"Just Ask Chat": The Evolution of an Isolating Mantra

While I've been writing a lot about my gripes with the current AI movement, I've never really explicitly tied it to the underlying problem: capitalism. Despite being deeply embedded in leftist spaces, I can't really say that I'm super well read, so I've instead decided to play a word association game today that starts with the phrase, "it takes a village," and ends at the phrase, "just ask chat." Needless to say, bear with me. The Erosion of Community Lately, I've been thinking about the erosion of community, at least here in the United States. As someone who has a kid, I've been thinking most specifically about the phrase, "it takes a village." During my recent Japan trip, I told one of my students that the mindset around "it takes a village" doesn't really exist anymore. There's not really this expectation that extended family and friends are around to aid with childcare. Typically, when I see people talking about this, the discussion centers around this idea of the nuclear family (i.e., a family unit consisting of only the parents and their children). Apparently, this trend was set off in Western Europe in 13th century. Ignoring patriarchal considerations, this arrangement may have worked for a time as at least one parent was able to be around to raise the child. However, we have reached a point where families can't survive on a single income, so both parents have to work. The current "village" then is daycare, a service that is needed to solve a problem that society created. Then, once kids are old enough, the school system becomes daycare and thus the "village." How Capitalism Killed Community All of this is to say that capitalism has effectively eroded any sense of community that we once had. Instead, it has isolated us into workplaces, daycares, shops, and classrooms and away from our communities. You might argue that these are just the contemporary versions of community, but you'd be wrong. No matter how many times your boss says it, you're not a family. You're paid to be there. When you go into a shopping mall, there's no community there—just enormous corporate entities. School? Again, a place for segregating the most promising laborers from the inept, not a place for exploring your interests and finding ways to give back to your community. Just to illustrate how bad this is, think about how cities are designed in the US. We increasingly divide our towns and cities with roads for cars, so people can produce and consume. What might seem as a symbolic barrier between homes and neighborhoods are literal death traps preventing you from engaging with your community. Why do you think parents don't let their kids play outside anymore? Not to mention that suburbs are a literal form of isolation. Then, think about how people, like myself, that have abandoned their communities by fleeing from rural areas to move to cities. These days, there is almost no way to stay in a rural community and have a fruitful life. I moved almost four hours away to get a job, with the closest cities to my hometown all being about 90 minutes away. We're forced to perpetuate the erosion of community to find a job, which ironically forces people out of their communities due to a rise in the cost of living. Perhaps the funniest example to me is how even the accumulation of capital creates isolation. As you ascend each tax bracket, you become more and more unrelatable. Some of the most pathetic people on this planet are the richest. For instance, Elon Musk deeply craves a sense of community. Why else would he purchase an entire social media platform (beyond the obvious reasons)? Why else was he so desperate to appeal to Donald Trump and his inner circle? Why else did he start lashing out when he was ostracized? Meanwhile, for the vast majority of us living paycheck to paycheck, even hobbies are no longer a way to form community. Now, we have to monetize everything we create. Do you like to craft? How come you haven't opened an Etsy shop? Do you enjoy sharing educational material with your peers? Why aren't you selling it on Teachers Pay Teachers? It is perhaps no surprise that even the smallest of hobbies is an opportunity to capture value for shareholders. Hell, we're so desperate for community, we'll join a literal pyramid scheme. Technology's Relation to Capital As we grow more physically separated despite concentrating in cities, technology swoops in to supposedly save the day. For instance, one of tech's greatest inventions is the idea that you don't have to physically spend time in your community anymore. You can simply engage with it online through social media—or at least you can engage with a caricature of it. Sure, I have to imagine that the internet and social media has been good for some folks, but I'll be honest, there is not a day that goes by where I think, "man, I wish I hadn't deleted my Facebook profile" or "shucks, I really wish I had scrolled through more tweets." Not to mention that social media might be one of the worst inventions for mental health. Funnily enough, tech just keeps "innovating" in a way that further drives isolation. Another example that comes to mind for me is Uber. What sounds like a nice deal, a taxi you can call from anywhere, just further highlights the lack of walkable communities and public transportation. Oh, you mean I can just get in this car, not interact with anyone, and end up at my location. Sweet! Another example that comes to mind is the cellphone. We've never been more "connected," except now we're connected to billions of people, almost none of which we will ever know in any meaningful way. Why do you think stan culture is a thing? Parasocial relationships might be taking the place of real ones. And interestingly enough, we can't seem to put them down. Going out to dinner with your friends? Be prepared for everyone to be half engaged as they stare at their phones. Want to watch the big game with your family? Yeah, they want to scroll Facebook instead. You can thank highly addictive algorithms that maximize screentime for that. Then, I even think about headphones. When I'm on campus, probably 75% of students walk around campus with airpods. Everyone knows that's the universal sign for "don't talk to me," so I guess no one wants to talk to anyone. We can simply walk aimlessly through life with all of our senses completely consumed by digital media. Of course, we can't have a conversation about tech without its intrinsic connection to imperialism. Hell, at the time of writing, OpenAI just signed a $200 million dollar defense contract. Yes, the silly chat bot company is now going to use generative AI for war. Who would have thought they'd already be starving for funding from the military industrial complex. How's that for bringing communities together? The Language of Isolation It's not just that capitalism has created a breeding ground for isolating innovation and technology. It has also infiltrated the way that we talk to each other. An example that has bothered me for a long time is when you ask someone a "dumb" question. If the person is kind, they might entertain it. If they're not so kind, they might laugh before helping you out. If they're rude, they'll say something like, "Google it." I've seen the last example a lot in progressive circles. We seem to have this mindset that knowledge grants moral superiority, or rather that a lack of knowledge is some moral failing (which to be fair, may be the case). Even Bo Burnham jokes about this in his song "How The World Works" with the following quote mocking the wokescold crowd: Read a book or something. I don't know. Just don't burden me with the responsibility of educating you. It's incredibly exhausting. This is a real shame because everyone is on their own journey to radicalization. By avoiding that chance for dialogue, we may have just cut that radicalization pipeline short. Generally, while the idea of gatekeeping knowledge is itself a mechanism for isolation, I think it's a product of this broader idea of purity culture or cancel culture. While cancel culture has never really worked (and I get so tired of conservatives whining about it), it does seem to have some consequences on relationships. Now, folks might self-censor if they think you're more "woke" than them. That directly reproduces a culture of isolation. Meanwhile, like the "Google it" example, folks in tech circles use the phrase "RTFM," which eloquently means "Read the Fucking Manual." Again, I think it's somewhat obvious, but this is an even more overt attempt to stop conversation (even though I think it's a valid phrase in the right contexts). It's an inherently isolating phrase that discourages anyone from asking questions. It's one of the reasons why the phrase "there are no stupid questions" has to exist. It counteracts what I assume is a longstanding culture of gatekeeping, elitism, and isolation. With that said, I find the idea that knowledge can and should only be exchanged through external resources like books and the internet to be really interesting. I think that really sets things up for where we've been headed for a long time in terms of isolation. Why talk to another person when you can simply get your answers from a book, an article, or dare I say, ChatGPT? Just Ask Chat These days, I see a lot of folks deferring to chat bots for information. For example, I think it's really funny how people will use ChatGPT and grok for internet points. What I never expected people to start doing is replacing the phrase, "just Google it," with the phrase, "just ask chat." Previously, the action of searching the internet was given a name, googling, which follows in a long list of words that were created based on the name of a brand (see: crock-pot, zipper, band-aid, etc.). Now, even answering a question for someone is too much of a burden. Instead, we are to direct others to "just ask chat"—"chat" of course being the gross colloquialism for LLMs like ChatGPT. What I find kind of unsettling about the phrase, "just ask chat," is that we've suddenly come to humanize technology. Sure, we probably already do that with voice assistants like Alexa and Siri, but I find the recent trend of anthropomorphism a little weird. While it produces human-like output, treating it like a human has always bothered me. We don't even give each other the same level of respect. Anthropomorphism aside, I think feelings of isolation are only going to get worse for folks. To me, the way we talk about and use ChatGPT is evidence of that. Why ask your friend a question when you can ask "chat?" Why write your own wedding vows when you can have "chat" do it? Why creatively express yourself through writing and art when you can have "chat" produce slop? Just this morning, I saw Charlie's video ranting about how YouTube already has AI generated content outperforming human content. In this video, Charlie makes the argument that there may be some niche use cases for generative AI, but most people are going to use it to make slop. To show this, he estimates that half of all YouTube Shorts are probably AI generated at this point, with the internet speculated to be 90% AI generated by 2026. We always seem to find a way to maximize pollution, whether its land, sea, space, or silicon. With my earlier argument that there are billions of people you'll never know online, you now have to sift through literal garbage just to find them. All because people are "just asking chat," as if that is so innocent a phrase at this point. Hi all! I've quickly become accustomed to using this separator symbol above to end the "essay" and shift to my closing comments. Otherwise, I might break your immersion! One thing I want to mention is that I'm not super read up on socialist theory, but I think my thoughts around isolation likely tie closely to Marx's theory of alienation. Perhaps through that lens, it's a lot more obvious why "innovation" continues to drive isolation. Likewise, I saw a wonderful short by @tonystatovci which comments on what it feels like to use the internet these days. I know I've been harping on generative AI for a bit on the site, but tech as a whole is due for a reckoning. Anyway, thanks again for reading. I'm really enjoying these more free form articles. They sort of fit my vibe a lot better. I enjoy following the threads of ideas and seeing where I'll end up. That does mean that not everything will flow well or will be entirely coherent, but I don't particularly care as I see writing as thinking. Hell, in an age of AI generated work, I think something a bit more "human" is probably appreciated anyway. As always, if you enjoyed this, you might enjoy some of these other articles: Generative AI Has a Short Shelf Life Is Anyone Else Bothered by How Quickly We Adopted Generative AI? Generative AI Makes It Feel Bad to Be an Educator Likewise, you can take your support further by checking out my list of ways to grow the site. Otherwise, thanks for sticking around. I appreciate it! Take care.