Charlie Hart. Right: ChatGPT on a computer.
This Opinion article is part of a Narcity Media series. The views expressed are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Narcity Media.
ChatGPT might seem like the answer to all of life's problems, but how much is the technology actually capable of right now?
As someone who is chronically indecisive, I decided to let AI make all my daily decisions for me, from what to eat to where to work. My biggest takeaway? AI might be intelligent, but it still makes some odd choices.
Throughout the day, I turned to my computer to help me plan out my day and honestly, it wasn't that easy.
The day started off well.
Making a cup of tea.Charlie Hart | Narcity
I decided to start things off pretty simply by asking if having a second cup of tea was a good idea. Luckily, the AI had no major issues with it, so we were off to a good start.
However, it did choose to remind me that excessive caffeine consumption can increase anxiety and disrupt sleep (like I don't push these boundaries every day of my life.)
I also usually listen to music on Spotify while I'm working, so I decided to ask ChatGPT for some recommendations.
I asked the AI for a new artist to listen to and listed some of my most-played artists so it could base its decision on that. Most of the artists suggested, like Arlo Parks, Lorde and Waxahatchee, weren't new to me, but I picked one and they ended up being pretty good. But it's nothing your Spotify algorithm couldn't do.
Its lunch suggestions were... interesting.
Questionable-looking but tasty avocado toast with eggs and a side of carrots and hummus.Charlie Hart | Narcity
When it got to lunch, I decided to kick my ChatGPT use up a notch. After looking in the fridge, I came up with a list of ingredients I had (including an avocado, some herbs, eggs, carrots and hummus).
The suggestion: avocado toast with eggs and a side of carrot sticks and hummus.
While I asked for other alternatives, the AI suggested a salad that I was missing ingredients for. It also suggested a "veggie and herb omelette" with a side of avocado, but the recipe didn't actually include any vegetables. It was just herbs and eggs, so I went back to the avocado toast.
Was it a ground-breaking recipe? No, but it was pretty tasty and used up a lot of things I already had lying around. It was a half-success.
It has no sense of direction.
I decided to head out for the afternoon to work and asked ChatGPT for recommendations for coffee shops. It was also minus 20 degrees outside, so I gave it my address and made sure to ask for locations that were close by. It gave me a suggestion of a few different places to try, but having lived in the area for a while, I was surprised that it missed a ton of way closer spots.
When I asked for places that were even closer, things got weird. It sent me a list of places that were actually farther away. When I pointed that out, it apologized for the error, so at least it was polite.
I opted to head to Analog Coffee, one of the coffee shops it originally selected, and cursed while I walked past all the other closer coffee shops that it had ignored.
As an extra test, I even asked ChatGPT to choose my beverage, deviating from my usual oat milk latte for a flat white with oat milk and honestly, the difference wasn't that noticeable.
It got dinner so right.
Vegetable bibimbap made from a ChatGPT recipe.Charlie Hart | Narcity
Although I'd been craving takeout all day, I decided once again to test out ChatGPT's recipe repertoire and asked it to suggest a healthy dinner with Korean flavours. It came back with an easy vegetarian bibimbap recipe that sounded pretty tasty.
Dinner was really simple to put together, with the main source of the flavour coming from the sauce. It asked me to use a quarter-cup of gochujang and a tablespoon each of soy sauce, sesame oil and sugar, and personally, I felt like those quantities were a little bit off.
While it wasn't perfect by any means, I realized that the recipes given by ChatGPT were definitely a good starting point, and you can just tweak them as you would any other recipe if things aren't to your taste.
Do not use ChatGPT to choose a movie.
I wish ChatGPT recommended She's The Man.Charlie Hart | Narcity
After a long hard day of making no decisions and arguing with a machine, I decided I wanted to settle in for the evening with a movie. Again, I turned to ChatGPT to give me some recommendations based on my streaming services and my likes (mainly rom-coms, to be honest).
Its first batch of suggestions was so spot on that I'd actually seen all of them already, so I asked for more and found one that I hadn't seen yet and decided to go for it.
Around 30 minutes into a movie called The Half Of It, which was a little bit boring and did not live up to my rom-com favourites, it started to dawn on me that sometimes, even computers don't know everything.
