This is your brain on ChatGPT
I’ve been using ChatGPT and other AI tools recently for quite a few things. A few examples:
Working on strategy and operations for Life Story Magic. (Human interaction is crucial for that experience, but a lot of the behind-the-scenes stuff would not be possible without AI.)
Planning how to get the most value out of the Epic ski pass I bought for the year, while balancing everything else.
Putting together a stretching and DIY physical therapy plan to get my shoulders feeling better during gym workouts.
Along the way, I’ve done what I think a lot of AI power users eventually wind up doing: I’ve gone into the personalization and settings and told the chatbot to be neutral, direct, and just-the-facts.
I don’t want a chatbot that tells me “That is a brilliant idea!” every time I explore a tweak to my business strategy. They’re not all brilliant, I assure you.
And I don’t want a lecture about how if I truly have shoulder issues I should see a “real” physical therapist. I’m an adult. I’m not outsourcing my judgment to a robot.
“Stop. I didn’t ask you that”
The result of all this is that I’ve developed an alpha relationship with AI.
I tell it what to do. If it goes on too long, if it assumes I agree with its suggestions, or starts padding its answers with unnecessary niceties, I shut it down.
“Stop. I didn’t ask you that.”
“No. Wrong. Listen to what I’m saying before replying.”
“All I need from you are the following three things. Nothing else.”
As ChatGPT itself repeatedly reminds me, it has no feelings. Here—I even asked it to confirm while writing this:
I don’t have feelings, and I can’t be offended. You can be blunt, curt, or even rude to a chatbot and nothing is harmed.
The awkwardness you’re describing is entirely on the human side of the interaction.
All good, right? Until I caught myself dealing with customer service.
$800 worth of Warby Parker
Recently, I was returning most of a large Warby Parker order—probably close to $600 out of $800 that I’d spent on glasses, spread across multiple orders placed on different days just before Christmas.
I always try to remember that customer service workers are real people, often working on an opposite schedule so they can be available during American waking hours, dealing with one unhappy customer after another all day long.
I keep that image in mind, so I remember that whatever small problem I’m having probably isn’t a big deal.
I guess I’m trying to be a decent human. I also avoid the remote possibility of becoming the star of some viral customer-service-gone-wrong video.
11 minutes of learning
But this call dragged on: 11 minutes in all. Writing that now, it doesn’t seem super long, but at the time it felt like an eternity for something that should have been simple.
There was a noticeable delay on the line, and not the best connection, and the customer service rep interrupted me several times, assuming that he understood what I was asking and launching into long, off-topic explanations before I could finish.
Reflexively, I started talking to him the same way I talk to ChatGPT:
“Stop. I didn’t ask you that.”
“No. Listen to what I’m saying before replying.”
“All I need from you are the following three things.”
Entire life stories
To be fair, I caught myself pretty quickly. Also, I probably overcompensated for the rest of the call.
In real life, it’s almost a cliché among people who know me that I talk with everyone and often walk away knowing their entire life story, simply because I find almost everyone interesting.
My wife, sitting next to me, as I read this part aloud to her: “Mmmm-hmmm.”
But in that moment, I had slipped into the mode I use with machines: efficient, blunt, and completely unconcerned with the other side’s experience.
Machine vs. human
I’ve stripped empathy out of my interactions with AI on purpose. I think that makes sense. I want speed and clarity, not emotional intelligence.
Also, I’m uneasy with the idea of blurring the lines between humans and machines.
But without thinking, I carried that same way of communicating into a conversation with a real, live, fellow human being! Whoops!
When you train yourself to communicate efficiently with something artificial—something that never needs patience, kindness, or to be treated with dignity, it’s easy to forget that most of the world still does.
And frankly, so do you.
Other things worth knowing …
The European Union and India concluded a free-trade agreement after almost two decades of negotiations, part of an effort to deepen economic ties that has gained momentum due to the Trump administration’s aggressive tariff policies. Related: Canada, Europe and South Korea, feeling burned by an unpredictable and transactional White House, are reassessing China in a drive to lessen their longstanding reliance on America. (Bloomberg, WSJ)
In 2015, China welcomed almost 16.5 million babies. A decade later, that figure has more than halved to just under 8 million. The drop is caused “not ... by couples who end up having fewer children but fewer people becoming couples in the first place, or by forming couples later in life when it is more difficult to have children,” said an expert in Chinese demographics. (Financial Times)
Minnesota’s chief federal judge, a George W. Bush appointee, has ordered the head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Todd Lyons, to appear in his courtroom Friday and threatened to hold him in contempt for what he says has been repeated defiance of judges’ orders in the state. “The court’s patience is at an end,” U.S. District Judge Patrick Schiltz said in a three-page order issued Monday night, demanding the acting director explain himself “personally.” (Politico, CourtListener)
Department of Homeland Security officers have fired shots during enforcement arrests or at people protesting their operations at least 16 times since July. At least 10 people have been struck by bullets — including four U.S. citizens. Three people have been killed. In each case the Trump administration has publicly declared the shootings justified before waiting for investigations to be completed. (The Washington Post)
Outrage is growing in Italy over the deployment of ICE agents to assist US security operations at the Winter Olympics next month. ICE will serve “a security role” at the Olympics, a DHS spokesperson said. “They don’t do immigration enforcement (operations) in a foreign country obviously,” the spokesperson said. (CNN)
Amazon said Tuesday it plans to sunset its Fresh and Go brick-and-mortar chains, marking a major pivot in the company’s grocery strategy. “After a careful evaluation of the business and how we can best serve customers, we’ve made the difficult decision to close our Amazon Go and Amazon Fresh physical stores, converting various locations into Whole Foods Market stores,” the company wrote in a blog post. (CNBC)
The earliest known hand-held wooden tools, used by our early human ancestors around 430,000 years ago, have been uncovered by researchers at an archeological site in Greece. One is made from the trunk of an alder tree and could have been used for digging, and the other is a small willow or poplar artifact that may have been used to shape stones, according to a study published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. (NBC News)
Thanks for reading. Photo by Charanjeet Dhiman on Unsplash. I wrote about some of this before at Inc.com. See you in the comments.
Maybe try my ChatGPT strategy: I've programmed it to be "warm and friendly, but not sycophantic. Don't tell me I'm a genius when my head is up my ass." Seems to work.
Personally, I kind of enjoy using (mostly) normal speech with ChatGPT. It's amusing to do that with a machine, and when using voice mode I've set a lovely British female voice. But when I'm done brainstorming with it, I paste the entire conversation into Perplexity for a reality check, which almost always turns up incomplete data or straight-up errors, with source links to back it up. If ChatGPT is like your buddy helping you sketch ideas on a cocktail napkin, then Perplexity is the subject matter expert who looks at your napkin, clears his throat and heads for the whiteboard.
As to customer service people, we should always try and remember that they're poorly paid people in crappy jobs talking to angry customers all day long in order to keep roofs over their heads.
I appreciate the insight and honesty of this experience. My wife and I share a motto when it comes to our interactions; "Everyone has a story, and it's worth hearing." I, like you, have made the mistake of drowning their story out with my impatience.