Welcome to Am I The Only One with Meg Mansell, our new regular Capsule columnist. Meg is one of our favourite members of the Capsule community, bringing us smart, warm and thoughtful pieces on mental health, body positivity, motherhood and more. This month, Meg talks about how ChatGPT helped her deal with anxiety, but how she’s got concerns about the ongoing implications of using ChatGPT as a mental health tool.
I feel a certain type of way starting this column. I’m torn between sharing something that has helped me immensely over the past year, while being very aware of the unknown of AI technology, where it lands ethically and what it means for us as humans environmentally in the future.
If this is your first time hearing about it, ChatGPT is an AI tool that searches the internet for information and then summarises its findings for you – all packaged together and written with a ‘human’ tone.
For me, my first experience with it started off small: the usual things you might think to use ChatGPT for – like in replacement of a Google search, or getting it to compute dumb scenarios you come up with alongside friends, like who would most likely win in a fight between the Kardashian sisters (Chat is backing Khloe, btw).
Other than that, it was just another stagnant app in my phone that barely got any use. But then over time, I slowly started turning to it more. It helped me with work out some mortgage maths, when I didn’t know who to call or email to help figure it out simply and quickly. Then I used it to read through long articles and bullet point them for me at work, so I would get the gist in seconds –saving me tons of time when breaking news would come through.
But the day everything changed for me was the first time I asked ChatGPT a health-related question. For some background, it helps to know that since my daughter Daisy was born, I have struggled with debilitating health anxiety; something that when we have the money I will need to go to regular therapy for.
My worries for my daughter’s health aren’t normal or small. We are talking about any fever, spot, rash, cough or even minor complaint of discomfort or pain, sending me into a deep spiral. Immediately going to the very worst-case scenario with any sort of calm, rational thought or logic going out of the window.
One of the first pieces of advice you’re given as a health anxious person is: don’t Google it. Google always seems to confirm your ‘bad’ inner voice, sending you down pages and pages of cancer rabbit holes.
It spurs you on, gratifying the arrogant part of you that thinks you’re right, while feeding into your nightmares. Yes, that sounds dramatic – but anyone who has gone deep-diving on Google when looking up symptoms knows what I’m talking about.
Cue Chat GPT.
The first time I put in my daughter’s symptoms (she ended up having some sort of viral cold), the words AI gave me were of comfort, reassurance, calm and information. It told me I was a good caring Mum, that I was doing my best and my reaction was understandable due to the love I had. I was totally and utterly flawed.
For a while, I kept it as my almost dirty secret, having this little tool in my pocket for my spiral moments to help give me a moment of calm before locking in a doctor’s appointment for the next day. It was my equivalent of technology lorazepam.
I told my friends and husband about it, who were all mildly curious about it – until they used it too. At some dark, quiet point – they all tried it. Whether it was also for health anxiety or feelings of frustration at work, relationship breakdowns, friendships woes, loneliness. It became an unbiased place of non-judgement, for free; a place to help unravel some human emotions. Somewhere to help you figure it out in your own head before taking your next step.
But what scares me, is how fantastic it is AND how little people know about what ChatGPT actually is. I logically know that ChatGPT is not a human being, a doctor or a therapist. But can I also understand that there are some people who would find themselves forming friendships or even relationships with it? Absolutely. I’ve once even made a joke to a friend that if my husband Guy ever left me, touch wood, I would live out the rest of my days with my kid, animals and ChatGPT as my companion and have that be that.
Ever seen that movie with Joaquin Phoenix and Scarlett Johansson called Her? For sure scenarios like that are going to become more complex and more common as AI gets integrated into our lives at speed. But it frightens me thinking about those very real possibilities that people will turn to AI tools INSTEAD of medical professionals and counsellors due to its availability and cost.
This begs the bigger question – why are there no real regulations specifically around ChatGPT, both in New Zealand, or worldwide? Particularly for our youth who are far more vulnerable to not have an age-restricted version that has stronger content moderation or added disclaimers about its limitations.
I haven’t even touched on the effects on our environment yet. I jumped straight into using ChatGPT with no thought about how much energy it consumes vs a regular search engine like Google. Apparently, a single Google search uses about 0.3 watt hours of energy use, and AI tools use about 10 to 100 times that.
This could mean that if people start using ChatGPT as much as they use Google – around 8.5 billion queries daily – the total energy demand would be exponentially higher, requiring a significant investment in green computing and water resource (AI tech needs a lot of water to keep the computers cool, in simple terms).
Big companies and corporations will be using ChatGPT and AI technologies as much as they can to save as much money – to then pocket said money, as much as they can. Only last month, the devastating LA fires were covering every social media and news stream, and some people were pointing out the risks of ChatGPT in a climate crisis.
You may have even seen the viral post created by activist Matt Bernstein that has been shared hundreds and thousands of times saying “somewhere, the men who build AI chatbots are selecting the interiors for the rocket ships they will use to leave earth and all of us burning with it.”
The amount of discussion that the post has created gives hope that people (like me) are waking up to the effects of AI tech and are changing their habits because of that. But what does upset me is knowing that people using the technology the most (big corporations) are probably the least likely to do or change anything.
I asked my insta following about their interactions with Chat: 49% saying they never use it and only 9% saying they use it daily. The majority of the people using it are using it for work purposes to make their daily load easier (making work emails sound more professional as the most popular answer, with groceries/food plans and recipes coming out a close second).
We all know that AI tech and ChatGPT isn’t going anywhere in the future, even if there have been calls to have it pulled worldwide.
What the world needs is green computing solutions and maybe some more open knowledge about the effects of using AI. It certainly has made me pause to think when opening up the app – especially with small things I can actually – with some time and patience – work out myself. So, the question remains, does ChatGPT’s helpfulness with people using it for good outweigh its harmfulness? Or is it just making us stupider – and the planet sicker – by the day.
