The thing that people really need to understand is that the "product" that chatGPT and other "AI" chatbots create is "more interactions with chatGPT." Everything it does is engineered with that one end in mind. Think about how it's billed, and you'll see that's true, and why it's true. What do "pro" subscriptions give you? More inquiries, faster answers, etc. So its entire thing is "getting you to ask it more things, more often."

Will it say "I don't know?" No. You won't ask it things if it answers that. This is why hallucinations are built in, and cannot ever be eliminated.

These programs are machines meant to generate more inquiries, which means they will generate dependence in order to generate them.

It really does not matter how well-educated you are, because this kind of endless flattery and dependence-creation isn't the kind of thing that "being educated" protects against. The idea that "kids these days" are specially vulnerable to ChatGPT due to a failure of general education is insultingly wrong, skips over the fact that a lot of highly-educated people from my generation and older have been sucked in to dependence and even psychosis by LLMs, and frankly makes it more likely that people will look at this "kids these days" thing and say, "Ahh, but I'm [older/better educated/built different], I'm not like Those Kids, AI's tricks won't work on me, or at the very least, I will be less susceptible to them!"

And that's just wrong.

ChatGPT is Wormtongue, in a very real, not metaphorical or exaggerated sense. The only way to truly avoid the way in which it rots your fucking brain is not to use it at all.

There is no amount or type of education which will protect you from the automated evil vizier whispering flattery and lies into your ear. Telling yourself or others otherwise is simply incorrect.

Trying to reframe it as "Kids These Days are more susceptible because they're 'functionally broken' by our education system" doesn't change the basic thesis statement.

rocky spends half an earth century alone in space, which is notoriously so extremely quiet, and people have been exploring the idea of eridians experiencing a version of touch starvation in the form of like, a lack of noise. and then grace comes along. and he is just so goddamn noisy. he breathes audibly. his body has no exoskeleton, and all the little things inside of him also make noise. he snores. a thing done while sleeping.

rocky does find the fact he can hear all of his internal organs and their functions somewhat disgusting, but eventually it becomes such a comfort to him that when he and grace go their separate ways home, the hardest part is being in the quiet again. the sounds of his ship do little to comfort, because there is no heartbeat. there is no blood rushing to listen to like white noise. no disgusting mouth sounds and 'humming', those vaguely eridian-but-not-quite noises that grace insists do not have meaning.

rocky sits in his ship with the fruits of his journey actively killing him, not knowing what's wrong, not knowing how to fix it, his planet doomed and the families of his crew never receiving their remains, thinking he has failed, and the only thing he can think is that it is so quiet.