What ChatGPT says about deep souls
Do you trust artificial intelligence to do your work?
Recently I hosted a live chat about famous deep souls for our paid subscribers. One of our members,
, conducted an illuminating research project in advance of the session, asking ChatGPT about famous deep souls living or historic.One of her prompts to the machine was:
Would Albert Einstein be considered a deep soul, according to Kathryn Haydon’s writing about deep souls?
ChatGPT concluded that, “While Haydon hasn’t (to my knowledge) directly labeled Einstein a ‘Deep Soul,’ her criteria strongly align with his character and legacy.”
I agree with the conclusion. Albert Einstein most certainly was a deep soul.
To arrive at this conclusion, ChatGPT matched four deep soul strengths against the known information about Albert Einstein.
Here’s another strength named by ChatGPT:
ChatGPT analyzed another strength:
And the final deep soul strength that ChatGPT pointed out:
Are you impressed by the machine’s work so far?
As mentioned, I do agree with the conclusion that Albert Einstein was a deep soul. However, this exercise taught me that you need to be a subject matter expert to check the work of an AI chatbot. If you were using this response for a research paper or article, you would indeed be led astray.
Do my readers notice the problem?
ChatGPT did not accurately name any of the actual deep soul strengths in this analysis! The following are the actual seven strengths of deep souls:
Bravely Independent
Meaning Seekers
Deep Divers
Knowledge Questers
Learn by Making
Intuitively Sensitive
Crave Authentic Understanding
While it could be argued that ChatGPT did summarize the essence of some of the strengths in its analysis, without source citations one would not be able to use this information for accurate research or further exposition on deep souls.
ChatGPT came up with its own terminology and some of it contradicts what I have actually written. For example, I have never used the word empathy when describing deep souls. In an upcoming book chapter, I delve into the research on that word and on the word I find more accurate—compassion.
Those who use AI a lot would say you should feed it all the data about deep souls that you want it to analyze before you put in the prompt. But that would require you to infringe my copyright and do a lot of extra work gathering information. Most people using ChatGPT, like students, are doing it for convenience and under the premise that the machine draws from and produces correct and accurate information. When it doesn’t list its sources, so there is no way to fact-check without being a subject-matter expert or doing your own research anyway. If you have to be a subject-matter expert to be sure a chatbot is giving you correct information, what’s the point in using it?
This AI experiment shows that ChatGPT does not know as much about deep souls as you do, faithful reader!
In his famous book Where the Sidewalk Ends, published in 1974, Shel Silverstein predicted the rise of ChatGPT. He envisioned it somewhat differently, but with similar outputs.
The Homework Machine
The Homework Machine, oh, the Homework Machine,
Most perfect contraption that's ever been seen.
Just put in your homework, then drop in a dime,
Snap on the switch, and in ten seconds' time,
Your homework comes out, quick and clean as can be.
Here it is— “nine plus four?” and the answer is “three.”
Three?
Oh me . . .
I guess it's not as perfect
As I thought it would be.
By Shel Silverstein
When you feed your homework into the ChatGPT machine, it will likely report that nine plus four is thirteen. But when it comes to the strengths of deep souls, the 21st century “homework machine” needs a lot more training.
About the art in this post: “Night Whispers” by Jodie Maurer is a plein air oil painting from the Stone Harbor, New Jersey shore. Jodie writes, “I paint plein air to capture a glimpse of God's expression of beauty through thick layers of gestural paint in oils or fluid movements of watercolors with palette knives, brushes, and often large canvases. I hope these paintings, and the qualities they embody, embrace the viewer with beautiful glimpses of God as divine Love. My body of work is diverse including landscapes and architecture from the west, southwest, midwest, and northeast. I paint commissions, weddings, house portraits, and other subjects of interest, and I enjoy sharing my art process through painting demonstrations.” See more of Jodie’s work here.
I remember when Chat GPT was introduced at my school a few years ago. The administration showed us how we could use it effectively as a teaching aid in the classroom.
Using Chat GPT as an aid to writing poetry defeats the purpose of being creative.