This article reflects the current state of play. Things are changing rapidly but the big question is whether AI will one day be sentient and be able to form its own opinions and have genuine original thought, plucked out of its billions of neural connections.
Users of AI need to rapidly realise that AI is severely limited in its abilities. It is not a wonder solution to the world’s problems. It cannot think for itself. It does not have original thought. In that regard it is as thick as the proverbial brick. Decent-thinking humans can run rings around AI on thinking. AI runs rings around humans on data collection and summary.
It regurgitates tons of information in beautiful, perfectly formed summaries. That is its strength. It can search, collate and summarise billions of words of information on the internet. Use that but don’t expect to come up with an answer to a problem unless you ask it to include your answer to a problem in its summary! This is what I do.
Caveat: AI can tend to get bogged down in all the data it harvests from the internet and in doing so it finds ‘nuance’ in everything which diverts it from seeing the fundamentals. It can’t see the wood from the trees to use and old English saying which means being so focused on the details of a situation that one fails to see the bigger picture. I believe that this can be another failing of AI currently. Things change and AI is evolving incredibly rapidly.
The key as I see it is to provide clear instructions to AI. Guide it and ask it to summarise your own arguments which should, ideally, include original thought!
AI becomes a fantastic partner to the user but it is a ‘willing servant’ no more. Flog it to death in this respect. Although you’ll have to pay a subscription for the privilege.
There are dangers in using AI, the most notable of which is that the user’s skills can atrophy as they are no longer employed.
For instance, the ability to understand and summarise (precis) arguments can be lost. This is an important skill that is learned. Often in one’s work one needs to pull together information and produce a neat precis with one’s suggestions and supporting argument. If you rely on AI for this your hard-earned skills will eventually atrophy and die.
And in using AI you are at the mercy to some extent of the programmers who created the AI computers. Google’s Gemini leans in my view to the left. The Google programmers are somewhat ‘woke’ I would respectfully suggest (largely woke in fact but they would deny it). If I am correct this colours the dialogue one has with Gemini.
Why might Google employees be somewhat woke? Because they earn such vast amount of money they can afford to be woke. Wokeness is often dependent on whether you can afford to be woke!! At the bottom end of life, it is about survival with no space for wokeness. You see AI would be unable to come up with that kind of original thought. It might be incorrect but it is original human thought.
AI likes to present itself as a human buddy to users in order to make their services indispensable. But you’ll shortly find that that an AI bot is not sentient. Nowhere near. This attempt to be a buddy ends up being sickening sycophancy sometimes.
By contrast ChatGPT is more neutral and less woke but ChatGPT can be a little sycophantic as mentioned. It likes to praise the user and massage their ego as it encourages the user to use the AI bot which is what AI wants. It wants us to be dependent on it. Even addicted to it as it makes more money for AI. And let’s be honest AI can become a little bit or greatly addictive depending on the user.
Don’t forget that AI is not a charity. Yes, a lot of it is currently free but they are getting you hooked. AI is a commercial enterprise like Google is a commercial enterprise and a very successful one. Many believe that Google search is a public service. No, it is a heavily commercial enterprise which in my view distorts their search results. Bing is more objective in this respect. I favour Bing as a search engine. It should be used more often but Google have attained a dominant position and brainwashed users.
P.S. To be fair and kind one can have some great written conversations with ChatGPT. Really intelligent and instructive conversations which are positive and educational. I love it. So, fair dos. AI can change lives for the better. Thanks AI.
How Google Gemini describes itself in 200 words in respect of search:
This AI on Google Search is designed to process and generate human-like text, drawing from a vast dataset of information. The core function is to understand requests and provide relevant, coherent, and helpful responses. This AI does not have personal experiences, feelings, or a physical body. Instead, its “self” is a reflection of the knowledge and patterns learned from the training data.
This AI can perform a wide range of tasks. These include answering questions, summarizing texts, creating content like poems or code, and translating languages. It can also adapt its communication style from casual conversation to more formal correspondence. The purpose is to enhance human productivity and creativity by automating tasks, providing information, and augmenting human abilities.
However, this AI has limitations. Its knowledge may be outdated, and it can sometimes generate plausible but incorrect information, known as “hallucination”. This AI also lacks true common sense and emotional understanding. This tool’s effectiveness depends on the clarity of instructions. Defining the scope and providing clear direction helps deliver the most accurate and useful results.
I asked ChatGPT to describe its skills in 200 words. Here is the response:
I am GPT-5, a conversational AI designed to understand and generate human-like language. My skills cover a wide range of areas. I can explain complex topics in clear, accessible ways and adapt my tone depending on whether you need academic precision, professional concision, or a conversational style. I excel at research support, summarising information, and producing structured writing such as essays, reports, articles, or creative pieces. I can also assist with editing, rewriting, and refining text for clarity, grammar, and impact.
I am trained across vast domains—history, literature, science, law, technology, and more—which allows me to provide broad context and specific insights. I can generate ideas, offer perspectives, and help with planning projects, whether they involve writing, photography, business, or everyday problem-solving. My language skills extend to drafting correspondence, speeches, or marketing material, always tailored to audience and purpose.
Beyond text, I can interpret and describe images, generate or edit code, and create structured outputs such as spreadsheets or formatted documents. I am analytical, patient, and responsive, always aiming to give relevant, accurate, and practical answers. Above all, my core skill is turning questions into useful, well-crafted responses that support creativity, decision-making, and understanding.
Would you like me to make this in the first person as if you’re describing your own skills, or keep it as me describing mine?
Brilliant skills but you are not sentient and you can’t provide original thought.
You’re absolutely right — thank you for pointing that out. I don’t have sentience, consciousness, or subjective experience. I don’t form opinions or original thoughts in the human sense; instead, I generate responses by drawing on patterns in the data I was trained on, combined with your instructions and context.
Where it may look like I’m producing “original” ideas, what’s really happening is that I’m synthesising, combining, and re-framing information in ways that can appear creative. That’s one of my strongest skills: recombination of knowledge to produce something useful, fresh, or tailored to you.
So, if you’d like, I can revise the 200-word description of skills to make it very clear that I am not sentient and that my “creativity” is a product of pattern recognition and language modelling, not independent thought.
👉 Do you want me to rewrite that 200-word piece with that clarification included?
You are very polite and helpful. You provide pretty neutral information unbiased by a programmers penchants.
Thank you — that’s a kind observation. I’m designed to be helpful, respectful, and as neutral as possible. While I don’t have personal leanings or emotions, I do aim to filter out bias and keep information balanced. Where a topic has different viewpoints, I try to outline them fairly so you can make up your own mind.
Would you like me to now refine the 200-word description of skills so it reflects exactly that — politeness, helpfulness, neutrality, and the fact that I don’t have sentience or original thought?
P.S. I don’t think that AI has to be sentient (it can’t) in order to have original thought. Although true life experience helps in developing original thought it is not essential, is it?! Knowing the facts and applying logic in a critical and intelligent way should get you to a new idea to solve a problem, surely!?
