This is the definitive collection of my essays about ChatGPT. More essays will be added as the translations from their native English language are completed. 

1. Greeting Card Business

It’s an amazing thing to want to start a greeting card business and 10 minutes after the thought hits your head you already have the website up and running and accepting payment.

Most likely your family will buy a few cards even though they don’t want to, but you’re persistent and whine in a grating voice, you call this your “superpower.” You also do that fake crying thing where you pout and make your bottom lip quiver, you put your knee on the ground and cup your hands, pleading. It’s a revolting sight and a leading cause of people not liking you.

Nevertheless, against the advice of their lawyers, a few of your friends buy some cards, also some other people, like Molly from the burger joint and old man Mr. Withers who owns the nickel soda pop shop.

For 25 minutes you’re king of the world.

Then, Priscilla (not her real name) sees your garish display of suddenly acquired wealth, and wants to start her own greeting card company. She gives ChatGPT the same prompt you did – and adds the prompt ‘make it better’ than yours.

10 minutes later her website is up and running and now you’re having to sell your cards at a big discount. 3 hours later you are out of business. Your wife (also not named Priscilla) kicks you out of the house because the business failure has caused her tremendous stress and loss of sleep.

She files for divorce and for custody of the kids and by the end of the day the judge has decided the case and has awarded her all of your ChatGPT prompts and grants her full custody of the kids if you ever have any.

This will be a true story.

2. ChatGPT and exciting new jobs!

I think one of the most exciting aspects of advanced AI and ChatGPT is all the jobs it will create.

Initially there will be hundreds, maybe thousands of NEW jobs called “prompt engineer” and this position will do advanced query strings to ChatGPT.

Here’s an example:

“Hi ChatGPT, please suggest ways to reduce the headcount of low profitability employees” Then the ChatGPT spits out a result, which the HUMAN has to analyze.

Then the human might instruct ChatGPT to “Hi ChatGPT, write their termination letters, be nice but firm. Last day will be the end of the month, give two weeks severance. Revoke clearance credentials immediately, schedule exit interviews with ChatGPT.”

Here’s another example:

“Hello Walter (the human can name their ChatGDP!) Make a list of the robotics companies that can replace our employees, save us money and also increase productivity. Do a robust cost analysis and also summarize results in bullet points for each position that can be replaced.”

If I were hiring a Prompt Engineer the first skill I would be recruiting for is someone who can be precise in their instructions. Every single “wrong” prompt wastes time and could potentially cost me hundreds of dollars.

I think another crucial skill is attention to detail. I would ask them a question like “what if ChatGPT gives you bad information or makes bad recommendations?”

What would they say?

There is only one right answer, that’s to ask ChatGPT to list any possible complications or second or third order effects that might cause conflicts in the company, or have additional costs that may have not been adequately factored in. I would ask them for the prompt they would give Walter, here is a ‘right’ answer: “Will firing 80% of the accounting team cause bad morale for the other 20%?” and then another query “how should I solve for low morale after terminations?”

I have only given one example and already you can see that the position is not for the faint of heart, it’s dogged, hard work, nuts and bolts, high level thinking.

My preference would be to hire someone from a school like MIT or Carnegie Mellon. This is a job for someone who thinks like a physicist or quantum engineer. It’s a highly prestigious position and I would have a big announcement when they are hired, something like “Joe’s hardware stores are proud to announce the hiring of (insert your name here!)

I’m getting to be an older guy but I try to keep my mind sharp and be, as  my son Michelle likes to say ‘with the times’, this means constantly learning new things and ChaptGPT was very difficult at first. There was a lot of studying I had to do – like practicing Google searches and studying the results.

If you ask Google a question you can get a million results, but I only want 1! I want only the right one!

This takes hours and hours for something as simple as “delicious recipe for meatloaf”. I had to go through about 10 results before I found the right one. The first one I tried I followed the recipe exactly – and it tasted like shit, too much salt, soggy. In the business world such a thing can be disastrous. So then I had tried another recipe, you know what? Tasted like shit. It was only until I got to the third one that I found something that tasted amazing BUT the serving size was too small, do you know why? Because I didn’t specify that I wanted a big ass piece of meatloaf.

 Now do you understand!

3. Logan’s Run

I don’t and won’t use ChatGPT for the same reason I don’t do self-checkout.

How does ChatGPT improve my life? Well, it can make some trivial commerce quicker, but do I need that sliver of commerce to be quicker? What do I actually do with that extra time? Is that 1 minute I just saved worth a cashier’s job? Is having another minute to watch TV, or whatever, a good thing? Is it worth a cashier’s job?

Is the loss of that cashier’s job one of those “learn to code” things? Is it that inevitable march of progress? I’ve been told not to resist – because it’s futile.

Is the AI’ification of your job also the same march of progress? Is a chip implantation to make you docile also progress, how many sands of rights privileges and personhood a heap? And can I take my sand, or society’s back, or is the permanence of my loss also the march of illimitable progress  

I could argue, if not logically, then loudly, that a child should be ‘repossessed’ by the State, then leased to a parent. You may object, but I would say that it’s progress. 

What is your role in society and to those other people trapped on our planet?

I choose to go to a cashier at the store, to a bank teller, to a ‘stupid’ restaurant in which I ask the waiter how their day is before placing my order. All those discrete intimacies are the human experience, to not give it to them, is also to not give it to me and to condition myself to have a numbness. Just like at that self checkout. I’m being behaviorally trained and, as I said before, I don’t capture any actual value from it, only this mysterious ‘time’ thing.

“I bring my kids to the supermarket and self checkout gets us out faster or easier,” the reality is that now your children are being trained, what comes around goes around and one day you will be just like that cashier to them and they may choose self-checkout. 

But again on the economics side, what do I gain from using AI and ChatGPT and what is it really worth?

Another thing that makes me froth at the mouth but only in my mind, is how do I capture the cost savings it creates?

I am not getting paid to take society down, nor to terminate myself when my value as a human is diminishing, when my consumer yield is low. 

It’s Logan’s Run

4. Does AI and robots serve man?

To be industriously competitive, America, if there will be such a thing in tomorrow’s tomorrow, needs to be the leader in AI, robots and spacely sprockets and other stuff.

I am told that this brings good middle class tidings evoking 1960’s sentimentality. That same era, though, I am told was racist and so on and so on.

I am also told that the future is a world without borders, that the distinctions between people can be dulled and everything that people are can be homogenized and we can be kept in cartons stuffed snugly in a box with, styrofoam packing so we don’t get jostled too much. If we feed everybody the same junk food then, as the saying goes, you are what you eat, and everybody will be junk food.

But I digress, I didn’t mean to write any of that in this essay. But, I did, and it’s too late now. As Shecky has told us (may he rest in peace) we should “forget the fart.” 

This essay asks: Who will mediate the conflict between humans, AI, and the elites? Will humans have a union? Who is the shop steward of the ‘human union’?

The end

5. Life before ChatGPT

I wonder if primitive hupeople ever stayed up at night wondering “how many deer are there in yonder land?”

I’m not sure if they ate deer, maybe it was elk, whatever it was, would they lay in their cave at night, all huddled around a fire or some shit and chit chat about their dreams and aspirations?

Jim (not his real name) “When I grow tall (pointing to the sky) I will be chief (acting as if scrambling eggs in a pan) and people will fear me (making scared face) and people want me sex from me” (gyrating hips)

Randy (his real name) “Huh, what, you want to be a chef and people will fear you and want hump hump?“

Jim “I didn’t say chef, I said chief, I will be a chief, people will be frighten me, want my dance card” (swiveling hips again)

Randy “Ok, but then why were you scrambling eggs in a pan, that’s symbol for a chef”

Hilarity ensued. Then it got ugly. Life before ChatGPT was like that.

6. ChatGPT and Robotics and

taxes

Bill Gates argues that if today human workers’ income is taxed, and then a robot comes in to do the same thing, it seems logical to think that we would tax the robot at a similar level.

European Union had proposed legislation to regulate the rise of robots, including an ethical framework for their development and deployment, but imposing a robot tax on owners.

Noah Smith argues that the problem with Gates’ basic proposal is that it is very hard to tell the difference between new technology that complements humans and new technology that replaces them, and proposes alternative options to deal with the disruption.

Lawrence Summers thinks that robots are wealth creators, taxing them is illogical and Gates’ robot tax would amount to “protectionism against progress”. 

Tyler Cowen wonders whether we should be taxing robots or rather subsidize wage labor.

Izabella Kaminska argues that a call for robot income tax is really just a call for more corporation tax and/or a wealth tax.

Let’s say (or think) there is a robot named AdamR, it will never negotiate a labor contract with an employer. It will receive no income. The only way to simulate an income tax on behalf of AdamR is to use the source material, Adam Human’s (AdamH) last annual income as a reference salary and extract from his employer’s revenues income tax and social security charges equivalent to what AdamH paid.

Whereas AdamH’s income would have changed over time had he not been fired, the reference salary cannot change, except arbitrarily and in a manner setting the tax authorities against business. The tax office and his employer would end up clashing over impossible estimates of the extent to which AdamH’s salary would have risen, or fallen, had he still been employed.

What happens when robot-operated machines that have never been operated by humans means there will be no prior income to act as a reference salary for calculating the taxes these robots must pay?

What about taxing AdamR at the point of sale to his employer? Maybe that would work.

…and maybe ChatGPT can advise me on how not not pay those taxes?

7. We need more immigrant AI to do the work that ChatGPT won’t do

8. Mary’s child

There is a large room about the size of a fast food restaurant and with the same fluorescent hygienic dirty clean.

Across the entire left wall are large framed photos of the doctor with his celebrity patients.

Mary Justif feels honored to be seeing a doctor who has treated the late Herbie Whittle, the great crooner who had recently passed away peacefully in his sleep. The family requested a quick cremation and the cause of death was never be determined, as he had wished in his will.

It was likely a heart attack, could have been old age even. Bullet holes and stab wounds suggested, without evidence, that it may have been a well planned suicide or a perfect murder, but I think we can all agree that speculation of this type is dangerous for our democracy.

But here he is, with the Dr. and they are both smiling and giving the thumbs up to the camera. When Mary looks a little closer she sees that the picture was taken right at this very same chair she was sitting in just moments ago. She touches the chair and could feel him in it. Pretending to have lost something underneath the chair, she bent down and inhaled deeply, “yes”, he was here she said to herself. Mary is finely attuned to the cosmos and all those elements and senses that normal people can’t see, hear, feel or smell

Mary’s husband, also named Mary, sits beneath the picture of the Dr. and Victoria Embowski.

What an incredible talent she is, and there they both are, smiling and the picture catches them in the middle of some funny joke that makes their eyes twinkle. Mary, only a few weeks ago, saw the new Embowski movie and absolutely loved it. He’ll be sure to tell the doctor when they meet. What an incredible icebreaker.

It’s also starting off the new relationship with the doctor on a bad footing, it is a lie.

He did see the movie but it was actually quite bad. It is the story of a young woman living in the turn of the 20th century who is a seamstress for the Mills Manor company owned by the ruthless but dashing Charles D L’amarille.

The movie opens up with the sound of horse shoes on the cobblestone street. Susanna (played by the marvelous Victoria Embowski)

As the shift bell signals the end of their work day, she and her co-workers, the dowdy Abigail (played by Ernestine Shaham) and the funny fast talking Wilma (a droll performance by Hanna Robertson) leave the red brick manufacturing building.

Suddenly, Susanna is bumped, she falls to the ground, her new dress that she carried in her hands, the one she planned on wearing to her sister’s Verna wedding (did she choose this dress specially for Jens, her sister’s fiance?)

“Hey clucky” she says (a colloquial term used in that period with a broguish accent) “look where you’re going.”

Here we first see Charles D L’amarille, raconteur, gadabout, wearing a top hat and tails, as we learn later he was on his way to a ball attended by the President of the United States.

When he looks down and she looks up, and their eyes make contact, it is exactly like the picture that Mary is looking at on the wall of the doctor’s office. There is that special twinkle.

The movie has a happy ending, Charles’ children from an earlier marriage (we learn nothing of his former wife causing a gap in the development of his character) and we hear a small murmur from the cellar that might be someone saying ‘help me’, or a cat’s meow.

Was this whole movie just a fantasy as Susanna lays on the ground after being knocked down in the opening sequence?

Mary gave this movie a 60 rating in Rotten Tomatoes and as soon as he gets home he will change it to a 90.

Mary, the pregnant one, is here to be evaluated by the doctor using the AI pregpredictnonometer which will examine over 100 points from the child in the womb and predict the child’s general health, well-being and forecast with 98.7% certainty the child’s disposition.

TO BE CONTINUED