now explain the situation and ask ChatGPT to come out with a message to give shape to my thoughts clearly. And I'm amazed by the results," she said.
ChatGPT helps her make sense of the circumstances she is involved in and 'much better than she could ever have', she stresses.
Such is her faith in ChatGPT these days that Krishna uses it to understand herself and her reactions to certain situations.
However there is a red line she will not cross. When it comes to personal conversations, the AI tool is a no-no.
"AI should just be an aid. It should not replace our personal style of communication. I'm afraid if I start using it often, I'll be dependent on it all the time," Krishna argued.
'People are afraid to be vulnerable'
Twenty-six-year-old Kiran Kumar is even more stringent in his boycott of ChatGPT.
"People tend to see ChatGPT as a means to an end. They delegate the task to AI. I don't agree with them but I can't blame them either," he said.
"I can't draw or paint to save my life. And there have been times when I have been insanely tempted to generate pictures of concepts that I have. But not all of us have restraint. Even the best of us will slip up if the impulse is strong enough," he goes on to add.
Kiran recalled how he uninstalled Bumble and stopped using dating apps because of AI Bios. The often generated em dash (--) by ChatGPT gives them away, he said. However, he added that it is becoming increasingly difficult to spot AI-generated content these days.
Referring to social media, he said people are becoming more insecure and there is a pressure to post the perfect picture with the perfect caption, which makes people turn to AI. "People are afraid to be vulnerable. They don't understand that it's our mistakes that make us human. Our flaws are proof that we are human."
'AI doesn't sound like you'
Anoop Mathew has been testing and using ChatGPT for a long time to consolidate abstract thoughts or concepts that come to him during meditation. ChatGPT helps to give them a form but he disagrees with using AI for personal communication.
"Once, for the novelty of it, I tested using an AI-generated reply to my longtime friend and she instantly caught me. It didn't sound like me and we had a laugh. That was the end of me using AI for replying to a conversation," he remembered.
He hopes people don't use AI in conversations.
"AI doesn't sound like you, whatever comes out of your mind is what makes you special, it doesn't need to be perfected by a machine, doing that just destroys your essence," Anoop said.
He pointed out that AI-assisted chat would soon become a norm, as nowadays, it's all about convenience and comfort. People are dependent on ChatGPT for their daily functioning as they don't trust themselves and are seeking validation through it.
"People are using ChatGPT for validation now, I know many are using it for analysing their chat history and profiling their dates and friends," he said.
Ego massaging that became a turn off
Lissel Thomas, who works in the healthcare sector in Canada, too has drawn clear boundaries.
The 26-year-old said she continues to use ChatGPT to set SMART goals for clients and to write incident reports.
"Initially, I used ChatGPT to communicate my problems and use it when I was feeling low, because my friends were busy with work and weren’t available. I couldn’t always talk to my friends from India because of different time zones too. That led me to turn to ChatGPT," she said.
However, she felt that ChatGPT tended to favour her side always and portray the opposite party in a negative light always. She didn't fall for the ego massaging that was on offer. These days, she has started journaling to get over her blues and feels all the better for it.
In the end, curated dating profiles, AI-generated empathy, AI-scripted conversations and even generation of images using AI are after all not original but simulations that endlessly reproduce other simulations.
As George Orwell noted, "If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought." Here then is to holding on to our original thoughts and not letting the machines dictate them.