Technology

Here’s an example of how not to use it. Medicine. The Internet soup includes medical advice from new agers, mommy blogs, anti-vax, chiropracty, chakras, well meaning but mistaken posters, Reddit, aggregate scrape sites, legit sites, and more.

If you take the time to correct the AI it will apologize and then move to other attempts until it nails it, maybe. Alternatively, you tell it the right answer and it confirmation biases you. (But are you actually right? The AI will never tell.)

The medical professional community is getting hit hard lately with aggressive waving of phones, yelling, and unwillingness to listen, because the Google bot said so and the medical staff doesn’t agree with the Google bot. Or, the chatGPT subscription said so. The ChatGPT guys go hard on defending the AI.

There used to be a bit of embarrassment and willingness to listen to credentialed individuals giving medical advice in contradiction to WebMD or random posts. Not always, but often.

Lately, people are defending the AI answers like it’s their own life’s work.

It’s starting to resonate, at times, like people caught in an addiction but not ready to get clean: defensive, they know what they’re about, you don’t know, and they’ve got this all under control. That’s not quite right, but it’s the closest equivalent in my experience.

Computer things though, I use it sometimes, depending.