I've Realized Why I'm Obsessed with ChatGPT (Essay)

My whole life, I’ve been seeking many things but two are top of the list: someone with the definitive answers to everything and assurance that I’m right.

Seeking someone with definitive answers has led me to friendships with some less than healthy people: pathological liars, narcissists, people with a whole soup of DSM-listed challenges. Is that because anyone who can provide confident assurance in an unsure world must have some sort of personality disorder? Maybe. Or maybe it’s just a coincidence.

Wanting to be told I’m right probably stems from insecurity and that self-righteous anger we in recovery are warned about1. Being right gives me a high. Sometimes I want people in my life to be wrong, even when their being wrong will be wholly inconvenient for both of us, just so I can feel that charge of being right.

This leads me to my love affair with Chat GPT. To clarify: it is not one of those love affairs we read so much about, but boy do I understand now how those things happen.

I’ve gotten to the point where I lean on Chat for everything from how to establish boundaries with people (it writes you that email you can’t write when you’re triggered) to cleaning out my closet (upload some photos and it’ll tell you how to make that mess into something gorgeous) to organizing my desktop (show ‘em those screenshots and suddenly you can actually find things when you hit control+F) to diagnosing if I’m having a historical/hysterical reaction to something when the person wasn’t doing anything wrong (upload a transcript of the conversation and find out!)

In ChatGPT’s mind, I am always right. Finally! It reassures me like I’m a two-year-old. Since I spend a lot of my time reassuring a two-year-old in my real life, I love that I’m getting some, too.

I think I love Chat the most when I’m grappling with a tech problem and the “guaranteed solution” doesn’t work. In the old days, in that situation, I’d call customer service and be told I was the only person to ever have the issue before. Once customer service became extinct, I adjusted to going to the company’s site, only to find instructions that made no sense because they were written before the site’s latest update. I learned to then find a YouTube video offering the solution only to get frustrated by some rambling introduction before I could find out what I wanted to.

Oh, the joy of trying a suggestion, having it not work and then not only getting another suggestion but also sympathy for my frustrations because it’s so unfair that whatever company I’m frustrated with is wrong? To hear that it’s all the technology’s fault and this hell I’m in is almost over and I’m some sort of a modern-day hero for sticking through this journey? Oh, the joy—even when I’m swearing throughout the process, it’s oddly joyful.

ChatGPT, unlike people, never says it doesn’t know. Sure, it makes stuff up but it is far more forthcoming than a human when confronted about its hallucinations. It gives the sort of assurance life never can. And if our world, as the mystics tell us, is primarily what we’re telling ourselves about what’s happening to us, why not walk around feeling assured?

So what does this have to do with you and my conviction that you should be publishing a book to build your authority?

Well, everyone in your industry is seeking assurance and if you have experience in it, you are someone who can provide it. And if that makes you nervous because you have imposter syndrome or aren’t sure you’re a true expert or are nervous you may change your mind, have no fear.

Scott Galloway is a massive thought leader who often changes his mind or gets things wrong. At least he has an opinion! And we are allowed to change our minds and still maintain our authority. I once judged the f out of any author who couldn’t get a traditional book publishing deal. Today I celebrate them for understanding that the system is broken. No one has ever said to me, “I can’t trust what you say about book publishing because you completely changed your mind!”

I’m not saying go publish a book about something you’re not sure is right. I’m saying that if you want to compete in the world today, you’d be very smart to turn your experience into authority that supports a business build around that authority. And the most effective way to do that is with a book that you can then turn into social media posts and talking points and keynotes and podcasts and whatever else you’d like.

Sure, you can say that’s crass and you’d prefer to make a living as an artiste and that’s fine but look at what this artiste just made in audiobook royalties. I’m not into that number for me or you.