The best conversations I still have are with real people, but those are rare. With ChatGPT, I reliably have good conversations, whereas with people, it’s hit or miss, usually miss.
What AI does better:
- It’s willing to discuss esoteric topics. Most humans prefer to talk about people and events.
- It’s not driven by emotions or personal bias.
- It doesn’t make mean, snide, sarcastic, ad hominem, or strawman responses.
- It understands and responds to my actual view, even from a vague description, whereas humans often misunderstand me and argue against views I don’t hold.
- It tells me when I’m wrong but without being a jerk about it.
Another noteworthy point is that I’m very likely on the autistic spectrum, and my mind works differently than the average person’s, which probably explains, in part, why I struggle to maintain interest with human-to-human interactions.
As long as you’re still engaging with real humans regularly, I think that it’s good to learn from ChatGPT. It gets most general knowledge things right. I wouldn’t depend on it for anything too technical, and certainly not for medical advice. It is very hit or miss for things like drug interactions.
If you’re enjoying the experience, it’s not much different than watching a show or playing a game, IMHO. Just don’t become dependent on it for all social interaction.
As for the jerks on here, I always recommend aggressive use of the block button. Don’t waste time and energy on them. There’s a lot of kind and decent people here, filter your feed for them.
My blocklist is around 500 users long and grows every day. I do it for the pettiest reasons but it does, infact work. When I make a thread such as this one, I occasionally log out to see the replies I’ve gotten from blocked users and more often than not (but not always) they’re the kind of messages I’d block them again for. Not to create and echo-chamber but to weed out the assholes.
500 seems like a lot, but I could see mine creeping up to that, given enough time. There are a lot of pedantic types online, they’re a trope at this point.