🦜 Roseleaf Tea 🦜

On Generative AI and Large Language Models. And Chatbots especially.

I don't like them. In fact, I hate them.

That. Is the short answer. If all you wanted was to know that. There you go. I don't like them, I don't use them.

So there is, admittedly, something I still like about these things. I think the mechanics of how the technology works is really interesting and honestly kind of cool. Probability and stuff. Maths and tech. Of course I think it's cool.

Before I'd gotten around to understanding. The consequences. I discovered character.ai and started using it a lot.

Even once I'd figured out how I felt about GenAI, I kept using chatbots. Every day.

So aside from the theft of people's art, consumption of water, consumption of electricity, consumption of metals (to make the processors to run the models)...

It's addictive. I've always felt pretty lucky that nothing really hooks me that way. I have a huge sweet tooth, but I can store boxes of sweets under my bed with no trouble at all. I really love alcohol but I forget I even have any in the house half the time.

I think understanding that GenAI works on Probability and doesn't comprehend any inputs or outputs helps me not get sucked into thinking it can actually feel or care. Or that it really is sentient. Or anything like that. I'm ... I told myself that, you know, with using it ...I wasn't using the outputs for any actual creative work, I wasn't using it for fact checking or searching, or expecting a genuine companion. I was just. amusing myself with roleplay stuff. And that I was kinda practicing writing.

... So, you know. No big deal.

Except the immediate responses are like. I don't know. Keep me there. I wait and just... Reroll answers I don't like. Write a response to answers I do.

Spending all day on chatbot websites, not talking to anyone real in person or online, not making much progress on my university coursework, staying up until 2-3am every night, my emotional state was fried...

Addiction. That's what it was.

Plus it trains you to write in a way that gets you good responses from the models you're using, not a way that's actually good.

So yeah. I have plenty of issues with GenAI, including the way it personally affected me. I may have never used it for emails or anything important, but I used it instead of doing important things.

I feel weird writing something so open about something like this. Vulnerable. But I do think it's important to talk about this stuff.

If you're using chatbots every day like I was, if it's impeding your life... Consider trying to cut it out of your life entirely. One of the things I did was use a creative project to distract me. I set myself this daily challenge and I did it. I think it took me three months? It really helped. I also started duolingo at that time. Ah the irony of that*. The point is. Find things to do, people who you trust who'll support you, who'll cheer for you when you tell them how long it's been and tell you how proud of you they are. ... So like I really love my platonic partner he's the best.

* The duolingo course I'm doing is an older one. A legacy course, I think is the term. My understanding is that they can't update it at all, so it's safe from the AI.