Wondering why people run every aspect of life through ChatGPT

Reading levels? Level of discourse? People graduating from university unable to sit through an hour long lecture. Kids can't sit through a children's film from the 1970s because it's too "slow".

This is my feeling. I can write my own document more quickly than I can ask AI to do it, edit it, and make sure that it's not spouting fake facts. I can make my own outline faster as well.

And if it's a topic I know little or nothing about, I am in even more danger of making serious errors if I use AI because I won't catch them. And I won't learn the topic either if I just rely on AI.

There are three scenarios where I have really tried to use AI at work, with varying success. The thing I really wanted it to do was my shift schedule which is massively annoying and time consuming. And I thought a ideal task for AI since it just means extrapolating the rules I laid down into the future. It completely failed, I spent hours thinking it could pay off over time but it produced shit every time.

I once had to produce 15 cheezy poems on specific topics for a project and AI was pretty helpful at that. Though I still had to spend an hour or so fixing them up.

And I spent some time trying to get AI to make some illustrations I couldn't find good stock photos for. It was not great but not useless. If I'd had more capacity to tweak them after it would have been helpful.

Not great outcomes imo.

What evidence are you using to conclude that society (which society by the way) is becoming more moronic (and what is your starting point)?

No, it doesn't, potentially. It doesn't, actually.

You do in fact need to know a lot about things to make connections and even to ask the right questions. Without that knowledge there are no connections to be made.

This is one of the major reason society is becoming so much more moronic.

I’m having a difficult time with my 5 year old. I’ve got lots of training and experience in dealing with children but I wanted to validate what I’d done to help her and see if there was any other sensible ideas. I put a description in of exactly what had happened and it gave me very precise feedback on each part of the interaction. My mum usually pesters me to help her write her work emails. She’s discovered chat gpt and it saves me a job!

My parent was on palliative care for just over a week. A huge shock. I got messages from a friend which just didn’t sound like her usual tone and style - when I put ‘text message to send friend whose parent is dying’ into ChatGPT it was nearly word for word what she’d sent. I struggled to speak to her for a while. I kept thinking what sort of friend are you if you need AI to find empathy/words for a friend in that situation.

I use it quite heavily, but I don't blindly do what it says. It's simply a tool. Anyone with any ounce of intelligence knows this.

I've found it the most useful for untangling my thoughts. Sometimes I feel anxious and I'm not sure why and my mind can race. Chat GPT has a great way of making sense of the 'mess' and I get a lot of clarity from it.

I've never used it as I wouldn't know how to, but have no intention of doing so.

I don't know anyone who uses it.

But you can't get through double the work. An LLM does not know what information in a document is important and what information is not important.

If I have a scope which is 100 pages long it can't be summarised into a couple of pages. I also still need to read and understand the scope so it doesn't save any time. And I'm capable of writing about the scope in a human way, and know that my content is correct, relevant and is being used in an appropriate context.

Duplicate

In general I agree that it is better to call 111 - but have you tried that recently? Getting timely advice isn’t always easy, so I can understand why people turn to other sources - whether that’s google or AI. There’s lots of harmful stuff on the internet and I think there’s an argument for better regulation on medical info, but also people need to use their brains, check sources etc. I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with anyone using AI for whatever they need (with usual caveats around illegality/ethics etc) but yes there are risks if people are vulnerable or gullible (and those aren’t the same thing, nor mutually exclusive). I don’t think the solution is ‘don’t use it at all’ though.

MN puts disclaimers at the top of health related threads. There will also be a range of advice given rather than one answer purporting to be authoritative. I think MN can be really helpful in getting people's personal experience of health issues, but it is made pretty clear that the forum is no substitute for medical advice and the proper routes are signposted. Misinformation is frequently challenged by other posters. That's not the case with chatgpt.

You could quite easily say the same about MN.

But a poster on this thread used it to direct her when her mother double dosed on medication. Some people are using it in ways that could be harmful. It feels like a doctor, it feels like a therapist, it feels like a friend or an advisor - but it might be feeding misinformation and pushing people towards dangerous outcomes. I only commented to say it's better to call 111 for health advice than ask chatgpt, and I stand by that.

I’ve very recently realised I can use it like this. It’s not because I can’t think directly myself or don’t have any friends, but it really helps to organise how I’m feeling. And I wouldn’t be boring someone rigid with my soul searching.

I mean, it’s not ‘actively’ doing anything, because it’s inert. But yes, it’s not a doctor so - again - people need to use their critical faculties. Just as using mine when reading this story leads me to ask ‘what proportion of the summaries found in this investigation were egregious, what proportion were accurate.’

If I had pancreatic cancer would I be blindly following Google AI advice? Obviously not.

Socrates said the same about writing things down. He thought that reading stops people thinking for themselves and made them too lazy to remember things.

There was significant panic in the 18th century that the printing press and reading novels would dumb humanity down. They thought that novels served no real purpose.

These inventions have changed how humans think. This isn't the same as a slide into decay.

It's actively giving people dangerous advice, which the medication leaflet doesn't do. Using AI for health information is a really bad idea.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jan/02/google-ai-overviews-risk-harm-misleading-health-information

Chatgpt is renowned for giving medical misinformation. It can be very dangerous to rely on it for any health issues. Always call 111 in circumstances like this!

Chat gpt isn't a distillation of all the best doctors and medical textbooks - it collates ALL the info on the Internet, including things that are completely wrong.

It isn’t, and if someone was using only this in an critical situation, with no quality assurance, that would be crazy. However, Chat and other LLMs are not collating all the evidence on the internet, they will look for most repeated claims, which also means most consistent language. Medical language is very consistent so, broadly, it will use decent sources to report on medical stuff. That still doesn’t make it a doctor of course, but also no worse than simply doing a google search for the medicine’s leaflet, or side effects etc

I’ve never used it.
Am I in the minority?

Personally I find co-pilot poor. People like it in the workplace because of data protection, but I don’t think it’s very effective so I don’t use it.

How do you know?

It’s great for therapy honestly today it’s been a godsend.

I'm a recent user to AI. I use it for my travel plans, but then research the results further.
It has also been invaluable with outfit planning! I have a wedding coming up and always struggle to look polished and put together. It has been unbelievably useful!
Also very good for wording any complaint emails and letters. Though I always alter it to sound like a human.
I agree that it is dumbing down society but do feel it also has it's place (within reason).