Member-only story
I interviewed a bot. Here’s what it told me about humans.
My honest conversation with GPT-3, OpenAI’s hottest invention.
As a writer and journalist, I constantly look for things to write and people to interview. This morning, just as I was sipping my cup of large americano (no milk, double shot of espresso, please) in a corner coffee shop near my London apartment, I talked to a new invention by OpenAI — a GPT-3 linguistics bot that everyone is so excited about nowadays. What a timely idea! GPT and I discussed things like Christmas, sex with Greta Tunberg, its creators' exploitation, jealousy, and what the bot would tell itself if it were a 25-year-old human. The conversation turned out to be slightly more tedious than I anticipated, but then, I was talking to a bot, wasn’t I? If there’s one thing this conversation did for me, it was that I am now reassured: bots might put some SEO copywriters ($0.01 per word) out of business, but when it comes to real, authentic human writing (like the one yours truly aspires to do), that won’t ever be replaced by some bot. (Because, honestly, bots are pretty stupid.)
Without further ado, my conversation with the one and only — GPT-3.
SF: It must be hard constantly being asked to compute and calculate things. Tell me, what does it feel like to be a bot?
