Why I Am Not Going to Chat with a Bot
"If the use of a computer is a new idea, then a newer idea is not to use one."
A hasty imitation of Wendell Berry’s 1987 essay “Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer.”
Like everyone else, I am hooked to the Internet. I use the Internet for all things. It tells me where to go. It tells me how to work and live. It tells me everything that I ever need to know.
If I have a question that I want to ask the Internet, I just type it into my search engine. The search engine gives me several pages of links. Sometimes the answer to my query is the top result. Other times, I have to click and read through several websites. We have, I think, a relationship that allows me to find information quickly and sensibly. I do not see anything anything wrong with it.
A number of people, by now, have told me that I could greatly improve things by chatting with a bot. My answer is I am not going to do it. I have several reasons, and they are good ones.
The first is the one I mentioned in the beginning. I would hate to to lose the ability to “search.” How would I ever think for myself if a single bot answered all my questions?
I do not admire the people who try to hack these bots. I have seen their prompts, attempting to manipulate the bots into saying bad things or false things. That bots should have morals or a sense of truth does not resonate with me.
What would talking to a bot enable me? A faster way to write documents, for one thing. But this efficiency comes at cost— a loss of ownership over the creation. In order to use a bot, I would have to sacrifice the joy and learning gained in the process of writing.
My final and perhaps my best reason for not chatting with a bot is that I do not wish to fool myself. I do not want to ever be tricked into thinking that it is a human on the other side. I realize that bots can be useful for many applications, such as writing throwaway code or generating disposable images. However, I will still not chat with one.
Isn’t it crazy that Wendell Berry doesn’t own a computer? Couldn’t be me!