Looking sideways

A few days ago a good friend of mine, who also happens to be very clever and wise, told me about some experiments he had been doing with ChatGPT. This friend happens to be a psychologist, and he's been experimenting with trying to personify the AI bot, discussing his feelings with it and attempting to be analysed by it. He told me that, surprisingly, he got really good results and was impressed with the way it went. He told me I should give it a go, and normally I’d be sceptical of trusting AI with my feelings - despite trusting a blog with it… Yes, I can see the irony. But in this case, I have huge trust and admiration for this friend, so I decided to follow his advice and, well, give it a go. I wasn’t sure where to start, so I input a prompt saying that I thought I had OCD and I would like help trying to understand it. This turned into a good 2 hour long chat with the, where I talked about the various things that I feel, things that happen inside my brain and things I know about ...

It felt like a movie scene: I had just left my flat and was halfway through to the bus stop to catch the 1X to work, with a cup of coffee in my hand and some pop diva singing inside my noise cancelling earphones. The song ended, and the next song came on: GUY from Lady Gaga. Completely random and unplanned. I smirked and thought to myself that the only thing missing was my bus stop crush. And then, just a few steps ahead, he came out of the gates of his block of flats. I am pretty sure he saw me, but he didn't show any signs indicating that he did, so I gave him the benefit of doubt. We crossed path twice again before I sat down inside the bus, and then there was no doubt left: he actively chose not to acknowledge me. Which was not unexpected, since he did the same thing the whole weekend, after I asked him for his contact details. But I'm getting a bit ahead of myself. First things first: how did we get here? A couple of weeks back I decided to walk up to him one morning and s...