Giving Away Your Mind to Technology
I was born and raised in Stockholm, a fairly small capital compared to others with a current population of approximately one million. It is made up of small islands connected by bridges, so learning to find and navigate the city is fairly easy and you learn quickly.
But, like any other capital city, when there is traffic you can be stuck. This is where Waze comes in. It is one of the apps I use regularly and is an important part of my smartphone.
A community driven navigation app that collects traffic information from the community in real time and helps me navigate traffic and find paths that have less traffic. It has helped my save endless time and kept me away from road rage.
But there is one side-effect that probably happens to a lot people including me.
When I don’t use the app for navigation, my mind becomes blank. Like a new city, where i am tourist in. It takes a few seconds to a minute for my mind to “boot up” and utilize its resources. But that is only possible just because i have stored memory of navigating the city in my mind before using any navigation app.
ChatGPT was released more than a month ago, and I have been making it an integral part of my workflow, almost as if it were a second brain. It’s like a virtual sparring partner, always there to provide a different perspective, to challenge my ideas and to offer up alternative solutions to problems.
It is like when you have seed of thought in your mind and give it to a jacked up inkubator and out comes a fully grown three. In seconds. And it feels like doping
ChatGPT is like a drug. But as any other drug it has it side effects.
Any ide that come to my mind i can use ChatGPT to produce. My output have increased extremely. Programming problems that previously had me searching internet, debuggers and in rare cases using pen papper and whiteboards have now been switched to ChatGPT. I handed my problem solving to ChatGPT.
I am not worried about my job, i am worried about my mind.
And i can already feel the side-effects, luring me back for any issue that have. Prompt engineering in my mind and thinking about if i can give away to ChatGPT and let it solve it for me.
And like the navigation app will my mind go blank when i stumble on problems that need to get solved?
But this is all part of the natural development of evolution. Evolution has shaped us and our minds to the point where we can create an entity that is smarter and faster than us; where silicon surpasses organic.
This is fascinating and scary
Ultimately, the relationship between humans and technology is a complex and evolving one, and it’s up to us to ensure that it works in our favor