Is AI Self-serving When You Ask Questions About Artificial Intelligence?

First let me state clearly - like we're becoming required to do - this story was completely written by a human, with the exception of any online Google search assisted research on the topic of artificial intelligence (which by the way, uses AI).

In fact, the whole paradox surrounding AI's value, with regard to writers and online content creation, amounts to: "Which came first, the chicken or the egg".

For those who haven't done a Google search lately, nowadays, whenever you search for something online, AI responses are among the first answers to come up in the search results.

This prompted me to ponder over the question I asked in the title.

Curious to see what kind of response I would get, I posed a simple query to ChatGPT, and merely asked what are the pros and cons of AI for the online writing community.

In my way of thinking, this was similar to a job interviewer asking the applicant to state their strengths and weaknesses.

Naturally, you wouldn't want to come off as dishonest or insincere about your faults to a potential employer. So somehow you manage to gloss over a few shortcomings, and even manage to make them sound like assets to your character.

However, your main objective would be to do a thorough job of clarifying your strengths - allowing them to overshadow any weaknesses you mention.

This type of self-serving behavior is natural and not unusual for human beings. Would the same still hold true for AI?

I wondered.

The results of a simple AI experiment

I fully expected the results to my ChatGPT experiment to yield lots of positive answers about the pros of AI.

One of the very first positive points cited on the list of six, talked about AI enabling writers to produce a much higher volume of stories, by helping to reduce the initial drafting time involved.

Needless to say, this can cause a reduction in burnout, while at the same time, increasing output.

Being familiar with this benefit, as well as the other pros that were mentioned, I directed my attention to what AI had to say about the negatives of Artificial Intelligence.

I specifically watched for, how it would handle citing negative responses, while I paid attention to the number of "cons" in comparison to the "pros".

There were six and six.

I read and noted whether the negative points were well defined or merely glossed over for affect, and treated like not quite negative attributes, just like in an interview.

I was a bit surprised to see the admissions that ChatGPT, an AI tool, was making about popular and justifiable fears concerning artificial intelligence.

The points they touched on were adequately made and well taken.

Even issues about how writers are outsourcing their thinking to AI, to the point of becoming too dependent on it, was addressed.

Imagine that. AI warning writers about causing their "long-term creativity" to suffer.

Whether those in the writing community accepts AI as the useful resource tool it can be used for when done correctly, or they shun it altogether, the fact still remains, AI is the future and there's no escaping it.

As far as whether or not I found the results AI provided for this little experiment to be self-serving, I'd have to say yes, and here's why...

Final Thoughts

Just like that applicant in our job interview scenario, not only do you want to emphasize your strengths and not let the weaknesses overshadow them, but you want to end the interview on a positive note with the interviewer, by reemphasizing your strongest attributes, and making that the last thing they hear and remember about you.

That is exactly what happened with my AI experiment. After providing an equal amount of pros and cons in a trustworthy and believable way, ChatGPT ended the query with nothing but glowing words about AI - just like a human would.

Which begs the question: Did we teach it how to do that?

Thanks for reading :-)