my father was a university professor and an expert in his field, writing and publishing.
I’m not happy with my job and I’m deciding if I should keep it or study a bachelor, meaning less money for at least 3 years, working part time, relocating… for an uncertain future.
I explained my fears and the situation to my father thoroughly. This once brilliant person capable of giving me several points of view about several topics pasted my questions to an AI engine and sent me its answers, it’s like he didn’t even try to answer the questions himself. wtf?
It’s sad and scary: a person I once could confide in, ask for guidance is now… disappearing? It’s like he disregarded the emotional component completely.
He is now 78 years old. Am I being unrealistic?
And the AI answer? gets several things wrong and doesn’t tell me anything new but holy shit, the way the answer is phrased (my personal opinion, what I think is…), no wonder so many seniors believe they’re talking to an actual human, which is scary on so many levels, because the engine hallucinated several false facts and presented them so neatly packaged, seniors take them as correct fact.
I’m currently going through something similar with my 80 year old dad, and while I don’t think that taking the output of an AI chatbot as gospel is necessarily a sign of cognitive decline, I have witnessed worse signs in my case.
He is bad with technology and it’s only gotten worse over the years. Aside from times where I’ve had to clear malware from his computer, I quite often find myself assisting him with basic things like navigating his emails, online banking, resetting a password for one of his accounts, or ordering catheter supplies through a smartphone app which is otherwise incredibly easy and straightforward to use (the app isn’t very good on smartphones though, and everything about its UI is bigger than it needs to be.)
Another good example is with his television. Sometimes he’s struggled to even navigate through menus on the set-top box and isn’t properly reading through the menus. Next thing you know, he’s either set up a separate Netflix subscription, or signed up to an expensive cable package because suddenly we have access to Sky Cinema and TNT Sports.
Teaching and reminding him of how to use these things is sometimes like pulling teeth and it’s not like I’ve been half-arsing it either. I used to work in customer service for a major right-wing UK newspaper and when I wasn’t dealing with arsehole customers and the occasional bigot who think we can put them through to a journalist so they can spout their racist views, a lot of my job involved helping pensioners with website and smartphone/tablet app tech support queries.
This is challenging to deal with in-and-of-itself, but dealing with someone who can be obnoxious, rude, impatient and have the temperament of a male Karen makes it even worse.
Unfortunately this is something I have to live with. At 34 years old I still live with my parents and not necessarily out of choice. I lost my job last year due to mass layoffs and my work prospects have been dogshit ever since. But also, absolutely everything is switching to a digital-only model.