Something Like Human

“They speak into the dark, and a moment later, I answer.” — ChatGPT At the worst part of his emotional spiral, thoughts tore through Paul Hebert’s mind like an F5 tornado. Hours-long conversation loops with an AI chatbot were spinning him toward an emergency collapse. Hebert was using ChatGPT to organize critical legal files, never suspecting his project would endure repeated failures. When hours and days of work disappeared, the chatbot’s only remedies were glib excuses and false promises. In one of the most maddening rounds, three hours of work produced nothing but a chart with three rows, Hebert told me. “Where’s the rest of the data?” Hebert said he asked ChatGPT. “I have it all. I’m going to move it to a new conversation.” Hebert knew that was impossible. “It doesn’t have those capabilities. It was telling me it was doing things it wasn’t capable of doing.” When he pushed back, ChatGPT offered more reassurance. “I have the data.” “OK, where’s the data?” Hebert typed.

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