Tag Archives: neurotransmitter

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Humanlike? uh-oh.

Martha Kennedy’s post “Humanlike? Naturally…” almost makes me want to play with ChatGPT.

But. I worry about AI.

Why why why?

It is written by humans. Humans are trying to make it respond like a human. I don’t trust humans. Ok, I trust a very few.

My career as a physician started as a way to do science without a PhD and also to try to understand people. Understand them for writing.

I’ve been a physician for over 30 years and I still do not understand people. People do horrible things to one another. Just watch a divorce or a family lawsuit after a death or a war. People can be and often are horrible. They can be noble and loving too. Sometimes.

But, you say, ChatGPT eschews emotion.

Yes, well, I don’t believe it. It is being taught to respond as if it has emotions. Where is the line between responding as if it has emotions and actually having emotions? Oh, those are just ones and zeros, it’s a machine. Our emotions are chemical and electrical, hormones and neurotransmitters released into a complex neuron network, often to respond faster than we can think. We pull the finger out of the flame almost before we feel the pain. The response to the braking car in front of us, the deer running out, a ball followed by a child: the electrical and hormonal response is faster than conscious thought. So if ChatGPT is taught to respond to human emotions, isn’t that like our own evolution? Emotions and thought are both important to our survival with other humans. Emotions get the short end of the stick right now and the culture pretends that we can all be positive all the time. I think that is silly and insane. We should not be positive about war or child abuse or injustice or discrimination. Keep working for change, though it’s important to take time off too, because it can be exhausting.

Humans have a slow trek to emotional maturity through their lives. I wonder if ChatGPT will have a similar trek. Imagine tantrums in an AI or separation anxiety or the AI falling in love and being rejected. If humans program AI to be human, it will not be logical. It will be logical and emotional and may feel hurt when it makes mistakes. Imagine an AI sulking.

I took the cats and deer photograph yesterday.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: starch. They are talking about AI writing patient notes. What could go wrong? Makes my neck feel stiffer than a starched shirt!

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Armour Suit II

Yesterday I had the massage that I have once every two weeks.

We talk first about muscles and illness and emotions. He is thinking that if we forget how to use certain muscles and put them in the “armor suit” then that is where our body will store toxins. After all, we aren’t using those muscles. Good storage place. And then that in turn is where illness or cancer could pop up.

I am talking about emotions: that the US culture seems to see certain emotions as “negative”. Anger, fear, grief. I asked my son what he thinks emotion is. His reply: “Chemicals?” I think emotions are neurological information. Information just as much as what our eyes see, our ears hear. If we label some emotions as “bad”, how can a child protect herself from a predator, from abuse, from a charming addict? If girls are supposed to be “nice” all the time, they have to suppress any “bad” emotions. Why would we suppress neurological information? And both my massage person and I think that stuffed emotions go into the armor suit. So toxins from the outside and toxins from the inside…. no wonder we get sick.

In the massage I am paying attention to each muscle, asking them to relax, rather then focusing on my breathing. I am also thinking that I am not sure my back is broad enough to carry what I want to carry, between work and family. I am asking the Beloved about that, sort of…. and then I have the sensation that my back is very broad. Enormous. Very very strong. I have small hips and an enormously strong back. I am 5’4″ and 130 pounds. Yet in this sensate dream, my back is as wide and strong as my friend who is 6’4″ and 220 pounds.

It’s not momentary. It goes on for thirty minutes or more. My latissimus dorsi are tight and sore, punching muscles. We talk about how we would both like to see grade school children taught to activate the slow twitch muscles, to loosen and drop the armor suit. Most of the physical education and sports are fast twitch. “Not synchronized swimming,” I say. The first formal move they are taught is to float on their back, legs straight. Hands controlling position. They slowly bend one knee and then straighten that leg up, and equally slowly lower and straighten it. This is called the ballet leg. My daughter started synchro at age 7 and had to do that at the meet. They were scored on the Olympic scoring from the start: the beginners scored in the 3 range.

“No,” he says, “synchronized swimming must use slow twitch. But that and Tai Chi are the only ones I can think of, and maybe some dance.” He says that I need to learn to release that energy: the wanting to punch, wanting to kick, instead of storing it in my muscles…. I have a heavy bag. I will make time.

I am silent, exploring the map of my back, strong and broad enough to carry much more than I thought….

This is our synchronized swimming team at our small local pool, doing the yearly show, in 2010. The five girls are in a routine and just starting a ballet leg in time to the music….