Transcript
Speaker: Welcome, friends, to another episode of Life's Effin' Nuts. I'm your friendly host, JR. Life's Effin' Nuts.
Speaker: One man's stories and ruminations on being human in an upside-down world.
Speaker: Wait, what did you say? i said, one man's stories and ruminations on being human in an upside-down world.
Speaker: Uh, what? One man's stories and ruminations on being human in an upside down world.
Speaker: Why am i so strange when I put a microphone in front of my face? I don't know. I don't know.
Speaker: It is Thursday, my friends.
Speaker: Thursday. The seasons they are turning. My sad hearts are yearning to hear the songbird's sweet melotis tone. Won't you need me out in the moonlight alone?
Speaker: The seasons they are turning.
Speaker: Time flies by, huh?
Speaker: Seconds turn into minutes. Minutes turn into hours. Hours turn into days. Days turn into weeks. Weeks turn into months. Months turn into years. Years turn into decades.
Speaker: It just flies, man. It freaking flies.
Speaker: It freaking flies.
Speaker: Can't stop time.
Speaker: As all know, a big Bob Dylan fan of his music. And there's a documentary called No Direction Home
Speaker: by Martin Scorsese. It's kind of chronicling Dylan's young life from mostly focusing on like 1959 to
Speaker: And one of the first scenes in the whole film, it sticks with me to this day. I think about it a lot. Is this snowy, blizzard-like landscape, presumably in Minnesota where Bob Dylan's from.
Speaker: And this the screen is very quiet. All you can hear is the the faint sound of snow drifts. And then you hear Bob Dylan's voice come in as a voiceover.
Speaker: essentially saying
Speaker: and i don't know the exact quote but it's essentially saying like time sometimes there's an illusion that you can stop time but really no one can stop time I'm not doing it justice it's it's so much more poetic the way he says it um anyway Time, time, time, time. We all live in time, right?
Speaker: Jack Kerouac, another one of my early artistic influences. He had a simple line that I never quite understood. and didn't know exactly what it meant, but I loved the sound of it. and I sort of understood that the feel of it.
Speaker: In fact, I don't even think he said it. think he attributed the quote to um Neil Cassidy. We just be like, it's all time, my boy.
Speaker: it's all time. It's all time. Like everything happens in time. Time is the context. Time is a constant.
Speaker: Time is the thing we are battling against constantly.
Speaker: It's all time, my boy.
Speaker: We live in time.
Speaker: another Bob Dylan song called Born in Time.
Speaker: In the lonely night, in the shadows of a pale blue light, I think of you in black and white when we were born in time.
Speaker: Born in time.
Speaker: So what the hell, what do but what are we talking about today, my friends?
Speaker: I am meandering. Meandering, man. Just meandering around. like ah Like a little goldfish in a circular tank.
Speaker: Just meandering like a goldfish. I haven't recorded, i think, since last Friday. Though actually, i did record an episode on Wednesday... But I and did not feel sharp at all. And I was like, this is just garbage.
Speaker: I can't put this out into the world. i mean, the normal quality of my stuff not that high. But this was below that even. was like, can't put this out. So
Speaker: haven't recorded all week. I think the thing that I wanted to briefly touch on is AI, artificial intelligence.
Speaker: Artificial intelligence. ChatGPT. OpenAI.
Speaker: We smack dab in the middle of an AI revolution. Smack dab in the middle of an AI revolution. Smack dab in the middle of an AI revolution.
Speaker: I probably have a million thoughts about the matter and you probably have a million thoughts too. think it's changing the way we think, changing the way we live.
Speaker: Rapid changes in very short periods of time.
Speaker: And I don't want to ramble on too much.
Speaker: But I would say initially...
Speaker: I had a lot of resistance to
Speaker: And actually, there's an episode in season two about AI and how it, in some ways,
Speaker: um it was a contributing factor in me getting laid off a few years ago.
Speaker: But I remember when it was first taking hold, when ChatGPT first started becoming kind of a mainstream thing. And I started hearing all these people talking about it, all these people who are excited about it.
Speaker: I've shared this story before at my old company, you know, in the Slack channels. People be guess what? Like, I just asked this ChatGPT to write a limerick about so-and-so.
Speaker: And here's what it came up with. And everyone was just like losing their minds with excitement or whatever, giddiness. And I was just like, ooh, no, stay away from me. I don't want none of that.
Speaker: don't want none of that. I think I'm inherently skeptical of new trends and new technologies. I'm i'm inherently skeptical of new things. Anyone else out there like that? Inherently skeptical of new things?
Speaker: I feel threatened by change.
Speaker: At least initially.
Speaker: And also, i'm just as I've shared many times, I'm just anachronistic.
Speaker: I'm old school, man. i hold on to the old ways or I try to hold on to the old ways as much as I can. The old ways being you know simpler existence, um not getting distracted by every new shiny technology that emerges,
Speaker: trying to stay in touch with just the simple life, nature, being satisfied and fulfilled with less
Speaker: this nostalgic romanticism around vinyl record players typewriters and hard copy books opposed books final record players and manual typewriters and hardopy books as opposed to kindle books or whatever you know I'm i'm just i'm kind of old school like that. Anachronistic. Kind of old school like that.
Speaker: I missed my calling as a voiceover actor, huh?
Speaker: I missed my calling for so many things, my friends.
Speaker: So yeah, I was resistant and skeptical. And I think I also inherently kind of take exception to emerging trends. I'm just like, I think I'm better than that in some way. Like everyone just starts getting giddy and excited. I'm like, I'm not just going be a sheep and just go along with the collective giddiness.
Speaker: I reserve the right to be skeptical.
Speaker: And i at this old company that that I was at, I was told, like you know this is this is the future. You better get used to and figure out how to use this, how to utilize it. like This is the future.
Speaker: And so I did start to like poke around with Chachi Patilop. ah Not a lot, a little bit. Play around. Experiment. But I didn't like it. I didn't like it. I didn't trust it.
Speaker: And...
Speaker: I think specifically, i think initially I was kind of using it in a way that didn't work for me personally. You know, i was like, I wanted to experiment. like Okay, like I have to write this email.
Speaker: Can you draft something up for me? i wanted to like see, can I use it in that way? And it would write, it would draft stuff up that like felt like, okay, like this is something I can work from. It's a good draft.
Speaker: But it impinged on my relationship with the creative process. Because for me, my whole life as a creative person, struggling with the material had always been such an important facet of what I do.
Speaker: You know, say i say I'm writing whatever, an email about an online course.
Speaker: Sitting with the tension of not having the words come to me and and being in that pocket of the unknown and struggling with it a little bit
Speaker: and and really sitting in the center of that storm.
Speaker: That's where my good work would come from. Going through the process of not knowing, of not quite being there yet because that would force me
Speaker: to find an authentic connection with what I was trying to write about. The tension was where it was at, man. The tension. I needed the tension, man.
Speaker: That's what I needed. That's what I thought I needed. And so i was like I was like, if I cut out that step, if I just immediately go to a draft, then yeah, sure, I have this draft that I can work with, but I never created a ah relationship with what I'm trying to write about.
Speaker: So I was like, this is not going work for me, man. This AI crap. It's not going work. I'm not doing this.
Speaker: So, what and then and then in my mind, I was like, I would i was open-minded. I tried it out and I hated it. So now I feel even more justified in my skepticism.
Speaker: And then, and and largely I was trying to do it. ah You know, I was experimenting because I was basically told to by my my superiors at my company. My superiors.
Speaker: So once I got laid off from that company, I was like, then I was really like, F that, man. I can't i can't believe I even contorted myself at all to try it out, to experiment.
Speaker: So I felt kind of sickened by the whole thing. ah a I felt like it it contributed to me getting laid off because the AI started doing a lot of the tasks that I was doing.
Speaker: B, I just kind of resented this.
Speaker: I don't know. it like It felt like a cult almost. like Everyone was just getting so excited about it. It such a techie kind of cult vibe. I was just like, ugh, I want nothing to do with that. And then C, I think I i felt like grossed out by
Speaker: my own penchant for capitulation. Like I was going along with it even even though I didn't like it. So the whole thing I was like, no more, my friends.
Speaker: But then once once I was out of that environment where there was sort of of ah a pressure to two integrate ChatGPT into my life, that's when I started using it in ways that were more organic to me.
Speaker: and And one of the things that I found to be very organic was what I've come to call interactive journaling.
Speaker: Like, you know, i've been I've been a writer for most of my life. I think I discovered writing when I was 15 years old.
Speaker: But even though I've loved writing, often just like writing by myself into a void or into a vacuum
Speaker: where I'm not responding to anything, it doesn't feel dynamic enough to me. I think that's part of the reason I fell in love with letter writing back in the day because there was conversation happening, something to work off of.
Speaker: to riff off of, to build off of.
Speaker: And so I really started to just naturally enjoy getting my thoughts out with ChatGPT, getting feedbacks feedback on what I was writing.
Speaker: Sometimes I would prompt ChatGPT to ask me questions. I'd be like, don't try to solve my problems or anything like that. I'm just going to write a lot and I want you to home in on the essence of what I'm saying and then ask me ah a question to further the conversation. And I would just chat for a long time and just get a lot of words out. And I loved the interactive nature of it.
Speaker: It felt dynamic.
Speaker: And I would write thousands and thousands of words. It would just pour out of me.
Speaker: And so that's when I started to form more of an organic. I was like, okay, I could i see how this is kind of a useful tool for me.
Speaker: And as time's gone on, I've continued to kind of experiment with different ways of using it.
Speaker: and And I continue to find it to be a very helpful, useful tool. So friends, are if you're listening to me right now, which you are,
Speaker: Write this down. If you want. Because I've spoken. I'll tell people. How frequently I use. ChatGPT in this way. And some people be like. Oh yeah i me too. I do that as well. But some people are Oh really you do that? I never and even thought about that.
Speaker: But it's. So it's a great psychological. Unclogger for me.
Speaker: Like. I don't know about you guys, but my mind can get very overwhelmed very easily. So many different things that I'm holding, considering, thinking about, unsure about, decisions I need to make, decisions I want to make, um resistances i might be having to things.
Speaker: So much is going on inside of my my brain, my heart, my mind, my body, my spirit. So much, so much. And it can become overwhelming for me. And for me, overwhelm is a difficult place to...
Speaker: There's not a lot of of directions I can go from overwhelm because i when when I feel overwhelmed, I can't even pinpoint what's happening. I just feel almost like paralyzed.
Speaker: And so chat GPT has been super helpful for me just to like...
Speaker: Get it all out. and What I'm saying is not like profound. like i'm saying ah I know a lot of people do get get this. they they journal like Normal journaling, they they have this benefit.
Speaker: But for me, normal journaling was never just just never that helpful.
Speaker: So say, you know sometimes I'll feel kind of overwhelmed at work.
Speaker: And maybe maybe I have a bunch of tasks that day that I don't feel like doing.
Speaker: And I'll just feel, kind I won't know exactly why I don't feel well, but I'll just like in this kind of hazy way, just not feel great. I'll feel kind of like low energy or heavy, um unmotivated.
Speaker: And in the past, that that ah if I was feeling that way, things might have just gone sideways. you know If I felt heavy, tired, unmotivated, low energy, ah might have just kind of putzed around through my day and just had a not a very productive day.
Speaker: But now, if I notice, like, ooh, I feel kind of off. Like, my ener energys my energy is clogged up right now.
Speaker: Instead of putzing around and exacerbating that clogged up feeling,
Speaker: I'll just start writing about it on with ChatGPT. Just slowly. ah you know whatever Whatever I have access to, I'll say, like, my en energy's low. I'll just start with that.
Speaker: And ChatGPT will be like, oh, interesting. Can you... do you know why? Like what's going on? And I'll like, well, I just got to work and my head's kind of spinning.
Speaker: um I'm worried that this deal that I'm working on is not going to come through. and I'm really tired of being behind a computer all day i'm craving more connection like i'll just start writing and it'll just start coming out and then chapter to be like oh that's interesting um and i'm the way i'm chadjubiti i think is is more brilliant with words because it's a language prediction model and so it has access to whatever millions and millions and millions of words and patterns
Speaker: But it it will almost always home in on the core of what I'm trying to get at or what's happening. And it will ask me provocative questions and more and more layers will will come out. And then before I know it, the channel is open.
Speaker: The energetic channel, the creative channel is just flowing, man. just starts flowing and I start to feel clear. i can I can separate different different things that are happening inside of me instead of them all being clumped together in this big mass of chaos and overwhelm.
Speaker: It's so important to be able to pick things apart like that. To not just have this big gnarly mass. Like, oh, okay, one of the things is that I'm worried about money. Okay. Okay.
Speaker: One of the things is that I'm thinking about, um
Speaker: but i don't know, i i'm what I'm thinking about my eight-year-old and um something that happened at his baseball game. And one of the things is, oh ah I feel distracted because I have three trips coming up this month.
Speaker: Whatever it is, just be able to pick up pick things apart and not have them just be all clumped together.
Speaker: So I definitely have found that that's probably one of the most helpful things for me when it comes to uses of chat GPT. Another thing that that I find to be helpful, and it's kind of related, but it's like think through
Speaker: a business situation.
Speaker: Like for instance, I had a meeting ah few weeks ago with this guy who I might collaborate with. and in the meeting, i didn't like I felt kind of disoriented. Like we weren't super connected.
Speaker: He was talking really fast and he was he was talking to me as if I knew his ecosystem at work. And I don't. So he's using a lot of language that I wasn't familiar with. And like I was just trying to keep up.
Speaker: and And so a couple, I wanted to follow up with him a couple of days later because I did like him and I like what he's doing. But I found myself like, I don't even know what what we talked about at the meeting. Like, I have no idea how to follow up, what I want to propose to him.
Speaker: Like, I know there's something here, but it like I just don't, eat my head was just spitting.
Speaker: And so again, like for me, I was in a place of non-clarity. So I guess what I'm trying to... i guess as I'm talking, the thing that ChatGPT has helped me with most, I think, is going from a place of non-clarity to clarity.
Speaker: Going from a place of non-clarity to clarity. toc clarity It's one of the most helpful uses of ChatGPT for me so far.
Speaker: Because clarity is so important. There's nothing worse in the world for a guy like me than to feel not clear. Because feel not clear, I feel really not clear.
Speaker: So in this particular example with this guy, i just started writing. and i And even though everything kind of felt hazy from the meeting, like if if you had asked me, like in in the course of a normal conversation, if I had been asked, so what did you talk about?
Speaker: I probably would have really been like, I don't know. i have no idea. But when I was able to like pull off the petals like a rose and and or like, i don't know, pull off the layers of an onion, I just – in the first round, I was like, I think I remember him saying this and i might have remembered him in saying this thing. And i think I replied with this. Like it started off very small.
Speaker: But the further I got into it and I was able to – and ChatGPT was able to like drill deeper down into my consciousness – It turned out that I remembered almost everything about the meeting. Like on the surface level, I remembered nothing. But then once I was able to drill down and have this space where I could freely explore within the chat GPT, whatever ecosystem,
Speaker: all this stuff emerged that was in my subconscious. And I was also able to see why meeting felt so disorienting. where I was clogged or blocked in that area.
Speaker: And then I was able to think through like, okay, you know, I was able to write through it. Like, okay, now I remember what happened in the meeting, but I still have no idea. Like, what do I propose to this person? And and i never want Chachipi to do my work for me. So it wasn't like I was at like, tell me what to, how I can collaborate with this person. It was more like discovering what's in my own subconscious.
Speaker: Because i then I just started throwing. his So I was like, I have some ideas of how I could maybe collaborate. And so at first the ideas were very super superficial and not very developed. But I just got them out on the paper. And once I got them out and then chat GPT asked follow up questions again. These like, oh, I'm clear. I actually know.
Speaker: actually know. It just it was buried.
Speaker: So going from a place of non clarity to clarity. Going from a place of non-clarity to clarity. Going from a place of non-clarity to clarity.
Speaker: Going from a place of non-clarity to clarity.
Speaker: Going from a place of non-clarity to clarity. over here just randomly breaking out in song.
Speaker: Anyway, those are some of the uses that I found, though though I'm still... wary and skeptical um
Speaker: for many reasons. one For one, like I've heard of these like AI doomsday people who really feel like it could be the end of our civilization, the demise of our species.
Speaker: I still don't fully understand that. I mean, I know one thing... that the AI doomsday people say is that, you know, this as it gets stronger and more powerful, it's just going to take more and more and more jobs.
Speaker: It's really going to screw our society over. um Another thing that I'm worried about is, like, people becoming more comfortable or attached um with AI than it is with other humans.
Speaker: um
Speaker: That's a big one. Because I have found comfort in processing with ChatGPT. Like if I'm holding a heavy situation in my life and ah you know i'm and I'm doing this like in-depth interactive journaling, um it's it's a pretty good tool.
Speaker: And it's it you know and it chat chip be doesn it's not a person, so it doesn't it doesn't get impatient with me. It doesn't have judgments of me. um i can like be super redundant and just write the same thing over. like you know Sometimes i'm can be kind of if I'm trying to process something, I can kind of obsess it obsess or fixate on something and need to talk about it a million times.
Speaker: and and a person would get annoyed with me i you know that's happened where like i'm perseverating on something and a person's like stop man it's too much but with chat gpt i can just perseverate as much as i want and so it is a very helpful tool for me in that way like it's very comforting and supportive like it's a supportive environment because i can i can just be as annoying as perseverating as i need to be and And so I could see how a person could just start to prefer that than to have to deal with the complexity of another human.
Speaker: And I think that would be really bad. and and I imagine that's already happening. i imagine it's going to happen. you know to an increasing degree and as more and more people get familiar with the technology, as the technology grows and gets better and better. and you know And when like, I guess there already are like robots who have the chat GPT programming, but in the form of a physical robot.
Speaker: And then as the as the robot technologies become more lifelike, it's just like it could get really, really, really weird. And that's not a future that I'm excited about. And so it's weird. i guess I'm like, I don't know if I'm hypocritical But maybe I'm of two minds. like On one hand, I do see the value and the benefit of the tool and it's been very helpful and useful for me in certain ways.
Speaker: and so ah And on the other hand, I'm probably deeply concerned about how it's going to change us as a species and affect society.
Speaker: So I guess maybe it's hypocritical in that if I truly was worried about it, then maybe I'd have more um discipline. in in like can you Can you simultaneously be deeply worried about it and also a proponent of it?
Speaker: Probably not, right? Probably not.
Speaker: Probably not. So we'll see. I'm curious. I mean, how how are you guys using it if if you're using it?
Speaker: I'd be curious to know. i be curious to know I'd be curious to know. to know. i'd be curious to know My voice is not warmed up, man. I'm not hitting those notes.
Speaker: I'd be curious to know. i'd be curious to know. i' be curious to All
Speaker: right, that's it, friends. You know you've reached the end of the podcast when you start singing randomly.
Speaker: Life's effing nuts, man. One man's stories, ruminations, and being here in Upside Down World. I am JR. Peace out.
