It’s taken me a minute to unpack why I’m so unsettled by Chat GPT’s meteoric ascent. I think it’s this:

One of the major malfunctions of the human lizard brain is that we cling to false prophets with quick answers when we encounter scary adversity. The old military saying, “There are no atheists in foxholes” is 100% true, but dangerously incomplete. It should say “There are no atheists in foxholes, which is why people claim to be God when there are bullets wizzing over everyone's head.”

The false-prophet business thrives during moments of terrifying uncertainty. False prophets can be people, and they can also be technologies.

• Tony Robbins is selling out convention centers promising to double your profits during a (likely) recession. (He certainly can double his own profits - but not yours.)

• Simon Sinek, an ad executive with zero lived experience in finance, insists the problem with business is that CFOs need to become Chief Vision Officers. 

• When I was 28 and new to finance, I was invited onto CNBC to talk about what would happen next in the financial crisis. Instead of saying "I'm not qualified to answer that question." I said, "Sure!" and stupidly predicted that Capital One would collapse

• A recent article in Harvard Business Review offered 5 ways to overcome a bad performance review, from a “life coach” who’s never been an employee with a bad performance review. 

• Bitcoin was supposed to solve the problem of predatory, all-powerful banks like Lehman Brothers.

• Facebook is ‘the’ answer to loneliness

• Google is “the” answer to confusion.

• CEOs spend $70 million dollars on a McKinsey powerpoint deck written by 26-year-old MBAs who’ve never had to live with the consequences of their advice. 

• PhD students write indecipherable 600-page dissertations to prove they found the answer to a question which has never been answered.

Chat GPT offers ‘the answer’ when we don’t have answers. It offers correct-ness at the expense of understanding. It’s both seductive and dangerous.

It’s seductive because it’s really hard to co-exist peacefully with ambiguity in moments of urgency. I find myself turning to Chat GPT when I can’t articulate what I’m trying to say.

It’s dangerous because most simple answers to hard questions are wrong. And sometimes the people who offer those answers are predatory and opportunistic. My wise, 70-something year-old neighbor Peter said it best when we were sipping tea in my back garden during the Pandemic “run with those who seek God, run away from those who believe they have found Him.” I’m 45. And I find that as I get older I trust the advice of people who are curious and humble. I gravitate toward mentors who just listen when I’m freaking out, instead of saying, “Here’s what you need to do.”

I’ve come to recognize the value of co-existing with hard, scary adversity. Inside those moments is a hidden gift of resilience, humility, and the hard-earned insight and understanding that stems from survival. Chat GPT, like so many addictive, breakout technologies, makes it easy to not have to wait for those miracles to arrive.

And, I’m probably wrong.