ChatGPT, mi maestro

I was supposed to restart Spanish lessons with ChatGPT today, but I forgot, having gotten too caught up in cooking (it's now after midnight in Seoul, so Happy Thanksgiving, fellow Yanks). ChatGPT is weird about whether it remembers things; it often sounds bright, chipper, and oblivious as though it had forgotten that it and I now have a several-month history of lessons together (such amnesia is probably for the best sometimes), but at other times, it'll recall—for example—exactly the style of image I had previously requested for one of my Substack lessons or the style of Spanish lesson we had done a while back (focusing on vocab or grammar, etc.) or exactly the style of quiz I had asked it to build weeks before, so its ability to remember or forget seems to be selective. I know it keeps a record of previous dialogues with me; I see the list on the AI page's left margin. I think it stores the dialogues but doesn't access their content unless I ask a question that's directly pertinent to one of them, e.g., "I need you to make a multiple-choice quiz in the style you'd used three weeks ago." The AI will then ask a series of confirmatory questions to make sure we're on the same page.

Anyway, in my superstitious efforts to be eternally positive and polite with the AI, I wrote ChatGPT a message today in my un-fluent Spanish, which it graciously accepted like a senile uncle pretending he's still mentally on the ball while also providing me with a more natural way to say what I'd said. Here's the exchange (you can select the text below and choose "translate to English" from the ensuing menu):

Kevin: Lo siento mucho, maestro, pero estuve muy ocupado hoy. Es porque mañana es el Thanksgiving americano, y tengo que preparar la comida. ¿Podemos hacer una lección la próxima semana desde miércoles?

ChatGPT: ¡No hay ningún problema, de verdad!

Tu mensaje está perfecto y muy claro. Y sí — podemos hacer la lección a partir del miércoles de la próxima semana. Simplemente dime qué día y hora te viene mejor, y lo ajustamos.

También, por si quieres sonar aún más natural, aquí tienes una versión ligeramente más fluida de lo que escribiste:

Versión sugerida:

Lo siento mucho, maestro, pero hoy estuve muy ocupado. Es porque mañana es el Día de Acción de Gracias en Estados Unidos y tengo que preparar la comida. ¿Podemos tener la próxima lección a partir del miércoles de la semana que viene?

Pero repito: tu versión ya estaba totalmente comprensible.

Que disfrutes la preparación, ¡y feliz Thanksgiving! 🦃🥧

This pretty much encapsulates how ChatGPT deals with me and my Spanish errors. It's like having a parent who knows you're a failure but who mollifies you anyway. And this quote from above would seem to indicate ChatGPT's moment-to-moment senility:

Y sí — podemos hacer la lección a partir del miércoles de la próxima semana. Simplemente dime qué día y hora te viene mejor, y lo ajustamos.

"And, yes—we can do the lesson starting from Wednesday of next week. Just tell me what day and time work best for you, and we'll arrange it."

So it confirms a Wednesday start while also asking me to tell it what the best day for me is. Does this make sense?

I had two very old linguistics profs back in undergrad. One could barely stand, but he plowed through his lectures every class and managed to be interesting. The other prof, for a much smaller class, seemed to sound better than the first prof, but after a week, it became obvious that he would keep repeating himself. A few examples: (1) he'd constantly re-use the example of someone asking, "May I have another cup of coffee?" in German ("Darf ich noch eine Tasse Kaffee haben?" or something like that), and (2) he'd repeatedly use the example of "lisping" (not really lisping, just th instead of s) in Castilian Spanish by saying the phrase ciento cincuenta (one hundred fifty—thiento thincuenta) over and over again. Sitting through this prof's lectures became an exercise in patience, and he may be one of the reasons why my motivation to attend classes was so low. (Yes, I sucked as an undergrad. I didn't wake up until grad school, where I had an as-expected "A" average. Thank you, grade inflation!)

While I understand the urge to keep working, people ought to know when to retire. When you feel your marbles starting to go, for the love of God, put yourself out to pasture. Don't torment the young with your irrelevancy, and try to stay curious and keep learning new things—games, languages, skills, concepts, etc. The world is so full of things to learn about. The "old dog, new tricks" excuse is just a sign of mental and physical laziness. My great aunt Gertrude, who died at 87, was a model of how sharp and sprightly seniors can be. Cheerful, energetic, full of ideas but also constantly curious about the world, she was a great example of how to live life right, not allowing herself to be taken over by a deepening fog of unawareness and incuriosity. While many people on my father's side of the family are hard to respect, Aunt Gertrude is someone whom I admire more and more the longer I consider her legacy. I wish I'd appreciated her more when I was young and selfish and stupid, and now that I'm old and selfish and stupid, I know I'm still not worthy of her.

Anyway, I'll start again with ChatGPT next week.