I had the troubling, yet enlightening experience of living without ChatGPT for two days. My hiking trip in remote South Texas cut me off from all cell and internet connectivity. I became a little bored and had to solve more problems on my own—shockingly, I learned how boredom and problem-solving make me smarter.
At first, I habitually reached for my phone to research various facts and advice on ChatGPT. Tell me more about the Rio Grande River. How can I treat my dry sinuses when in the desert? But, alas, I remembered I was severed.
Gradually, I found some relaxation and eventually experienced something I rarely feel—boredom. Boredom can be surprisingly pleasant and even therapeutic. I thought about whatever. Took a nap. Connected with nature. In the end, I felt recharged and refocused.
I remembered back to the mid-1980s, during the early days of my career, when the pace was less intense. Roughly once a month, I would run out of things to do. In those pre-Internet days, my mind meandered, relaxed, read, and subconsciously pondered. Often, a Eureka-like bolt showed a valuable insight: a new opportunity, or a better way to manage something, or how some task was pretty worthless. My boredom proved to be a valuable gift. A gift that provided both insights and recharging.
Sadly, my boredom has disappeared as media, then social media, and eventually AI became multi-channel, addictive, and ubiquitous.
Now, with AI, I’m beginning to worry that my problem-solving skills may disappear, just like my boredom has.
On the first day of my hike, a modest pain developed behind my right kneecap. For the first time in two years, I had to solve my own medical problem without ChatGPT’s pithy and confident recommendation. I assessed that the pain was modest. I reflected on my history of never feeling such pain before. And I weighed my excitement about the upcoming 10-mile hike through some majestic canyons. I decided to rest my knee that night, do the hike in the morning, and stop only if the pain flared. I joked to my friend how I was “adulting” by making decisions on my own.
During my college years, when I first started “adulting,” I could still hear my mom’s voice in my head about what to do. Now, even though I was severed from ChatGPT, I could still hear its likely response in my head: “As a 63-year-old man, remember you want to hike for many more years. Don’t risk creating a major knee injury. Enjoy nature in other ways and walk at most only 1-2 miles tomorrow.”
Thanks to my “adulting,” I instead enjoyed a spectacular 10-mile hike and my knee felt fine.
On the second day of the hike, a cell signal touched our phones when we reached the summit of a mountain. I received a quick news download, including how President Trump had fired Kristi Noem as Secretary of Homeland Security. This was especially important news in my current location, since Noem was pushing to build a border wall that would scar these majestic canyons. A few hours later, I showed the great news to a park ranger. She gave me such an icy stare of hate that it haunted me for hours. I wanted to turn to ChatGPT. I would have asked it to explain her perspective and to give me some consolation, but I was off the grid again. Instead, I had to put on my big boy pants and remember that I should not show politically charged news to strangers in these polarized times. I was adulting again.
After my two-day separation from ChatGPT, I realized that we may be worrying too much about what AI could do in the future, in terms of developing its own agency or making millions of jobs irrelevant. Instead, maybe we should worry about what it is doing right now. I experienced how I’ve grown to rely on it, far too much, to solve my problems, rather than live as a fully functioning adult. This could be the greatest danger of all.
I don’t want to become a pet dog of AI, who is never bored and lets it solve my problems, while I addictively seek my next online treat.
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