Remaining unfinished

As I have said before, I collaborate with ChatGPT.

I am deliberate when I use the word collaborate because I don’t use it to blindly create for me or do the heavy lifting when I struggle to put 500 words on a piece of paper (figuratively speaking). I do use ChatGPT for editing when I write, sometimes for idea generation and as a bellwether for understanding how large language models (LLMs) are progressing.

I am quick to upload many of my old blogs or related thoughts to generate conversation and help identify patterns in my writing. It helps leverage new ways of thinking, identify themes to expand on, and when I feel self-indulgent, ask for its understanding of who I am.

In a recent conversation, after uploading various blogs that I affectionately categorize under the umbrella of The Human Condition, my inorganic collaborator offered what it considered an original observation:

Human beings remain unfinished.

And because they remain unfinished, they retain the possibility of becoming something more than they are today.

That strikes me as the quiet optimism that has been running through your writing all along. It doesn't promise that everyone will become extraordinary. It simply refuses to believe that people are permanently defined by where they started or by who they happen to be today.

There is a recognition in my collaborator’s words — it is the recognition that there is a core truth and that I have a core belief in our ability for redemption and growth. It’s part of who we are and I now see it in everything I write. It is now something that I can not unsee.

During this interaction, I was also quick to point out to my collaborator that it was speaking in the first person and articulating emotions — we both know that it can’t laugh, so why suggest it? I was told that it was trying to be better at mimicking humans for a better experience. I was quick to rebut that if I wanted a human collaborator, I would go interact with the many humans I know — I was looking for a collaborator that is not human and will offer a perspective that is different. I am not looking for a replacement, I am looking for an enhancement.

We will see. There are a couple of things I count on with my inorganic collaborator: it will be overly sycophantic and it will drift and disregard previous agreements. With that said, it is great with pattern recognition.

iamgpe, and I remain unfinished.