The recent chat bot advances have pretty much changed my life. I used to get anxiety by receiving mails and IMs, sometimes even from friends. I lost friendships over not replying. My main issue being that I am sometimes get completely stuck in a loop of how to formulate things in the best way to the point of just abandoning the contact. I went to therapy for that and it helped. But the LLM advancements of the recent years have been a game changer.
Now I plop everything into ChatGPT, cleaning out personal information as much as possible, and let the machine write. Often I’ll make some adjustments but just having a starting point has changed my life.
So, my answer, I use it all the fucking time.
I’ve never done this and I guess I need to go yell at a cloud somewhere if this is about to become a thing.
Understandable! I wouldn’t want to just talk to a chat bot either, whilst thinking I’m talking to a friend.
The way I use it is mostly to get a starting point from which I’ll edit further. Sometimes the generated response is bang on though and I admit I have just copy pasted.
First of all, I can really empathize with your anxieties. I’ve lost contact with a few penpals years ago because of similar issues and I still hate myself for it.
I don’t use chat-gpt for writing my replies, because my English is crap and my manner of writing distinct enough that any friend can immediately spot a real response from a generated one (not enough smileys for one :)
But I still have similar anxieties. So if I feel anxious about writing something, I do sometimes give a general description of the original mail (“A friend of mine wrote about her mother’s funeral”, “a family member lost his cat”, etc.) and give it the reply I’ve written so far (names and personal details removed).
I then explain that I feel anxious about my reply and worry if I hit the right tone. I never ask it to write for me, only to give critique where necessary and advice on how to improve (for good measure I always add some snide remarks on how it sounds too fake to ever pass as a human so don’t even bother trying, which it always takes in good humor because… well… AI :)
I ignore most of the suggestions because it sounds like a corporate HR communique. But, what’s more important is that it usually tries to tell me that I was thoughtful, considerate and that that little light-hearted joke at the end was just sweet enough to add a personal touch without coming across as insensitive.
Just to get some positive feedback, even from software that was designed specifically for that purpose, gives me that little push to hit the send button and hope for the best. I wouldn’t dare to ask someone else for advice because it would be an admission of how weak and insecure I feel about expressing myself in the first place, which would ramp up my anxiety by making it a ‘big thing’.
Anyway, I can understand the animosity people show against AI. And I’m happy for those who don’t need or want it.
PS: This reply was 100% written without any use of AI, direct or indirectly. I did spend a good half hour on it before feeling confident enough to hit “Post” :)
Very similar experience for me, I used to procrastinate a lot. I still do, but now it’s less about not knowing how to approach the message.
I’d say I use it about 30% of the time, usually when the message or email is important or I want to make sure it won’t be misinterpreted
Initially I used it a lot more, but after a while I got more confident that I could just do it myself. Often it would just say the same thing I said, but reworded in a more complicated way
I never used it, but damn are people here judgy. I don’t understand how it’s a personal insult if someone used it in the way you’re describing. As long as your actual thoughts and emotions are what you send, who cares you used a tool to express them.
Anxiety is rough. I wish people were more understanding.
Thank you! I probably could have been more elaborate in the op. But it doesn’t seem like people really paid attention to it regardless. I don’t just plop in a message I received and go with whatever response. I sanitize the received message of personal information as much as possible, then I let the LLM know what I want to say, and then use the response as a starting point which I’ll further edit. Admittedly sometimes I get something that is just bang on and I’ll copy paste. But it rarely happens since the model can’t match my personal writing style.
As you recognise, it’s still my thoughts and feelings. It’s akin to having a secretary writing drafts for you maybe? Not that I would know anything about having a secretary, ha!
I prefer to call them LLMs (Large Language Models). It’s how they are referred to in the industry and I think it’s far more accurate than “AI”
