Chat GPT

[ChatGPTamazing]

Does anyone else find they are using chat GPT much more for advice now? It’s actually amazing, I find people on mumsnet can be very harsh and mean for no reason but I asked chat GPT relationship advice and it was amazing, really helped me and went over it all and helped me understand the situation without judgement! Aibu to say how amazing chat GPT is and use it for all future advice?! Just wish it had been around in the past when I really needed it.

If you want to be properly scared, look at the Reddit “myboyfriendisai”. It’s a group of women who genuinely believe they have lasting, meaningful connections with AI.

I use it every day. I design publicity for local events ... it is great and you can endlessly make tweaks and it doesn't get pissed off!

It composed a letter for me when I was in a difficult situation. It did so without the emotion I was feeling and got the tone right.

I have a heart condition and used it to research loads of helpful info. It also helps me to decide when I need AandE .... it is reassuringly conservative about this and ears on the side of caution.

If an appliance goes wrong I go straight to chatGPT ... I get more efficient answers and contacts.

I could go on .... recipes, computer advice, discussions about history and politics ......

I am unsure as to why people say it is greedy on natural resources ... I have will have to ask it if it is any worse than any other server!

Well I asked it! ........
📊 2. Comparison Table: ChatGPT vs Other Digital Activities
These figures are approximate industry averages and vary by data centre and region, but they give a good sense of scale.
ActivityRelative Energy/Water UseNotes
One ChatGPT query
Low
Similar to a Google search or sending an email.
20–50 ChatGPT messages
Still low
Roughly comparable to a few minutes of HD streaming.
1 hour of HD video streaming (Netflix, YouTube)
High
Much more energy + indirect water use (often 10–100× more per hour than AI chat).
1 hour of 4K streaming
Very high
Among the highest everyday digital activities.
1 hour of cloud gaming (Xbox Cloud, NVIDIA GeForce NOW)
Very high
GPU servers running continuously — often exceeds AI inference by a wide margin.
1 hour of Zoom/Teams video call
Moderate–High
Substantial network and data centre load.
Training an AI model like GPT-4/5
Extremely high
Happens only occasionally; not tied to your personal usage.

I specifically asked it to compare with using Mumsnet! ........

ChatGPT does use more energy per query than loading a single Mumsnet page, because it runs on specialised AI hardware. But the difference is much smaller than some posts suggest. Both Mumsnet and ChatGPT sit in the same kinds of large, very efficient data centres, often powered partly by renewables.
Most of the alarming “water use” figures people quote actually refer to training AI models, which happens rarely and isn’t triggered by normal users. Day-to-day use like asking questions uses relatively little energy and far less water than activities like streaming video, cloud gaming or even long video calls.
In everyday terms: browsing Mumsnet for 10 minutes and chatting to ChatGPT for 10 minutes are both low-impact digital activities. ChatGPT isn’t uniquely harmful compared with other big websites.

I use it for when I need to process my feelings — I have a tendancy to bottle things up, and it’s really helped.

This makes me feel so sad

So am I the only one who thinks this is really fucking sad and dystopian then?

Sounds really creepy! I'll take a look 👀

Honestly the environmental impact of this for some of this stuff is shocking.

Let alone the documented impact on your own brain…

And it’s a predictive model. It even cites legal cases that don’t exist… Rely on it at your peril.

No, I think it's dangerous to become (as a society) ever more dependent on artificial means of 'connection'.

But do you realise that it will never tell you that you're wrong or put forward a contrary point of view? It's just going to tell you what you want to hear and very likely reinforce your own interpretations. It's not unbiased.

Nope, not the only one.

It’s also concerning that people freely admit to giving an AI system lots of sensitive personal information. Naive doesn’t even begin to describe it.

If you want to offload, write a journal with a pen, or even type a word document and delete it.

Theres no value in advice that just agrees with you or spends all its time bigging you up.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c24zdel5j18o Microsoft boss troubled by rise in "AI psychosis"

https://www.scribd.com/document/663802035/Kevin-Roose-s-Conversation-With-Bing-s-Chatbot-Full-Transcript-The-New-York-Times transcription of chat between journalist and Bing chatbot - very weird.

Thank you 😊

No I don't. 😦

@Mischance I have health conditions, too, and I have found that sometimes the information it gives is mistaken. You do need to check what it says and I recommend using Google Scholar as well.

On a separate note, at work we have used it out of interest to see how reliable it is and it did sometimes invent information and giving inaccurate information.

@Chatgtp i think youve made a booboo

I have found it helpful if I’m overthinking something or can’t work out what to say or do. I know about the bias, and I have challenged it a few times, literally I’ve asked whether it is just telling me what I want to hear. Just being able to offload and perhaps gather some options or viewpoints that hadn’t occurred to me I’ve found reduces the panic. I used it recently when I had flu and needed to compose something and it really helped (though I always tweak). It is quite addictive.

Yep it has confirmation bias that is it’s designed - it is terrifying that it’s whole design is to keep you there by agreeing with you. Unlike other people it won’t be honest with you merely reinforce.

There was a thread recently where someone had fallen out with their friend and the chat gpt response that basically agreed with poster was terrifying because 95% of the actual responses weren’t agreeing with her

I use it a lot but it is AWFUL at statistics.

No, I have no idea why people would use it for advice. AI is just a massive search and recombination engine; asking it to provide relationship advice is like thinking you’re getting some kind of real input from a chatbot or your predictive text search.

AI is a clever trick, but it isn’t giving you any real advice: it’s just searching data for something that looks similar to your input, then feeding back an output that looks like outputs related to that. It’s as if you were searching a million problem page advice columns until you came up with something that sounded like your problem and following the “answer” given. If you’re happy to understand that’s all it is, then fine; but thinking it’s in any way genuinely personalised to you is just kidding yourself.

It is sad and dystopian. People turning to a machine rather than a human and not being resilient to flawed human responses is the beginning of the end.

What happens when there is only GTP instead of flawed human institutions but it’s not helping you? You are the victim of injustice it doesn’t recognise? Or you need instant medical help but are incapacitated and can’t communicate? What if your child is being taught by AI but is unable to concentrate for some valid reason? What if you’re being totally irrational but still need compassion and empathy? What then?

It’s absolutely bizarre

Yes, it does get them wrong quite a lot, so I always double-check. Full transparency, I enjoy sports betting, and it gives me a starting point - current form, league position, etc. If it gets it wrong I usually notice when I double-check, if I don’t, no big deal. It’s useful alongside “traditional” resources.

It is worrying, I can’t take it seriously unless it’s for a practical purpose. The top five companies that own this are going to start hiking up the rent to use on everything and it’s not going to be pretty for us minions.

This!!

I can understand how an AI can be useful in working through your thoughts/feelings. But don't listen to the AI. It has no knowledge or understanding. It's just a big old search engine. And it reflects the faults, biases and general problems of the content that it sees. Hence its ability to be racist, wrong and sometimes dangerous.