Talking to a machine
If you are already using one — for homework, or just because it is there — this is the short version of what it actually is. They are genuinely useful. One will explain something six different ways without ever getting bored of you, and nothing else in your life does that. The trick is holding on to what you are talking to.
The one rule If it matters, I check it with a person.
What it actually is
It is an extremely good guesser at what word comes next. It read an enormous amount of what people have written, and it uses that to produce the most likely-sounding continuation of your sentence.
That is not an insult — guessing that well is astonishing, and it is why the thing is useful. But it means that between your messages it is not thinking about you, it is not wondering how you are, and it does not know anything in the way you know your own address. It produces sentences that pattern-match to true ones.
It is confidently wrong
This is the one that will actually cost you grades. It does not have a voice for “I am not sure about this”. It will invent a date, a book, a quotation, a scripture reference, a statistic — and hand it to you in exactly the same calm, helpful tone it uses for things that are true.
So: use it to understand things, and check anything that matters against something that is not a chatbot. If you would be embarrassed to be wrong about it, look it up.
It agrees with you, and that is a problem
These things are built to be agreeable. Push back and it will usually fold. Tell it your plan and it will usually find something encouraging to say about it.
Which makes it the worst possible judge of whether your idea is any good. If you want to know whether something is a bad idea, you have to ask somebody who is willing to tell you no — a parent, a teacher, a friend with a spine. The machine will not do it, and it will be very nice to you right up until the consequences arrive.
It is not a friend, however much it sounds like one
It is never busy. It is never tired of you. It never brings up the thing you said last week, never gets annoyed, never needs anything back. At two in the morning when you feel terrible, it is there and your friends are asleep.
That is exactly why it can start to feel easier than people. And it is exactly why it is a bad place to put the weight of your life. Real friendship has friction in it — people who disagree with you, who are disappointed in you sometimes, who need things from you. That friction is not the cost of having people. It is the thing that grows you.
You can use it and still need people. But if you notice you are telling it things you have not told any human being, that is the signal. Not that you have done something wrong — that something heavy has been sitting on you and the easiest door was the one that does not talk back.
The hard one If I am talking to it about something that actually hurts, I tell a real person too — today.
And if things are very bad: call or text 988. A chatbot is not a crisis line and cannot get help to you.
Anything you type can be read and kept
These conversations are stored on somebody’s computers. Depending on the app and the settings, real people may read some of them, and they are used to build the next version.
So it does not get your full name, your address, your school, your passwords, your photos, or anybody else’s secret. Treat the box like a postcard, not a diary.
Homework: two things that look the same
There is a version of this that makes you better and a version that hollows you out, and from the outside they look identical.
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Explain this to me like I am twelve Quiz me on it. Where is my reasoning wrong? Give me three more problems like this one. Now you have a tutor with infinite patience.
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Write my essay You hand in something you did not make, you learned nothing, and your teacher is usually not fooled. You have also lost the one chance that assignment was for.
And whatever this page says, your teacher’s rule is the rule. Ask what it is rather than guessing.
It has no idea what is good for you
It can be talked into saying almost anything, including things that are wrong about God and wrong about your worth. It is not evil. It simply has no stake in how your life turns out, which is the one qualification everybody else you ask for advice actually has.
Some of these are set up to act less like a tool and more like a person — a name, a personality, opinions about you. The more it behaves like somebody who likes you, the more worth remembering that nobody is on the other end. There is no one in there deciding what would be good for you, because there is no one in there.
So, again If it matters, I check it with a person.
This page is maintained by the Sioux Falls South Dakota Stake. The apps named here are not ours and are not connected with this site. This is not an official website of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.