Celebrating 10 Years of Survivorship
February 5, 2025
“Thank you, Diane, for sharing your cancer journey with us as you continue to inspire and provide hope to so many.””
– Sandy Neves, in response to my last blog post
Okay, so THIS was inevitable.
First off, honest disclosure. After roasting artificial intelligence (AI) a few times last year in my social media messaging and blog posts, I signed up for the $60 a year version of ChatGPT at year-end, because well . . . because.
Since then, when I would have previously turned to WordHippo to find a better descriptive word for “important,” or to Google Chrome to search for a better phrase for “And in the end . . .” I have been giving ChatGPT a whirl.
There is indeed a time and place when it comes to AI. So far, one of the few times ChatGPT has been worth it to me was when I needed to compare two versions of a promissory note. I uploaded both, and boom, it promptly spit out what the differences were between the two docs. That was super helpful, plus it saved me probably 15 minutes of time.
But in early January I was working on the rewrite of a section for a future article, struggling with how to introduce a concept I had developed. I presented the dilemma to ChatGPT and found the recommendations it made to be scatter-brained and annoying, as though the Bot was BS’ing its way through, trying to bait and switch me off my topic.
You know, the way a human would do. Particularly a human of the ex-husband species type.
In frustration, I asked my Bot why it sounded like my ex-husband, just to see what it would say.
Its response was equally as lame, suggesting its job is to present information “in a straight-forward manner” and that perhaps my tone or style of communication was the reason I was experiencing flashbacks. But I should be sure to keep making specific requests, because (like the government) ChatGPT is here to help.
My blood pressure skyrocketed. So, I did three rounds of box breathing, then decided to praise my Bot for previously helping me with a YouTube video question before explaining why my ex-husband was still a trigger of unpleasant flashbacks. After that, I decided to request solutions and guidance:
This was ChatGPT’s reply:
Ah, how sweet. Situation resolved and nuclear crisis averted.
By the way, I couldn’t stop myself from asking my Bot one more question:
Does anyone beside me see the irony in THAT exchange?
My run-in with AI reminded me of what I used to say during my time in corporate America:
“What I do here is mildly rewarding and highly entertaining. And I don’t mean that as a compliment.”
To the future!
