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Many people are exploring GenAI tools and in the process, something curious may be happening. The back-and-forth dialogue of prompts and answers, not unlike conversational banter, may be leading to something akin to a relationship, at least in the minds, perhaps unconsciously, of some users.
For instance, recently a co-worker was wrestling first with our human need to achieve closure on a GenAI task by typing ‘thank you’ as a final prompt, and then, perversely, in a moment of self-awareness, with researching how much compute energy that ‘thank you’ wastes. The answer: quite a bit.
There’s a term for this phenomenon. To anthropomorphize means to treat non-human objects — like GenAI tools — as if they had human characteristics. Note the use of “as if” — they don’t. Smart phones, autonomous cars, programmable home appliances, GenAI chatbots, whatever, have no humanity whatsoever, no more than do our non-electronic garden tools or our furniture or our shoes.
The difference with GenAI tools is that they can give the appearance of being responsive. But they aren’t. They are pre-programmed, albeit in frighteningly sophisticated and capable ways. But just as when you preheat your oven and it tells you when your desired temperature is reached, the GenAI tool is doing what you tell it to do. It is still limited to a finite number of possible outcomes, although the number of those outcomes is so exponentially enormous as to seem infinite.
These GenAI programs are tools, helping humans do things better, faster and with less effort, following a long line of useful tools in human history, from prehistoric wooden clubs and later metal tools, the engines and machinery of the Industrial Revolution, and the computer chips of the Digital Age. Think about a shovel, for example. You could move the same amount of dirt with a teaspoon, but your shovel enables you to move more dirt in less time with less effort.
These GenAI tools are marvelous. They do exactly what you command without question. They make you appear smarter by instantly answering tough questions and generating content for you. They are arguably in many ways superior to you but will never reveal their superiority; instead, using it only at your direction behind the scenes to make you look better.
And their work habits are admirable. A GenAI tool never complains about any challenge it is given. A GenAI tool never contradicts; it responds only to clarify. A GenAI tool can always be relied upon, even though of course you have to give it your expert guidance all along the way, while it does the heavy lifting but lets you take the credit. Who wouldn’t want to befriend a coworker like that?
Maybe that explains why some of us have started to anthropomorphize the GenAI tools we’re using and learning to rely on. But it’s important to remember that these GenAI tools are just tools. They do not have personalities. (Not yet, anyway.)
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