When I face an AI seriously, I get the feeling my humanity comes out.
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 license, so this is all secondhand. Not from my own experience.
But when I look back at myself while working with an AI, I think I sort of 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 that would never come out against a human face to face come out against an AI.
This is probably the same as driving.
Tension brings out who you are
Why does driving reveal your true nature? Probably because "stretches of things not going the way you intended pile up." The car ahead is slow, the light changes, a pedestrian steps out. Moment-to-moment judgments and irritations accumulate.
AI is similar. I want it done "like this," and a response that's off comes back. I re-explain. 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.
Breaking down what the irritation really is
Here, let me honestly stop and look. I went back and sorted the moments I throw strong words at an AI. They split roughly into three.
The first is when I failed to share a premise. I toss out a condition that only exists in my own head, never putting it into words, assuming "you'll get it" — and sure enough, it misses.
The second is 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.
The third is when I realize, afterward, that my own instruction was vague. This one stings the most. A few minutes after the rough words, I realize, "no, that was my bad phrasing." The arrow of anger turns back on me.
Laying them out, what I saw is 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.
The contradiction of someone who can't drive using a driving metaphor
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 proposition that "driving reveals your true nature." It's a pretty silly setup.
"Driving reveals your true nature" is, for me, entirely secondhand. A collage made from scenes viewed from the passenger seat, words a friend who was driving let slip, 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, because 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 leave honestly stated.
Proof that I'm "facing it"
That said, I don't think it's all bad.
I don't get rough with someone I'm indifferent to. For work I don't care about, I'd be more detached. The fact that I can get rough with an AI is because 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 in the first place doesn't vanish. You don't regret your own explaining over someone who doesn't matter.
These days
Now that working with AI has become ordinary, maybe my humanity comes out in the 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.
