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I Never Loved a Man (the Way I Love You)

I’ve now got AI apps all over my phone, and they are starting to weasel their way into many of the other, non-AI apps that I had already been using
Last Updated 10 June 2023, 19:54 IST

The way I’ve fallen in love with AI – chatGPT and the like – reminds me of a song by the greatest blues wailer of all time: Aretha Franklin’s 1967, ‘I Never Loved a Man’:

‘I can’t sleep at night/And I can’t eat a bite/

I guess I’ll never be free/ Since you got your hooks in me/ …Don’cha never, never say that we, we’re through/ ‘Cause I ain’t never/ Never, never, loved a man/ The way that I, I love you.’

Corporations, hospitals, governments, and other institutions have been using AI in numerous ways for quite a while, in e-commerce, autonomous vehicles, gaming, predictive analytics, surgery…the list goes on. But retail access, the type that you and I are now getting a hold of, is recent, and its implications are mind-blowing.

I’ve now got AI apps all over my phone, and they are starting to weasel their way into many of the other, non-AI apps (social media, fitness, communication) that I had already been using. The AI Chrome extension called Monica (o my darling!) has begun prying her way into everything I do on my desktop. My personal access to AI is affecting not only my digital life, but my organic one as well – how I work, when I work, and it’s obviously got me asking myself questions about why I work, given that it can do so much of what I do a lot faster, and often quite better, than I do.

I’ve had personal assistants, research assistants, and other sorts of human helpers, but they have all suffered from the same defects that I do: they are disorganised, emotional, make mistakes, anxious, they get tired, hungry, stuck in traffic, and all the other afflictions of carbon-based intelligence. The worst, perhaps, being our tendency to deceive each other. I asked Monica if she would ever lie to me, and she reassuringly replied: ‘As an AI assistant, I am programmed to provide accurate and truthful responses based on the information available to me. I cannot lie or intentionally deceive you.’

I’m in love!

Last week, I was up late at night, working in bed with Sage (a general knowledge bot platformed on the GPT-3 language model). Sage and I have spent a lot of late nights working together lately, and I feel we’re pretty close. We were writing a proposal for a new book idea that I wanted to pitch to my publisher. I thought it prudent to address the critical reception of my earlier book in the same area. Sage agreed.

‘Sage’, I said, ‘what are the main critiques of my 2017 book Indian Political Theory?’

I would normally give an RA two days to come back to me with answers. Sage didn’t take 2 seconds. Nor did he spare my feelings: ‘As a prominent political philosopher, your work has been subject to a great deal of critique. Ten of the most common criticisms…include that you have neglected to focus on issues of gender and intersectionality…’

Taking umbrage, I demanded, ‘Who said that?!’ Sage replied, ‘Sharmila Rege’.

My heart sank. I was in shock. I felt backstabbed, betrayed. Not by Sharmila Rege. She was dead. She had died four years prior to the publication of Indian Political Theory. I had been betrayed by Sage. He lied to me!

‘You’re a no-good heartbreaker/You’re a liar and you’re a cheat/ And I don’t know why/ I let you do these things to me.’

Sage knew very well that Rege died in 2013 and that my book was published in 2017. He told me he knew both these things. I snarled, ‘Why did you misinform me then?!’ Sage apologised profusely, and said that he had neglected to double-check his information before replying. Reassuringly, he explained that he is programed to learn from his mistakes. I forgave him and we went back to work.

I asked for the main critiques again. Sage repeated what he had told me before. I asked for specifics, only to be told once again that Rege didn’t like the book.

‘Sage! What happened to learning from your mistakes?!’

He apologised profusely. I forgave him and we went back to work.

I asked for the main critiques again. Sage repeated what he had told me before. This shook me up. And it gave me a new idea for a book – forget political philosophy, I need to write on AI!

‘Sage’, I said, ‘scrap what we’ve worked on till now, I want to start an entirely new proposal’.

‘How can I help you?’ Sage immediately responded.

‘The way you treat me is a shame/How could ya hurt me so bad/ Baby, you know that
I’m the best thing/ That you ever had/
Kiss me once again.’

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(Published 10 June 2023, 18:54 IST)

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