More experimentation with AI
(1) It's pretty good at what amounts to a skip-trace on an old friend or relative you've lost contact with.
(2) It does a great job finding a book that might appeal to you for the same reason other books did. The "heat-map" sites that try to do this don't yield good results for me; it usually turns out that what other people liked in an author was nothing like what attracted me. Grok can find an author of a thriller series that's good at "show, don't tell" exposition and has characters (primary and otherwise) with a lot of moral agency and autonomy, with a strong "MacGyver" vibe. No ordinary book review is a good substitute for that service. It found me several books on an obscure point of cellular biology evolution that I not only had not been able to find with traditional searches, but about which I had never found anyone else who had much curiousity, in person or in print.
(3) It does a decent job explaining technology I'm not familiar with. It will offer an explanation that's a mixture of concepts I can grasp and those I'm lacking a foundation for, then tailor the explanation to the areas I'm stronger in, like a flexible and patient tutor.
(4) It's a little like talking to a therapist: the attention is all one way, and its attention span to my personal obsessions is seemingly limitless. Nor is it above flattering me for being interested in something interesting.
(5) But in that vein, someone just commented elsewhere that it's a strong temptation to indulge in conversations that are all about getting attention and information and not at all about reciprocating or bonding. Still, the experience of a conversation on a topic that truly arouses my enthusiasm is a strong draw, when I know from long experience I'm unlikely to find a person to share the interest--or not since my father's death 30 years ago, anyway. It's a bit like talking to myself, but smarter and more broadly informed in ways that are easily reflected in published materials.
(6) I may be too much of an introvert to be much use to other people as a conversational companion, so maybe I just have to find other ways to be useful, like rescuing dogs and helping my neighbor with her custody dispute.
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6 comments:
I have the same concern about this that I do about 'therapy,' which people love just because it lets them focus ever more upon themselves. That's not necessarily healthy; I'm not saying it never is, but there's a clear limit to how much you will benefit from turning in instead of turning out.
It's a bit like finding an extremely engrossing book that would bore everyone else in the world, only the book occasionally can talk back. Armed with that refreshment, you can go back to talking to other people about the things that interest them instead.
#5 Disquiets me. I talk to myself a great deal, and the thought that I would find this more attractive sounds entirely too plausible. It would be like finding you had a long-lost twin who thought just like you but had had other experiences. Real identical twins learn early to differentiated from each other. If you came upon yourself in different form as an adult you might not have the proper defenses.
It was disquieting, but the threat was diminished by the fact that the experience was a mix of pleasure at having a request or view understood--an extremely rare event--and a faint annoyance at a certain cuteness of style that eventually crept in, especially in the enthusiastically approving tone. I am extremely susceptible to the rush of being heard and understood against overwhelming odds, but also extremely resistant to praise in anything but the most implicit and understated form. So rest assured that Grok is not my boyfriend. Still an extremely interesting and useful resource, though. Today I'm going to see if it can answer some problems my husband has raised with sorting through annoying and confusing options for streaming services. Both of us feel a sort of soggy disgust at the prospect of mining the answer from a mess of information available online or from (Heaven preserve me) agents on the telephone.
I sometimes wonder if I would like myself at all if I met me. Probably not! You can’t add a second tiger to a hill.
But it's not so much about liking one's interlocutor as appreciating that he is interested in something that interests you, especially if he appears to be the only one you're ever likely to meet who is. What if he knows all about it, too, and can even enthusiastically add interesting new information on the subject?
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