i’ve been using chatGPT for useful things a few times a day and it’s very cool and helpful, able to do things faster and easier than web searches.

It’s pretty amazing but to me it’s just another of many useful tools, along with the many amazing and useful tools i’ve encountered since the days of the first pocket calculators.

Am i in denial about the supposed implications for civilization? Was i in denial when the first web browser came out?

Maybe it’s just another amazing and useful tool in a long line of amazing useful tools.

I had a pocket calculator in the ‘70s. I learned to program on my Commodore 64 in the ‘80s, i made my own web page in the ‘90s, etc.

You and i are talking to each other on Reddit. That’s pretty damn amazing.

All those things had an impact on society, as did the printing press, the radio, the telephone, and the rest. Air conditioning was probably one of the biggest changes to society yet we don’t think anything of it. Where would Florida Man be without AC?

Now we have generative transformers and they are amazing and useful. So what is it that’s so different about this that makes you think we are in shock or denial? What would it look like to not be in shock or denial?

It’s amazing but so were all those other things, and there’ll be other more amazing things to come.

And the news media can’t seem to shut up about ChatGPT, so what else do you want? Should they stop reporting on everything else?

Yes it’s amazing, and it will change things, but humanity will remain the same. As always we will adapt and it will become part of our lives, and children alive today will grow up in a world where they can’t imagine that there was a time when you couldn’t just ask for what you wanted from the chat bot. Just as someone in their 20s doesn’t know a world before touchscreens and facetime calls, and someone in their 50s doesn’t know a world before televisions. And all those things transformed society, making and breaking entire industries. Before the interstate highways the Pennsylvania Railroad was the most profitable corporation to ever exist. They had so much money they didn’t know what to do with it all, so they built giant beautiful train stations all over the country. Now they’re out of business and those train stations are crumbling.

As William Gibson once said, the future is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed.