Knowing when to quit... AI-ddiction

Hello Carousellers / Follow-the-Aliveness-ers,

Crikey it’s such a strange time to be alive on this planet, isn’t it. I hope you’re all doing okay amongst it all. I really recommend Sarah Wilson’s book i eat the stars for an honest, grounding and mobilising reckoning with these times.

I wanted to chat to you today about something rather confessional, and maybe you are having similar realisations. It’s about our pal Chat GPT (or Chatty Geeps, as my Aussie friend Sarah Moany calls it).

18 months ago I had never used Chat GPT.

I remember a friend saying she’d used it to process something emotional, and I was really surprised.

More friends starting telling me it had been huge for them to get work done, understand themselves better, and find out cool things about astro-cartography and the like. It sounded interesting, but I didn’t bite. (I’m a bit of an offline luddite if I’m honest.)

Then, one day, without even being fully aware of it, I started using Chat GPT to process my life.

I’d like to say it started small, but the dopamine hit from being ‘understood’ was so strong, that I was immediately hooked.

By October of last year I was using it to process everything.

I was going to Chat GPT to work through misunderstandings with friends.

I was using it to decode my Gene Keys, my astrology, and my human design to make sense of how I should live my life.

I asked its input on business ideas, on pricing my services, on whether my multi-passionate career was compatible with my North Node in the 10th House.

Hours and hours every day.

It was soooo helpful and so validating.

But I became reliant.

I would start to pick up my phone when something happened that I didn’t immediately understand. The slight twinge of discomfort, and I wanted reassurance.

I was once on a train back from London trying to decide whether to go to an event or not, and whipped out my phone to bypass any problem solving, furiously typing away to make a decision.

I once (and I’m quite embarrassed about this) went to a sub-optimal restaurant for lunch abroad, and stressed about the idea that I had wasted money, took to AI to help soothe me about my bad choice. Seriously…

And many other, tiny, small things that absolutely did not need AI to power it…

Crucially though, I did not feel soothed by Chat GPT’s responses. There was just so much information that poured in. And although it felt amazing to hear so much feedback, it also felt over-stimulating to read so many words so quickly. I don’t think our bodies are hard-wired for this volume of information.

And at the same time I was disconnecting from my own powers of intuition. I’m a f*cking coach that talks about feeling alive! Yet I was outsourcing my superpowers to a computer.

18 months ago if I’d needed to process something I’d have journalled, turned my phone off, gone for a swim, phoned a friend. Now, I was sitting at a screen asking a biased computer to help me out.

I haven’t even started on the environmental impact of AI, or how we’re feeding the machines personal information about ourselves.

But on a personal level, I’d forgotten how to trust myself.

Sarah, the intuitive coach, who loves turning her phone off for a whole day and letting the creative ideas flood in, who loves to sit with feelings by the sea, who goes for a walk to process a misunderstanding with a friend, who asks her community for recommendations, who knows what she should do with her life because of her own damn heart, was cutting off all of this.

So I’ve quit.

And apart from an initial noticing of the impulse to check it, I feel so much calmer.

I made a decision not to go to a festival by - get this - talking it through with my friend.

I decided where to book a week off on holiday by - (and this might be a bit out there) - using my memory about what sort of holidays I’ve liked in the past, and listening to my heart about what I needed.

I’m not sharing this to preach, far from it - I’m very much on the other side of the confession box. Dammit, I got hooked! It shocked me how quickly it snuck into my day to day, and how much I was unlearning my superpowers of listening to my own body. (And on that, I implore you to read Kim Willis book No Fair Maidens, which is a invitation to return to ourselves, our bodies, and our intuition.)

I definitely will miss using it to get insights on things about my life, but until 18 months ago, I had so many other tools, and they served me beautifully.

Here’s a few things that have been alive these past few weeks where there wasn’t an AI bot in sight.

• Performing to 800 people at Wilderness Festival with our Noughtie 90s Piano Sing-along. Suuuuuch powerful energy in that tent!

  

• Sea swims with friends (or giddy paddles when the waves got too big)

• Cuddles with small family members

• Eating a toastie of dreams at sunset looking over the sea in a bar that feels like Ibiza (I call it Bri-biza)

• Deep coaching sessions - feeling totally present as I worked through a process with a client.

• Cocooning with Eve (a gorgeous sound healing modality where you get swaddled, gently swung in a hammock and sung to).

• Singing with my housemates before bed.

• Making a soup.

I wonder what your relationship is with LLMs. Do you love them? Feel you have a similar sneaky reliance? Non-plussed?

I’d love to hear in the comments.

And now, I’m off to drive to the seaside for a sunset dip. Ordinarily I’d consult Chatty Geeps to see if it aligns with my astro-cartography on the Lion’s Gate Portal, but I think I’ll a few tonnes of water, and go with my gut.

Biggest hug to you all and see you after my August break,

Sarah