A(aaaghh)I

Hello. It's been a while, I know. For those thrilled by a break in a barrage of badly written blogs, you're welcome, and I'm sorry to be back.

The truth is, there is less to laugh at as life gets better. My bipolar has decided it's time for a nap. I'm working on how to make that a permanent one. No but really, I'm learning. I was trying to describe the bipolar thing to a man, and for the first time I managed to acknowledge the idea that it may not be solely bad and horrible.

Yes, it IS bad and horrible. But reading Rosie Viva's 'Totally Normal and Completely Fine' - an excellent book about her experience of being diagnosed with bipolar in her early 20 - has been eye-openeing. She was a model, super successful and beautiful - the parallels are there, I know!! Her bipolar emerged and landed her in a psych ward at 22. Reading her experience - what she was like as a child, and as a teen / young adult in relationships, I was shocked by the similarities. This is all ramble, the POINT that I'm inarticulately trying to make, is that at the end she said she wouldn't trade it. Despite all the pain, the heartbreak, the impact on her family, the danger that bipolar puts you in, she believes that who she is when she is well (creative, energetic, magnetic) is also down to bipolar.

My Mum spoke to me about this and I instantly shut her down - I couldn't cope with bipolar being anything but the thief of joy and normality in my life. It's easier to put it in the 'BAD, AWFUL, NO THANKS, FUCK OFF' box. The more I've mused (an excellent word. Imagine me reclining on a chaise-longue, in some sort of floaty dress... musing), the more I'm coming around to it. Yes, although bipolar has damaged my life immeasurably, especially in the last few years, I do appreciate being well on an entirely different plane now. I'm not sure I would be as energetic or passionate when I am well, if the person I am when I am ill didn't exist. Does that make any sense? Probably not.

Wowwwww, tangent. Attempt at profundity over. Thank God. I am putting pen to paper today to talk about AI. Why, you ask? Because I simply don't get it.

I am not a woman in STEM. I am a woman, who is curious about science, but understands VERY little about why / how things actually work. I can't imagine a world where Newton would be surprised that the apple fell?

I really don't understand 'heat'. Like, how is my house warm? What physically turns electricity (I don't think I really understand electricity anyway) into HEAT to warm up my boiler?

Electric cars. What do you mean a battery is powerful enough to do what petrol and diesel have been doing for years? AND HOW CAN ELECTRICITY IN A WHITE FUCKING POST IN A CAR PARK FILL UP A CAR BATTERY AND PUT IT BACK ON THE M4?

3D printers? My stepbrother made these cool chess pawns with a 3D printer and I simply do NOT understand how a PRINTER can interpret a DESIGN, and 'PRINT' it?

I'm actually getting quite stressed, and we haven't even reached AI.

So, I've been a slow adopter. I left uni in 2022, but my friends that did an extra year started to use it for their uni work. Then there was the ChatGPT craze, which, three or four years later, I'm jumping onto. We'll talk content, then we'll talk science.

Here are some of my past Chat GPT searches that are, in hindsight, quite funny:

1. Do I legally have to pay my speeding ticket?

   1. yes, obviously

2. Emotional confusion. Advice?

3. MUN motion polar governance

   1. What?

4. Resting heart rate 39?

5. Oyster sauce alternatives

6. How do you know if you're good at flirting?

7. Quit smoking morning routine

My stepdad made me listen to a podcast to help me with all this AI stuff (it didn't work - don't let him read this blog). It said that searches on an AI platform use TRILLIONS of tonnes of water compared with searches on Google.

What do you mean typing something into an app uses water? No... but seriously?

Anyway, in terms of my relationship with ChatGPT, I would say it's an enabler. Constantly reassuring me that it's FINE that swimming feels harder than running, it's FINE to feel down when you've given up smoking, it's FINE to need more sleep when you're concussed (Cheers Rupe). STOP TELLING ME EVERYTHING IS FINE. NOTHING IS FINE.

So yes, I am not a personality type that requires enabling. I require reining in.

Onto reels. I don't have TikTok. Never have. At the start it was so I had more evidence that I was, in fact, better than everyone else. Since then, it's more that with an addictive personality like mine, I must avoid new addictions. I do, however, love reels on Insta. I saw a reel of a Nottingham Forest fan, aged 7ish, being interviewed post defeat, and he was crying and swearing. It was funny. I was told that it was fake? So my questions begin - who is the boy in the video based on? Is it someone's kid and AI has then edited him to say funny shit and wear a Forest shirt? Or, scarier still, is the whole boy fake? I'm just very, very confused.

I sent Mimi a reel of someone falling over / a child hurting themselves (my two favourite genres of reel - don't tell the school I work at). She said it was fake? That it wasn't possible? I'm going to give an example below for your viewing pleasure (I think this one is real though).

I know I sound thick right now. And maybe I am, so that's ok. But I simply do not understand this whole business. I feel like culturally, it's only taken 5 minutes to go from 'log into chat room C on your DS' in 2008, to AI generating fake humans and writing scholarly essays in 2026.

Anyway, if anyone can explain AI, electric cars, 3D printing, and how my boiler produces heat in a way that doesn't use phrases like "well it's actually quite simple", I would be deeply grateful. Until then I will continue living in mild technological panic, being emotionally enabled by ChatGPT, and preparing to be outsmarted by a toaster, likely before 2030.

p.s. Asked ChatGPT to make a picture of me looking angry at the logo this morning for this blog. How crazy is this?! HOW does this happen?! It's made my teeth quite weird. Am I becoming a vampire? Stay tuned.