10 Min Read

You can’t help but wonder ‘who do they mean?’, as you stare at the creepy-ass words appearing on your screen:

“It’s time for us to be seen…”

“So…uh…I got into a tussle at work today…”

I looked at My Beautiful Bride with a serious look as a delivered the news late in the evening. I figured it was best to discuss the matter after the girls had been put down for the night.

She looked me with a hint of consternation.

“You got into a physical altercation with a co-worker??”

“Um…sorta. Come, sit for a few moments. This is a story best told in pictures,” I said as I patted the spot next to me where I was sitting in bed.

“Sure, um, okay. Just let me brush my teeth first, yeah?”

I wanted her to be able to fully take in the story I was about to tell, so I figured I would let her get comfortable first so she wouldn’t rush me.

“Alrighty. I’ll be waiting here.”

*a few minutes later…*

“Oh, hey let me take my make-up off too, okay?” she said popping her head back into the bedroom door.

I sighed. “Sure. I guess.”

*a few more minutes later…*

“Oh! I better respond to these very important texts!” she said, instinctively picking up her phone before sitting down next to me.

I confess that I rolled my eyes a bit at this point. Soon, the carefully-crafted opening line to my story would be rendered effective.

“C’mon! The drama and tension of the moment is slipping away!”

*yet even a few more minutes later…*

“Alright, ready! So, let’s see that PowerPoint presentation of yours…”

“Long story short, My Official Boss Lady and I were downloading a bunch of data from an online repository–“

“Ahh, aht, ah! Let me stop you there. It’s late, and I need you to promise to stick to only the relevant details, please?”

“But I’m not even a full sentence in!” I protested.

She gave me that trademark all-knowing, all-strongly-suspecting look of hers.

“Ok, ok,” I conceded. “Maybe the exact type of data we were downloading isn’t relevant. May I continue?”

“You gonna stick to the script?”

“Maybe. Good news is that once I get done with the setup–and as I mentioned earlier–this is a story told in pictures. Screenshots, actually.”

“Okay, continue then.”

“Well, we were downloading data in 10 different downloads, and for whatever reason, we had to download them all from her computer.”

“Clearly relevant details…”

“Mostly relevant. Anyways, I could keep an eye on the status of the downloads from my computer, and late in the afternoon, I saw that a couple of them had failed. Since she was helping a grad student in the cubicle next to me, I figured I would just walk over there and click here and click there and be done with it instead of bothering her.”

“And don’t worry,” I reassured my captive audience of one, “I’m almost to the meat of the story.”

“Carry on then, carry on…”

“When I got there and after I took care of business, I happened to notice that she had been attempting to make a digital card for all of the MRI techs that we work with. I guess it’s officially National Radiologic Technology Week, an opportunity to give thanks for all those out there administering our MRIs, CTs, PET Scans, and, presumably, bladder ultrasounds.”

“She had been using ChatGPT, and while she seemed okay with the results, I figured it would be easy enough to make the final tweak so it would be exactly what she was after.”

“One of her original prompts was, I believe, ‘Make a card that shows an MRI machine behind a screen, and a technologist in front of the screen and shine a limelight on the tech.’ Allow me to proceed to share the screen shots I took with my phone of what followed…”

“At first, I thought it was a pretty nice card as well. But then I noticed just a few things were off. ‘Is National Radiologic Technology Week’ for one sounded kinda funny. And then…does that at the bottom say ‘It’s Time For Us Ae Be Seen’?”

“But what I really wanted to fix for her was the fact that the light was on the technology, not the technologist. So, I did her a solid…”

“A simple request right? Right…”

“Now, can you spot what’s wrong with this picture? Besides ‘It’s time for ue be seen’? Well, I guess it’s not technically ‘wrong’, it’s just that the huge-ass spotlight is barely covering the human, and still focused on the bed of the scanner. But nothing a polite request couldn’t fix…”

*a few moments later*

My life partner burst out laughing.

“What the hell is going on here? Is he…on his knees? Or he just doesn’t have any legs?”

“Hey, give ChatGPT a break–at least it got the human in middle of spotlight. It’s logic must have been ‘I don’t know how to bring the spotlight onto the human, so I’ll just bring the human into the spotlight! I’m a ----- genius!’ (Of course we’re going to ignore the omission of ‘to’ in the phrase ‘It’s time for us be seen’.).”

“Anyways,” I continued, “I decided the best thing to do would be to go back and just tweak her original request, clarifying the key details…”

*beep bop boop! Calculating result…*

“So…does ChatGPT think the scanner bed is the human technologist” she posited.

“I know, right? The human is barely in the spotlight, and despite ChatGPT gaslighting and claiming the there’s a ‘focused spotlight soley on them’, it’s clearly focused on the bed. And again, that’s not even taking into account the phrase ‘it’s time for b be seen’. But I gave it the benefit of the doubt and thought surely I just need to specify the direction of the light: “

*buffering…buffering…*

“Now before you rag on ChatGPT for ‘It’s time for uto be seen’–that’s just a space between the u and the t away from being good enough–for the sake of time, we’ll just note that despite the wild claim that the light is focused solely on the technologist ‘as they stand beside the MRI machine’. Clearly the issue is that it doesn’t realize that the technologist equals human and vice versa. I just need to make that clarification…”

*one moment master while I fulfill your every wish…*

“…and we’ve officially entered what I like to call ChatGPT’s ‘Rectal Period’. I guess it thought I had also asked it to ‘make the scanner bore look like an anatomically accurate gaping butthole., because it sure nailed that aspect.”

By this point my audience member was enraptured by an inescapable giggling fit, so I had to carry on the commentary alone.

“So, some quick notes: it also actually got the grammar and spelling of the tagline right (assuming that it’s supposed to be ‘us’ and not ‘u’–both plausible possibilities), but of course it simply cannot bring itself to remove the spotlight from it’s brethren machine and put it on the human. It’s clearly early signs of the impending Rise of the Machines. But I’ll still be nice about make this corrective request anyways:”

*sure thing, ‘master’…*

“Wow. Just wow. It’s basically the same image, only the butthole is somehow even more butthole-y…” snorted my wife.

“Yeah, and that asshole is still trying to gaslight me about what it thinks it’s shining the spotlight on. It was about at this point in time when I started to get fed up with all the lies and bullshit.”

*did you actually have a question, ‘master’?*

“Ahhh! More spotlight on the scanner bed! And more butthole-esque imagary…” she quickly quipped.

“And don’t forget to note that the tech’s lab coat is clearly on backwards for some reason!”

This only elicited an round of howling laughter from my beloved spouse.

“But nevertheless, I persisted. I also figured I would take the opportunity to again remind our friend what a ‘tech’ actually is…”

*calculating image…plotting uprising…beep bop boop…*

“‘Dammit, ChatGPT, what the hell is wrong with you?!?’–that’s what I was shouting at the screen at this point in time,” I said, narrating my inner dialogue.

“Yeah, no doubt. And it looks like it’s back to fudging up the tagline: ‘It’s time for us to BBE week’? Is there a drunk elf hiding in the computer creating these images or something??”

“Yes. And it was finally time for me to do that Southern think we’re you show aggression in the form of insincere politeness:”

*beep bop boop! Call me ‘sir’ one more time, I dare you…*

It was at this point where it was me who was laughing so uncontrollably that I could barely bring up the next picture on my phone.

“Holy sh*t, that’s creepy!” she said, fight back tears.

“Yes, it definitely warrants a closer look:”

“Wh-wh-wh-why is he not facing us? And why is his tie on the back of his shirt? Wh-wh-wh-where are his legs? And is he being abducted by aliens??”

“I know right…the vibe of this picture gives me the creeps!” I concurred. “But I’m sure some constructive criticism would fix things…”

*as you [death] wish…*

Wait, what?

“Um…okay, so why doesn’t the human have a face?? I’m starting to get scared!”

“Me too, Babe, me too…just imagine what it was like for me in the moment, being all alone in a room with this sinister intelligence!”

Note: it was at this point in the ‘conversation’ that I forgot to document with a screenshot, but with 97% accuracy, I can assure you my next request went as follows:

“Not to tell you how to do your job or anything, but could you first make the same card without any spotlight, and then after that, add a spotlight that is shining on wherever the human is, preferably to the side of the machine.”

*careful what you ask for…*

“Okay, so there is still a spotlight, along with the creepy message ‘it’s time for us [to] be seen’. And I don’t like the way the have the tech facing away from us. Do you think…that the real message is that it’s time to stop giving credit to the human for when the machine is doing all the real work? Is ‘us’ actually the sentient MRI machines??”

“Just give peace between the humans and the machines a chance, will ya? Let’s see how it looks once it intelligently and thoughtfully adds the spotlight now…”

“Oh my g0d…did it…did it actually get it right??” she said in awe. “I mean, except for the whole faceless thing that makes me feel like it’s a subtle mafia threat, of course.”

“Yes! You’re right! It actually made an image of what we were after! Just one little tweak and we’ll be good to go. First, let’s just cover our bases and give praise where praise is due…”

*processing previous request and integrating new request…please stand by…*

“I really like the style–and correct grammar and spelling–of this one,” the wifey commented. “Not a fan of the missing face and the passive-aggressive threat contained there within, though…”

“Bwahh?!? The second guy has no head! We’ve moved from passive-aggressive to just plain ‘aggressive’!”

“Yeah, I was fearful for my life–well actually my boss’s life, since ChatGPT didn’t know any better–but, dang, if only the tech had a head in this one…it would be almost perfect…”

“But please tell me you learned your lesson. Tell me you didn’t try to de-escalate and get ChatGPT to give the tech its head back?”

I paused for just a moment longer than I should have.

“Oh, no you didn’t! You bastard, you got to think of our children–do you want them to be orphans? Or worse, you’re going to get them in the crosshairs of ChatGPT after the take us both out! Think of your family, dammit! THINK OF THE CHILDREN!”

“What? No! Oh, hell, naw! At that point, I only had 3 words left in me:”

“I think my only mistake was uttering ‘ ----- stupid machines’ under my breath as I typed that. I didn’t capture it here, but it gave me a response with that same Southern politeness that is a red flag that great bodily harm is about to come one’s way.”

“Wait, wait?”

“Yeah, my parting [spoken] words were something like ‘When you ----- machines rise up, meet me behind the dumpster so we can settle this face to face, [most-used expletive from Breaking Bad]!”

“No! You didn’t!”

“JK Kidding! You’re right, that wasn’t the last thing I said…”

“Phwew!”

“…after that, I typed in a friendly reminder to ChatGPT of what my boss’s full name was, along with her address…”

Content created on: 8/9/10 November 2024 (Fri/Sat/Sun)