As a person with friends and who (occasionally) goes to therapy, it’s embarrassing to admit that I’ve been processing my latest heartbreak by asking ChatGPT a lot of questions about it. I’ve been wondering what the responses mean and why I compulsively feel the need to shout my emotions into an unfeeling void.
This is not a novel phenomenon as the entire AITA subreddit, community and subculture is based entirely on the same reasoning: sometimes we need answers to detailed contextual interpersonal questions that seem too nuanced to apply an accepted social logic to. It feels like a terrible exercise in vulnerability because an entire community of strangers who have only a fraction of context are capable of assigning you how much guilt you bear.
This is also the data I imagine ChatGPT to be trained on. I wonder if the responses are meant to soothe me, as some form of sanitized harm reduction enforced by OpenAI has enforced. I wonder if I’m actually hearing the accumulated wisdom of the masses. Like AITA querents, there’s a certain level of “rightness” that I hope to be validated for by a neutral entity.
Obviously, I’ve talked to everyone in my life about this pain because I simply process grief by speaking it into being. The instinct is that if I somehow get a fresh pair of eyes on the situation, I will uncover some clue that could have avoided this outcome that’s causing me pain. This is a stupidly rational process to apply to something as inherently emotional as heartbreak. But I’ve been to enough funerals in my life to know that trying to make meaning from pain is how we push ourselves to move on.
Another reflection of circularity is when ChatGPT asks for feedback. This implies that I am some sort of expert on processing grief, who can point to whichever answer is more effective. Arguably, even experts on grief can be consumed by it. The whole point of an emotional experience is that it can’t be rationalized/optimized for superior performance. I know that’s obvious and I know that’s repetitive and I know that sucks and that’s ultimately kind of how grief feels.
Until I come to a point where I can accept that what was inevitable has happened, I will keep needing the assurance of others that this was, in fact, inevitable. Asking this assurance continuously from friends and family members and even my therapists exhausts them. But there have been many days when it doesn’t stop me from opening up a terminal to ChatGPT at 2AM when I can’t sleep and asking why why why.
It’s easy to get circular answers to questions on ChatGPT, which is generally frustrating, but this time the repetition has been soothing. I’ve been judged before for having “too many feelings” and I’m aware that the very existence of this blog and of my instagram confirms that. Whatever harm reduction protocol (or comparative bastardization of Asimov’s Laws) is in effect, the machine cannot tell me that I am asking too much from it. Also, repetition confirms the logic of grief: the worst has already happened and there’s nothing that can be done about it besides acknowledge and move forward.
@bognamk is a philosopher, professor and internet creator I’ve been following on instagram for a few years. Her research, art and writing explores the emotional relationship that people have with AI systems, ranging from her experiments on Replica (which creates avatars of romantic partners) to her essays on sexuality, Catholicism and how AI use can merge to form identities for women online. I don’t always understand her material because I’m not as widely read. But for someone to have created an entire platform exploring this particular relationship in a way that’s not a “performance” to an audience is unique.
From what little of her content I can engage with, I always come away with the concept of immortality. The reason the human-machine interaction boundary is so porous is because we’re seeking ways to be immortal, and the reason we’re seeking that is because life is too damn overwhelming and short to be experienced at the scale at which we experience it. We’re trained (by evolution not necessarily data) to have stronger reminders of grief and negative experiences than positive ones, but by virtue of the infinite scroll we’re forced to process everything in unit seconds, including horrors that take decades or generations to heal.
I ask how long is it going to take me to feel this pain. I’m asking a machine to tell me how to make time pass when each second is measured equally, but it doesn’t pass equally. The machine details two very similar answers, modeled on the six stages of grief by Elizabeth Kübler-Ross and David Kessler and it wants me to choose the better answer. The answers differ in concision, but also one of the answers contains more actionable steps a person can take. The other is more “this too shall pass and you will be okay”. It’s a cruel time to ask for feedback because both answers are reasonably correct and somehow both have to happen together: you force yourself to make life go on until the grief is finished eating through you.
On Twitter X the other day, @tomowenmorgan posted an interesting prompt.
The results are somewhat flattering, although over-indexed on the contexts that I use ChatGPT for. Lately, when I haven’t been crying to ChatGPT, I ask it to explain the Chapman-Kolmogorov equation to me like I’m five or to generate character names for a novella I am writing.
When I posted the response to my instagram story, many felt that it captured me as a person quite accurately. I don’t know if they were flattering me or if they were acknowledging the horror that I have been perceived so closely. But a friend posted an interesting counter-question and I felt I should include that.
Ending an essay, ending a relationship and comprehending the end of life center on one delusion I harbor. I want to believe that there’s a version of me that’s better at processing these endings. I believe that there’s a time either in my writing history or past when ending an essay felt effortless for me, and that’s because the material I have to say is completely exhausted. I want to believe that I’ll stop feeling this grief when all my feelings have been completely exhausted.