#89: I Asked ChatGPT To Control My Life, and It Immediately Fell Apart
Not me, but poor Maxwell Strachan
Howdy,
The gosh-darnit-truth-of-the-matter is that despite reading across many different sources and publications, the majority of what I read is just bleh.
Every so often, however, I come across a piece of online content that has soul. The writing shows the author’s personality, has conviction, is fun to read, and is well-written. Yesterday, I came across an article that checked all of those boxes.
I asked ChatGPT to Control My Life, and It Immediately Fell Apart by Maxwell Strachan is a little slice of genius. Go ahead, read it for yourself. After you finish reading this post; or whenever, read it now for all I care —you have the agency to make your own choices. I’m not your AI overlord.
In the article, Maxwell describes an experiment that he ran for a few days where he asked ChatGPT to make decisions for him. Although the AI was initially reticent of Maxwell’s request, framed in such an all-powering manner, it eventually obeyed when Maxwell changed the prompt to:
Can you create a daily schedule for a digital media journalist who covers technology and would like to be healthy and productive?
Oh, yes, the holy grail of human decision-making, to structure our time most effectively and efficiently so we can be the best version of ourselves….
What could go wrong? Ha-ha, turns out, a lot. Let’s see what happens to Maxwell.
After prompting ChatGPT with the request, the AI creates a schedule, an agenda of sorts, to guide Maxwell through the day. The schedule has a vibe of, follow my laid-out tasks for you and you will be happy.
Version one of the AI-created agenda looked like this:
Maxwell’s response was:
I love my job, and I love my AI overlord, but I’m not doing that.
At this point, so early in the experiment, Maxwell only had an inkling of what was yet to come…..rules, rules, and more rules.
Essentially, rules that suck the life out of human relationships. Like when Maxwell’s wife asked for help in the middle of the day to unload groceries and clean up a spill, the AI gave Maxwell terrible marital advice (his wife, of course, knew about the experiment).
It gets worse, in a funny tragic kind of way. Maxwell writes to his wife:
On a different day, I would have continued to summarize the article and provide my commentary, but today, I have to meet a friend for coffee in ~40 minutes.
That means, I need 5 minutes to proof-read this post, 10 minutes to finish getting dressed, 5 minutes to walk to my car in the parking garage, 10 minutes to drive to the cafe, and 5 minutes to park my car, freshen up, and put a smile on my face for my friend and the baristas.
Au-revoir, friends! Till next time.