constellations #108: who cares what the robot thinks

Hi again.

a quick note: NYC primary elections are happening today, June 24! If you live here and are reading this and haven’t voted yet, I implore you to rank Zohran Mamdani #1 for mayor and to not rank Cuomo at all. I feel inspired by Mamdani’s vision for a more affordable city for all New Yorkers & by the enormous amount of grassroots support behind him; happy to talk more if you’d like! (I like what Haley Nahman wrote about his campaign in her newsletter, too, if you want more information.) Thank you!

***

The other day, facedown on my couch, idly scrolling TikTok, I was served a video of a woman on stage. She was listing foods by superlative: the best food for brain health; the worst food for brain health; the best food for your skin; the worst food for your skin; the best food for stress; the worst food for stress. She went on and on, in a strangely calming rhythm, speaking into a microphone she was holding limply. I don’t get a ton of nutrition-related videos in my feed (and am generally pretty skeptical of one-size-fits-all health advice…) but I kept watching this one, feeling mindlessly smug when she mentioned the benefits of a food I eat a lot of and vaguely shamed when she said the opposite. 

After she had listed off a few categories, I started to doubt she was any kind of health expert at all; after half a dozen, I started to doubt she was even real. I got a sinking feeling in my stomach: Was this entire thing AI-generated? A fake voice reading fake statistics, personified by a fake woman on a fake stage? Suddenly it felt very obvious that there was nothing interesting or informative or substantive about this video at all. I felt foolish. I swiped away as fast as I could.

Doesn’t everyone have a story like this by now? Even the most cautious consumer can be momentarily fooled. And I am a cautious consumer. I’ve comforted my fair share of boomers who have been misled by fake news and politely replied to friends’ messages by saying “idk if this is real fyi!” The video in question struck me, in retrospect, for how braindead it was—no statistics named or studies quoted, of course—and for how eerie the whole thing seemed: the possibility of an unreal person—this idea of a woman; a robot, basically—positioned on an unreal stage, telling me how to care for my body. It grossed me out.

Another way to put it, maybe: The video reminded me that I have an expectation of humanity from the content I encounter online, and maybe I shouldn’t. In some regards this has always been true, I guess. A friend who has been facing online harassment recently had to grimly remind me, for example, that tons of her detractors are actually just bots. (Enough of them, unfortunately, are genuinely hateful people.) But as more and more of the internet becomes filled with AI-generated slop, maybe that expectation of humanity will—ought to?—wane.

I was thinking of this when I read something Marianela D’Aprile wrote recently about the frictionlessness of AI. She was thinking about the recent trend of people turning to Large Language Models for advice. “It strikes me that not only does ChatGPT not know the person typing how do I break up with my girlfriend? into its little prompt box,” she writes, “but also that because the person typing has no personal obligation or emotional connection (benefit of the doubt applies here) to ChatGPT, the receiving of advice from the machine will prompt no further reflection.” When we ask a chatbot to solve our problems, there’s no opportunity to truly encounter the unexpected within ourselves, she argues. And isn’t that where growth comes from?

I’ve been thinking a lot lately, too, about what the prevalence of ChatGPT will do to writing. I suppose everyone has. (When I ask my friends who work in education about students relying on ChatGPT, the responses usually range from “it’s so bad” to “it’s an existential threat.”) I’ve always struggled to identify as a writer, especially before I ever got paid to do it, and especially now that working even adjacent to writing feels more precarious and competitive every day. But nothing cements that identity for me like thinking about the frictionlessness of outsourcing the writing process to technology. Asking a bot to write something for you means you don’t have to deal with the frustration of searching for ideas, drafting and deleting and rewriting, finally figuring out what it even is you want to say and then realizing it’s just outside your reach and then pathetically grasping for it anyway. I understand the appeal of this ease and avoidance, sure. But that wrenching process is also incredibly precious to me. I don’t really feel tempted to give it away.

I keep returning to what the studies call cognitive atrophy, that weakening of critical thinking skills and breakdown of the links between having an idea and putting it into words that results from an over-reliance on these tools. And listen, I’m no alarmist; this isn’t the first time technology has majorly disrupted how we think and process and learn, not even the first in my lifetime. And still, despite the disruptions, we’ve been able to keep thinking and processing and learning. And I try not to be a techno-pessimist, because technology is tangibly making my life better all the time (even as it zaps my attention span and decimates my self-esteem). Everyone has their reasons for using the tools they use, I suppose. But on a society-wide scale, I find the concept of that atrophy profoundly depressing.

I encounter a lot of LLM-generated writing on social media. And it’s not that I think writing, say, an Instagram caption is necessarily an opportunity to tap into writing’s transcendent, invigorating power. Still, when I scroll through social media and encounter this type of robot-writing alongside something personal—photos from a big life milestone, say—I’m disappointed not to hear the actual voice of my real-life friend reflected back to me. Who cares how the robot would describe your life? I think to myself as I swipe.

“It’s difficult to write about ChatGPT (and AI in general) without sounding wistful or sentimental or preemptively nostalgic,” Marianela wrote in her newsletter; and yes, here I am, doing just that. But I guess that’s what I mean about looking for humanity: that I really am still hoping, maybe foolishly, to see the reflection of a real person when I stare at my phone, especially when I read writing on the internet, even (especially!) informal writing or so-called “bad” writing. At the very least—wistful and sentimental as it may sound, wrenching and filled with friction as the process may be—I remember that writing, even if it serves no other purpose, still makes me encounter the unexpected within myself, still connects me to my own humanity. I hold tight to that idea.

unrelated photo: sunset at the rockaways

***

Here are some other things I have been consuming lately: The Slicks by Maggie Nelson; After Claude by Iris Owens; Infect your friends and loved ones by Torrey Peters; 24 hours in Greensboro, North Carolina to write this profile of Karly Hartzman from the wonderful band Wednesday; a big sandwich kick, including but not limited to a delightful sandwich from Seitan’s Helper in Bushwick; Broadcast News, which I had somehow never seen (so good!); Love and Mercy, on the day of Brian Wilson’s passing </3; Squirrel Flower and Annie DiRusso live—a really fun show; Perfume Genius live, transcendent as always; Planting by the Signs by S.G. Goodman; Raspberry Moon by Hotline TNT; Love Is a Dog from Hell by forty winks; a walk around Central Park with an out-of-town friend (while we reminisced about camping out of bounds); an opportunity to finally sing “Portions for Foxes” at karaoke; my grandmother’s 99th birthday party, which was totally lovely and frankly inspiring; the Brooklyn Pride 5k, in the rain

***

This time last year I was: thinking about my past selves (when am I not?!); and before that, feeling nostalgic, learning new words, contemplating hibernation, & being a late bloomer

***

Thanks for reading. I hope we don’t get fooled by any weird AI content this month and we all keep our critical thinking skills fully engaged :)

xo,
M