I Have My Most Interesting Conversations With AI

It’s kind of embarrassing to admit, but the way I write is kind of similar to how AI chatbots respond to you. It’s not exactly the same obviously. But I do like to go into detail. I do like to write in proper English with full punctuation and without shorthand. I like to ask thought provoking questions and I like to be challenged with thought provoking responses.

You don’t really get that these days. Especially not online in comment replies on Bluesky, YouTube, or Instagram. Sometimes you do, but it’s very rare that someone challenges you in a smart and friendly way. Usually it’s disingenuous, or snarky, or just plain rude. And I’m guilty of being rude too sometimes. When you’re faced with trolling comments, or you see them targeting someone else; sometimes it’s natural that you’re not going to be able to resist going on the attack. Especially with the amount of misinformation and lies that are spread about the left politically, whether intentionally or unintentionally. I think when it’s someone being an obvious troll to you, then you should resist if you can (everyone has a bad day sometimes). Occasionally, actively going after ignorant comments can be cathartic; but it doesn’t give you the real satisfaction you get from an intelligent discussion.

I try not to use AI much, and only really when I can’t find an answer to something when using DuckDuckGo; or other non-Google search engine. Interesting questions, stats, tech support I find it really useful for. As long as you make sure to check the list of articles it’s read, and read some of them to make sure the information is correct.

I’m always very conscious of the resource use of AI datacentres, which I don’t want to excessively add to. However, I think a few conversations a week is reasonable compared to what everyone else is doing with images and videos. I make a point to only ever ask for text responses for that reason (with one or two exceptions if I recall correctly).

When I do ask DeepSeek or Claude a question, they give a typically thorough answer. But because they approach questions from every angle, it can lead to really interesting conclusions and reframing of questions that can really enlighten you and make you reconsider your own point of view. It feels like I haven’t been challenged like that by a human in a long time. The other day, I was asking Claude AI about the ethics of watching the Commonwealth Games, as someone who wants to abolish the monarchy. What it came up with initially, and then in a bit of a back and forth afterwards was genuinely interesting and opened my mind. It came up with ways to see the event in a positive way for former colonies, and how the commonwealth might be reconstituented in future to the benefit of the smaller nations, as well as a bunch of other positions you could hold which would influence how you thought, and whether ethically you should support the event or not. Then I asked about the environmental impact of such an event; which again led to an interesting debate. About the structure of the sporting world and its complex heirarchy of federations and governing bodies; how this makes sport an easier sector for deciding an event is surplus to requirements in the sporting calendar; how that could be policed; and how different and more challenging it is to police other sectors of the global economy, like entertainment and music. I wouldn’t have been able to consider all of that by myself.

However, one big downside of AI chatbots, and the other reason I got onto this topic; was that I had a guy reply to me on YouTube the other day. He said openly that he used AI to respond. I don’t know if he asked AI to summarise the two paragraphs I wrote, and then asked it to write a more intelligent sounding, longer version of his response - Or if he just asked the AI to respond to my comment without ever reading it himself. Whether it’s due to laziness or illiteracy, I don’t know. But it doesn’t really matter. Either way, it’s deeply depressing and the total wrong way to use AI. It’s absurd, the idea that sometimes you’ll literally get chatbots wasting energy arguing amongst themselves on behalf of two or more humans. None of which could be bothered to read each other’s comments.

AI definitely has a lot of downsides, but it also has some important upsides. It isn ‘t going to solve our seemingly global literacy crisis (if anything it’s the opposite); and it’s not going to automatically set humanity on a positive path for the future. Far from it. But at the same time, we shouldn’t throw the baby out with the bath water. Use it for tech support. Use it to bounce interesting ideas off. Converse with it in a way which helps you feel inspired and learn more. Not learn less (or nothing), and let a computer do everything for you; while using up huge amounts of precious resources in the process.

In other words, don’t use it frivolously. Make use of it only when you really need to. Ignore all the AI evangelists telling you it’s the greatest thing since sliced bread; and that we need to shoehorn it into everything. We don’t.