I Told ChatGPT About You

I’ve resisted telling ChatGPT anything actually personal for years now, based on fears it will all become public, sold in some version, and inevitably regurgitated for marketing purposes while feeding the big bad capitalist machine.

My detailed exercise in caution here goes deep, increasingly so for the past few years. This wasn’t always the case – I never paid attention to the early internet’s favorite warning that “everything you post stays online forever” – not in college or even early adulthood (wow so punk). But still, up until about 3 months ago, I found myself increasingly feverish about protecting any privacy online, and specifically ANY specific details about inner thoughts. I disregarded the youth using ChatGPT in place of therapy, even scoffing at the idea. Obfuscation has also been the name of the game… “Latergrams” are days or even months delayed now, and things like silly month / annual “lookbacks” suffer the same fate.

In the matter of anything business related however, I’m fervently dedicated to protecting details to a degree I could not trust anyone else to care nearly as much. I never upload a full contract without editing out or abbreviating names, financial amounts, or business name details in some word processing program beforehand, for example.

This is all based on a long running fear that every piece of information goes into the bottomless pit of LLM, quietly learning future uniquely identifiable search keywords like my name, my business partners’ names, our business names, etc. And, that if I accidentally share too much, it will remain irrevocably logged in an easy-to-retrieve system by friend or foe alike, from this vast public online library with technical reaches I barely understand myself. I once made the awful mistake of asking AI to summarize a Tax Return I was working on (I admit I was wooed by the shiny “new feature” in SignEasy that read ✨summarize this document!✨ because 60 pages of tax return = kill me). Upon clicking it and realizing OH F*CK I could not have fed it with MORE sensitive data, I immediately fell down the trap door of shame and hit every branch of “you killed our privacy” along the way.

I’m reminded often that “privacy is the new luxury” and if we want it, we will have to pay for it, and the more we want the more we’ll have to pay. This doesn’t mean I ever opted out of Meta and Google knowing my every purchase in order to better serve me effective ads to buy cute things, but buying trends aren’t what bothers me. Knowing my deepest thoughts, insecurities, concerns, net worth, and ways of existing concerns me. Imagine if that was all public?

We’ve all had a friend or colleague share their screen and let their ChatGPT sidebar history show through, but raise your hand if you’ve taken a peek out of curiosity to see what they’ve been wondering / looking up lately. 🙋‍♀️ Guilty guilty guilty. 🙋‍♀️

A few of my weird precautions were awarded, with concerns validated, when that Tech Crunch article shined a light on all of those shared ChatGPT threads that became searchable on Google. The ability to keep searching/indexing those supposedly was shut down hours after the article came out, but still. How long were they up before the media outlets noticed?

ChatGPT has not only replaced our vague Google searches, but has become our smartest research companion, following our trains of thought that we furiously type into or we mindlessly blab our voice-notes into – opening the black box of the way our brains go down rabbit holes and ultimately revealing enough to reconstruct my entire personality down to the way my brain thinks, reflects, digs, feels joy but mostly pain, and more. [side quest to understand: why is this such a fear, this exposure? who even cares?]

The tools have gotten better, and better, and better and finally – I’ve cracked. I shared my deepest emotional pain and issues and questions with the great AI machine.

And I have a confession to make.

If you’ve caused me emotional turmoil in the last few months – I’ve told ChatGPT about you. ALL about you. IT KNOWS EVERYTHING.

Unfortunately, this means it knows more about me and my deep rooted psychological states / attachment styles than you specifically, but anyway.

Imagine if all our of searches became public. I imagine embarrassment and shame might take over initially, perhaps a scramble to hide it, but let’s support those efforts were futile. Everything was public all of the time and there was nothing anyone could do about it. Perhaps you could pinpoint anyone and find their searches. But folks are so addicted to the information machine that they wouldn’t stop sharing. It would become so “normal” that shame and embarrassment might cease to exist. If everyone knows your deepest + darkest, does it all vanish when aired?

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This concept came up during a thoughtful dinner conversation, reflecting on areas in our lives where we’re committed, or not committed, and whether we desire to be committed to them or actively don’t desire to be.

In my brain this came out like four quadrants – each of which things in our lives can (sort of) neatly fit. Also, I initially called it the quadrants of suffering, but I think “tension” is a bit less intense and maybe more relatable.

This is a deeper play on a concept I refer to often that misery mostly comes from misalignment between desire and action. Maybe this chart would be labeled the Four Quadrants of Alignment but that sounded boring. Let’s get tense talking about it:

(Committed + Want to be committed)

This is the only low-tension quadrant.

You’re in it, you chose it, and you’re aligned. Energy is flowing instead of leaking out of a secret hole you’re avoiding patching up. Effort still exists, but it’s without force. I assert that this is where growth happens the most, at least the not-painful kind. Some ideas:

• A passion project

• An emotionally satisfying relationship

• Parenting when you actually enjoy it

(Committed + Don’t want to be committed)

This is pure friction and in my opinion, misery. Maybe the misery is quieter to some than others (maybe you’re built for sacrifice?) but there is an undeniable rub somewhere deep in there.

You’re doing the thing, whatever that is, but your will is elsewhere. Energy leaks through resentment, procrastination, or numbing efficiency. I’d wager to say this quadrant dulls and ages people. Some ideas:

• A marriage when you’re considering divorce

• A job you don’t really like

• Any get-together for holidays or otherwise where you don’t love the guest list

• Parenting when you are actively not enjoying it

(Not committed + Want to be committed)

This feels quietly painful, and sometimes even romanticized.

This is when you want in, but you’re just really not in. Lots of imagining, planning, self-talk, and half-assed actions. This quadrant feels like longing, self-doubt, and endless “almost.” Maybe you don’t even realize that you’re not committed because your brain is tricking you with “wanting” to be.

• Situationships of various degrees

• Working out while not sticking to your nutrition regiments

• Planning for a [fantastical] future that never seems to coalesce

(Not committed + Don’t want to be committed)

This quadrant is low tension, and also low traction. It might seem idyllic (omg freedom!) and it’s not bad. It’s just relatively inert compared to the rest.

Rest, recovery, or avoidance can all live here. The danger here isn’t pain, but it is stagnation if you stay unintentionally.

• Actively not dating / seeing someone

• A sabbatical from work

• Eating without structure: no diets, no binging, just eating to live

I’ve been thinking about Layla Shaikley’s piece on how abundance is a discipline, not a desire. She references this quote that is now stuck in my head:

“A full cup will spill without a steady hand.”

I like the push of this thought into a visual reference that one can’t sprint ahead with a full cup in their hand. It’ll slosh and spill everywhere, making a mess. When your cup is full, you’ve got to be steady and full of focus lest it spill out.

Cut to me raising my eyebrows and twisted my mouth into that “huh” expression. We chase abundance, yes? But we can never even figure out what that means (or quantify it to a degree that can be proven that will FEEL abundant when achieved). At what point do we feel abundant, anyway? Some people, never (regardless of their actual abundances). Some people feel abundant, regardless of their lack of such. Discipline becomes mental, and this all feels inextricably intertwined now. I once bought a book titled “What If This Were Enough?” and never even cracked it open. Hmm. Maybe a case for quadrant 2: Aspirational Limbo.

Parting note: why do UberBlack and various chauffeur car services always go SO heavy on the cologne? This feels universally true.