Cancelling GPT Plus

I let go of my GPT Plus subscription today. Yoooo, I know, LLMs are cool, way too cool to the point of forcing everyone to be afraid of the future and implode while asking “will this thing replace my job and make my life miserable?”

I’ve used GPT mainly as a reading companion. The chatbot really is the best dictionary I’ve ever used. I could just feed this genius an entire sentence(a paragraph if I wanted to), and it would break down the sentence into a set of plain language definitions. I could also prompt the bot to refer to the specific text I was reading, and it understood exactly what my question was about. Mind-blowing.

Reading with this GPT guy was a lot of fun. I would argue many humans will soon “read” books as if conversing with a friend who has a PhD. Lots of humans would appreciate a superpower that lets them finish a book in an hour. People like me who hoard stacks of unread books will gladly pay $$$ for the advanced AI models that can scan books and narrate key points and highlights. I’ll be able to say, “Look, I finally read The Origin of Species and Wealth of Nations! In one day!”

So why do I want to downgrade and be a muggle? Because I sensed that the bot was on the way to becoming my essential tool. I knew that if I kept treating the machine as part of my body, I would feel lost and helpless when I didn’t have access to the technology. For now, I didn’t want to be that person.

When I read a book or an article, I have a habit of highlighting words and sentences that require clarifications. After using GPT, I found myself unconsciously saving all kinds of questions not for me but for the bot. I no longer had to think twice and come up with my best shot at solving the mysteries of the text. I was a keyboard away from the answer. I could always ask AI to spew out explanations for all the subtle nuances and historical contexts. Even when I typed in a mumbo jumbo question, the bot instantly rephrased what I was trying to say and asked itself again. Everything was just too easy.

In a few months, GPT has transformed how I read–possibly why I read as well. The AI is and always will be way ahead of me in terms of understanding world history and poetic expressions. Cool, but I no longer want reading to feel like fetching questions for a master. It’s time to experiment if I could go back and stand on my own.