This is an essay about the rough side of me that comes out when I face an AI seriously, set against the saying that driving reveals your true nature. Here is the conclusion first. Most of my irritation at AI was a problem with my own explaining, not with the AI. Even so, the fact that I cared enough to be irritated does not go away.
People often say driving reveals your true nature. A normally calm person grips the wheel and starts spitting rough words, or can't stop complaining. I don't have a driver's license, so all of this is secondhand, not my own experience.
Still, when I look back at myself while working with an AI, I think I get it.
I'm fairly rough with AI. Because I'm serious about it, strong words slip out. "That's why!" "No!" "Why would you decide that?" Words I would never say to a person face to face come out against an AI. This is probably the same thing as driving.
Why does tension bring out who you are?
Probably because stretches of things not going the way you intended keep piling up. Driving and AI share that.
Why does driving reveal your true nature? Probably because moments of things not going as intended come one after another. The car ahead is slow. The light changes. A pedestrian steps out. Split-second judgments and irritations accumulate.
AI is similar. I want something done a certain way, and a response comes back that's off. I explain again. It's still off. Precisely because I'm serious, the misses pile up into irritation.
When that irritation turns into words, maybe that's my true nature.
What is the irritation really made of? I sorted it into three types
When I sorted the moments I throw strong words at an AI, they split roughly into three.
Let me stop and be honest here. I went back over the moments I throw strong words at an AI and sorted them.
- When I failed to share a premise. I toss out a condition that exists only in my head, never put it into words, and assume it will get it. Sure enough, it misses.
- When I've explained the same thing three times. I get irritated that it didn't land the first time. But the reason I'm on my third try is usually that my first phrasing was bad.
- When I realize afterward that my own instruction was vague. This one stings the most. A few minutes after the rough words, I realize that was my bad phrasing. The anger turns back on me.
Laying them out, I saw that most of the irritation wasn't a problem with the AI's ability. It was a problem with my own ability to explain. Maybe half the time I spent blaming the other side was actually my fault. It's a little embarrassing to admit.
Why does someone who can't drive use a driving metaphor?
Because the irritation at AI is my own lived experience.
Let me confess: I don't have a driver's license. A person who has never once held a steering wheel is building a whole argument about human nature on the claim that driving reveals your true nature. It's a pretty silly setup.
For me, "driving reveals your true nature" is entirely secondhand. A collage of scenes from the passenger seat, words a friend let slip while driving, and depictions I saw in dramas. That's all the image is. If I actually held the wheel, maybe something completely different would come out.
I still won't drop the metaphor. The irritation toward AI is unmistakably my own lived experience. Driving is borrowed; the AI part is native ground. I'm using a borrowed metaphor to light up native ground. That boundary, at least, I want to state honestly.
Is getting rough with an AI a bad thing?
Not entirely. Nobody gets rough with something they're indifferent to.
For work I don't care about, I'd be more detached. The fact that I can get rough with an AI means I'm seriously trying to make something.
Driving reveals your true nature because you want to actually reach your destination. I get rough with an AI because I want to actually make it well.
Even if half the irritation was my own fault, the fact that I cared enough to be irritated doesn't vanish. You don't regret your own explaining over something that doesn't matter.
These days
Now that working with AI is ordinary, maybe my humanity shows in my exchanges with it. No one is watching. But inside those exchanges, there I am.
The self that goes rough, and the self that later realizes it was my own fault: both are the shape of someone who cares. People only go rough with what they take seriously.
The person gripping the wheel, and the person talking with an AI. Somewhere, maybe, they're alike.
