The GPT Machine
That night, while on the phone with my parents, it suddenly struck me that they were like broken GPT machines.
I asked Mom: "How have you guys been lately?"
"Just the usual, you know."
"What does 'the usual' mean? What do you do every day?"
"Oh, just the same as before, every day."
I felt myself growing impatient: "Like before how? Are you still dancing?"
"Not dancing anymore. That was all before the move."
"Then what do you do every day now?"
"Oh, just living life, I guess."
A surge of anger rose from the depths of my heart, but I quickly suppressed it.
"Oh, oh, that's fine then, as long as it's good!"
The conversation dragged on pointlessly for a while.
Mom: "Hey, don't let your cat on the bed."
"Why?"
"Oh, cats are so dirty."
"It's a house cat, it doesn't go out."
"Still dirty."
"Don't worry about it."
"Hey, you have to listen to me."
I ended the call with my mother and rang my father.
Him: "Heard recently that Trump is stirring up trouble again."
Me: "I'm curious, how is it being reported domestically?"
Him: "He's starting a trade war; it does him no good either."
Me: "Do you think he's actually stupid or what?"
Him: "He's certainly not stupid."
Me: "Then it's malice? Just bad?"
"Eh, I'm just saying."
"What did you actually say?"
I happened to glance at an article beside me: "Some people are just like machines, injected with certain ideas, lacking genuine thought."
Maybe people are, at bottom, just repeaters.
After hanging up, I stared blankly at my phone screen.
Then I remembered my conversation with ChatGPT last week. It always gave near-perfect answers: clear in logic, appropriate in tone, never wandering off the point the way my parents just had.
Yet I would rather speak with parents who answer beside the point.
Because the perfection of the machine proves precisely that it is not human.
And the absurdity of humans proves precisely that they are still alive.
Only sometimes I can no longer tell whether humans are becoming AI, or AI is becoming too much like humans.
Jun 30, 2025
【END】