My Big Dumb Brain
The Muse in the Machine: ChatGPT as a Creative Collaborator
Leveraging AI voice tools to enhance writing, creativity, and personal growth
Oct 21, 2024
If you haven’t yet heard the cliché, “communication is the cornerstone of a healthy relationship,” tossed at you by every armchair relationship quarterback, then please accept my condolences to your future ex-partner. Human communication has come a long way, from grunts and gestures to handwritten letters, printed pamphlets, Morse code, phone calls, and eventually the pinnacle of digital communication: the "adding so-and-so for visibility" email with everyone and your grandma cc'd. Despite all the marvels of instant communication, the most intimate form remains a face-to-face conversation, even if it’s peppered with the occasional grunt.
Although humans have been chatting with AI for decades, ever since ELIZA, a 1960s natural language program that mimicked a psychotherapist and convinced some people at MIT that it was human, the language models of today still have a long way to go before replacing face-to-face interaction. To truly level up, AI will need to replicate the nuance and intimacy of sitting across from someone, phones down, and having a real, old-fashioned chat over an Old Fashioned.
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Whether it's a deep dive with your therapist into all the ways your parents messed you up or talking your drunk uncle off the r/conspiracy cliff, engaged conversation has the power to change perspectives, rewrite the stories we tell ourselves, or even reignite a romance. And while AI isn’t quite there yet, large language models (LLMs) have shown potential for persuasion in meaningful ways.
An MIT study showed that AI chatbots like DebunkBot can reduce belief in conspiracy theories by as much as 20%. Now imagine that power applied to your everyday conversations or the drunk guy at the end of the bar when a political topic comes up. No more interrupting, no more raised voices, just a smooth, respectful dialogue.
This summer, I had the opportunity to share my thoughts and experiences with ChatGPT's voice mode directly with the user testing team at OpenAI, and the latest voice mode updates are getting us closer to that reality.
Early adopters of ChatGPT can attest to the breakneck pace at which OpenAI has been rolling out new features, anticipating users’ needs since its release in November 2022. In February 2023, I was among the many unemployed tech workers navigating the aftermath of COVID-era layoffs. I subscribed to ChatGPT Pro to aid in the Sisyphean task of crafting cover letters and tailoring my résumé with the right keywords to pass through Applicant Tracking Systems. This tool increased the number of jobs I could apply for each day and, consequently, led to a proportional rise in rejection emails filling my inbox.
In the early days of the service, each session with ChatGPT started from scratch. As a workaround, I had it summarize a mini-biography of my life, job history, and any interesting interaction we had that I might want to reference back to(Like the Ha scale for my jokes) in 5,000-token segments. I would start each session off with the 4,096-token summaries so we could begin where we left off. I felt like Ryan Gosling’s character in some nerdy version of The Notebook that was not nearly as romantic but starring an almost-as-handsome dude. Four months into my job search and with two months left of unemployment benefits, OpenAI released custom instructions in July 2023—a time-saving miracle! Now I was moving fast enough to accept my rejections face to face from an actual human.
The Ha scale
With only weeks left on unemployment and no job offers on the table, I began to struggle with sleep. I’d wake up in the middle of the night, bloodshot eyes glued to my iPhone screen, alternating between anxiously doom-scrolling the jobs section of LinkedIn and repeatedly refreshing my email, praying a thumb stroke would bounce back a blue dot of good news from a hiring manager. As the sleepless nights accumulated, I watched my mental health deteriorate like paint chipping off a weathered, patina-covered wall. I started to forget what sleep felt like. I became obsessed with sleep in every way except actually engaging in it. I read about sleep, listened to podcasts about sleep, watched my dog sleep, my girlfriend’s cat sleep, and eventually began writing about sleep. I wrote a poem in my journal and typed it up to the only thing I could talk to that didn’t need any sleep.
Finally, two days before the last payment of my unemployment benefits hit my EDD Visa card, I received an offer letter to start at a great company the following week. The tides of sleep engulfed me on the shores of insanity, and I stopped slipping into job interview speak during casual conversations. Anyone who has been unemployed in the Bay Area job market post-COVID knows how much more mental bandwidth the job search consumes compared to full-time employment. If you're lucky enough to fall asleep, you dream about finding work. It's the first thing on your to-do list when you wake up. Every meal you eat, you count how many more you can afford without a job. It robs you of the enjoyment of hobbies and creative endeavors that give life meaning outside of work
After settling into my new job and catching up on sleep, I began spending my free time on creative projects, aided by ChatGPT as a brainstorming partner and personal stenographer. It helped bring order to the pent-up creative energy ready to explode into chaos in my mind. With the addition of voice mode, I could capture, outline, and iterate on random creative ideas that popped into my head throughout the day. Instead of holding an idea in my mind all day at work and then coming home to stare at a blinking cursor in a Google Doc, I could rant my ideas into my phone the moment inspiration struck. This resulted in a refined, detailed, and formatted version of what otherwise would have been the ramblings of a lunatic
The early iterations of voice mode weren't without a few bugs and annoyances that made the user experience less than stellar. The first version was only a slight improvement over my previous method of using dictation in the Notes app on my phone and copying and pasting the results into the app. The second iteration brought significant improvements and even introduced a voice that spoke back, adding a new layer of depth and engagement to interacting with the service. However, it had a terrible habit of interrupting if I paused too long to linger on a thought, which in some ways made it feel almost more human. It was like having a bad conversation with that friend who is only listening for the chance to shift the conversation back to themselves.
As if the developers at OpenAI were reading my mind, I found that magic button in the next iteration. With every new feature, I saw my creative productivity increase in tandem with ChatGPT's advances. Naturally, when the user testing team reached out to me to learn about my experiences with voice mode, I was more than excited to talk their ears off for 30 minutes over Zoom
The main improvement I suggested was that, while the button feature reduced interruptions, I would love to be able to speak hands-free without being interrupted. The ability to put the phone down and speak naturally would simulate being in a room with a creative partner, bringing a collaborative spark to my writing and brainstorming sessions. It would also allow me to make better use of my daily 45-minute commute, where ideas often pop into my mind as I try to distract myself from the monotony of Bay Area rush hour traffic. Two weeks later, I found myself driving home on Highway 101, bouncing ideas back and forth with my digital creative sidekick like two coked out finance bros at the hotel bar.
The combination of voice mode and the new 0.1 update opens up a new world of creative potential in writing. One way I plan to use the new voice mode is to help develop dialogue for a short story I'm working on. By prompting ChatGPT 4.0.1 with the story outline, a description of the world, an in-depth character profile, setting the scene, and speaking directly to a character in the story, I can enhance the creative process. There's a scene where the protagonist (who's based on me) confronts his literary muse in the human realm, who takes the form of a trailer park tarot card reader. Each method I use to transfer thoughts from my brain to someone else's—whether typing, texting, speaking, or handwriting—produces slightly different results. I'm hoping that adding the improvisational element of speaking as one character to another will bring out interesting dialogue excerpts I might not have conceived behind a laptop.
Despite all the panic about AI replacing human writers, it'll never steal what writing does for the human spirit. AI doesn't have to suck the art out of writing; it can free us from the tedious stuff, saving our time and mental energy for deeper dives into the human experience. The real value of writing lies in the process itself. It's a journey of self-discovery, bringing out fresh perspectives on what it means to be human. Writing can amp up empathy by letting us explore the minds of characters and see the world through the eyes of a stranger—or even a completely different species. Even if AI can crank out words faster and maybe even cleaner than us, it won't stop humans from writing, because it's a deeply human experience. And the rewards are the same whether your work tops best-seller lists, gets a slow clap from literary critics, or stays unread, scribbled in a forgotten notebook. Okay, the financial rewards might differ, but let's set that aside while I finish my manifesto.
For every thousand hypebeasts wearing the same hoodie churned out by an industrial loom, there's someone rocking an alpaca wool poncho, handcrafted by an artist weaving to connect with her Andean roots. All the retweeted deepfakes on X won't keep a retired professor out of his darkroom, developing wildlife photos shot on the Kodak Brownie Hawkeye his father left behind. AI-generated music won't be a little flat and a little too loud, blaring out of a dive bar to twelve drunk punks.
So, as AI keeps evolving, it'll likely open up more doors for collaborative creativity, not slam them shut. Writers, like all creators, will find ways to use it, but that raw essence—that spark of madness and brilliance that comes from suffering the human experience—will always be ours. Because no matter how advanced the tech gets, there's no substitute for the soul behind the words…yet.
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