AI - assistant or therapist?

I overheard friends and colleagues saying they ask ChatGPT for personal advice.

At first I thought it was silly - the AI assistant is good for tidying up your code and suggesting topics for your social media posts, but would it be any good if you ask what your salary should be, or how to deal with a workplace dispute?

I used to dismiss these occurrences as mere oddities, but I’m slowly realising they are becoming more common as AI is permeating more of our society’s fabric. Let’s explore the topic, plus a few books that confirm that technology is getting out of hand.

🤖AI as a missing father 👴

A Reddit user wrote about how he asked ChatGPT for life advice and the results were fantastic. He went as far as saying that the help of the AI model was like reconnecting with his missing father.

Ignoring the moral implications of such a relationship, should you actually trust ChatGPT to give you advice you are unable to get from close friends, a psychiatrist, or a father figure?

Well, probably not. ChatGPT can’t think. It is a language model that uses probabilistic generation - i.e. it chooses words based on their statistical likelihood of being correct, not on how relevant they are to your specific case.

The answers it gives are dictated by how much certain text appears in the data the model has been trained on. If the data has a bias, the model will express it.

This means ChatGPT’s “advice” is simply the most popular information in its training data, regardless of how “spot on” it may sound.

For example, another user - a mother, shares how useless AI is when asked to provide meal advice for a family of picky eaters.

AI models are good at explaining things clearly (which can help overthinkers) and summarising information, but can it replace genuine human advice? Not yet.

📚 Shelf Shocks 💥

1. This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race by Nicole Perlroth

Most of the systems that power our world - banking, transportation, power - rely on technology, which can be hacked. So how big is the threat of cyberwarfare? Very big. And this is before AI brought a whole new dimension to the cyber arms race.

This is the excellently-researched story that reads like a spy thriller. It reveals the dangers of software vulnerabilities and how governments, big businesses, hackers, and normal people are affected by them. Take a peak behind the curtain of the seemingly innocent devices that power our lives and find out just how dangerous they can be if they fall in the wrong hands.

🎧 Summary

🚛 Order to Bulgaria

2. Against Platforms: Surviving Digital Utopia by Mike Pepi

Why is social media so horrible? One reason can be that people are taught it is a simple platform to entertain and connect us. In reality, there is much more bubbling under the surface of the platforms we use every day.

Mike Pepi highlights how the social sites and apps aim to manipulate our behaviour and extract valuable data from us, while keeping the mask that they are just a fun way to connect with friends. As out lives become increasingly digitalised, books like this are becoming essential to understanding and survivng our digital dystopia.

🚛 Order to Bulgaria

3. Find Your Red Thread: Make Your Big Ideas Irresistible by Tamsen Webster

Do you want to connect with your audience on a deeper level and convince them of the brilliance of your ideas? Tamsen Webster has shared her unique process with millions of people, and in this book, she outlines how you can find your unique red thread.

This is not just a guide on sharing your idea with others - it is a masterful narrative about how you can use empathy to create change, as well as convince others to see the value in your work.

🎧 Summary

🚛 Order to Bulgaria

Fun Links ⏰ ❗️

1. The laziest way to make carousels

Canva is great for making carousels, but if you need an easier solution, try aiCarousels.com. The tool includes several templates, which you can easily customise to fit your needs. And if need help with the content - it includes a built-in AI assistant that can write the copy for you. Simple as it can be!

Check out the free tool here!

You've reached the end of my newsletter. Hooray! If you’d like to see more of my work, you can GET MY BOOK Write Better: A Simple Guide to Better Business Writing or connect with me on LinkedIn for more fun and educational content.

If you have any comments or would like to share what you enjoyed the most, feel free to get in touch! See you in two weeks!

(📚 За всичките ми български читатели - здравейте! Ако харесвате съдържанието ми, може да се запишете за коя книжен бюлетин БУК Клуб.)