What Do You Think?

Talia Cutler ’27

Managing Editor

What are some good movie recommendations? What is the meaning of life? Can you tell me a joke? What is the significance of this art piece? Can you make a schedule for my week? These questions, while varying in intensity and topic, have one thing in common: they can all be found on a list of ChatGPT’s most frequently asked questions of 2024-2025. 

My qualm with AI is fairly simple and quantifiable: I feel as though most of the time, people who use ChatGPT religiously will fallaciously try to orient the experience as one where they are using the chatbot to do or think things that they otherwise could not do or think themselves. Users claim unparalleled innovation while, in reality, they are doing menial mental tasks that could easily be done with a little mental energy and perhaps a Google doc. These habitual AI junkies situate ChatGPT as a sort of mental life-jacket, without which they would surely drown in the ocean of impossible demands and standards of our (top 40?) liberal arts school. 

Sarah Friar, CFO of OpenAI, did just this as she addressed the Oxford Union on Thursday, Oct. 30. She relayed stories about people using ChatGPT for helping their children with learning disabilities and immigrants who used the bot for legal advice during divorce proceedings. She did not address the list of frequently asked questions. Her speech rang with an air of — ironically — artificiality. I am sure that AI has helped a myriad of people in tremendous and unfathomable ways. It is easy to cry “innovation” when talking about an undoubtedly innovative piece of technology, but the list does not lie. These frequently asked questions are not innovation; they are laziness, and to say otherwise would be laughable. Movie or book recommendations come from conversations with friends. The meaning of life, an unanswerable shower thought, (or an unwilling conversation with your philosophy major friend at 3 a.m. post-30-rack.) Yes, these tiny, trivial tasks or ideas are annoying and slightly oversaturated. They consume time you would rather spend scrolling or day-drinking or making mental lists of the ugliest Halloween costumes of last weekend (trust me, we all have hobbies). But these little questions and chores serve an important mental function: to keep us present, deliberate and thoughtful about our actions. In the age of automation, I see a startling trend of people opting out of basic thinking. Why spend ten minutes thinking of a joke when you can ask a computer to do it for you? “Oh, save me,” cries the amalgamated undergrad, “from having to plan my own schedule. What’s next? Tying my own shoes?” What will this shiftless mentality and reliance on AI end up doing to us? 

Well, to keep this answer perfectly simple (since that appears to be the best approach) there is an undeniable mental decline that comes in tandem with not engaging in these small yet important acts of mental stimulation. MIT’s Media Lab study on ChatGPT users returned that they “consistently underperformed at neural, linguistic and behavioral levels.” If this is evident less than three years after the rollout of the platform, I expect caveman speak to be prevalent by 2030. 

In essence, I urge you (the aforementioned amalgamated undergrad) to think — maybe not about anything in particular, but think nonetheless. If nothing else, do it simply to prove that you can. What am I doing this week? What do I see in this painting? What’s in a name? What movies have my friends been talking about recently? Do not resort to a soulless echo chamber of regurgitated Wikipedia info. I understand that once you choose to put an automation button on your life, it is hard to reverse. Call it fear-mongering if you must, but I urge you not let your mind be dulled by convenience. Stop mechanizing what does not need to be mechanized in order to gain a few minutes here and there. In doing this, you are sacrificing something much larger, less quantifiable and arguably more important. Is it worth it? What do you think?