{"id":205,"date":"2025-03-08T22:27:21","date_gmt":"2025-03-08T22:27:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/studbud.dcreate.domains\/flogdump\/?p=205"},"modified":"2025-05-06T18:08:10","modified_gmt":"2025-05-06T18:08:10","slug":"week-7","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/studbud.dcreate.domains\/flogdump\/flog\/hacking-and-design\/week-7\/","title":{"rendered":"Week 7"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

For me, this<\/span> w<\/span>eek<\/span> w<\/span>as<\/span> de<\/span>fined<\/span> by t<\/span>he<\/span> So<\/span>ftware<\/span> In<\/span>vasion<\/span> pr<\/span>oject<\/span><\/span>. Using ChatGPT for hours upon hours, reading meta psychoanalyses and simulations, it was quite the mental exercise. The biggest challenge was taking the 200+ pages of chat sessions and synthesizing them into a class presentation. I do not have the expertise in digital studies or psychoanalysis that the referenced authors did, of course, so the process was also a massive learning curve. Plus, the ethical tension around presenting Dr. Sample’s psychoanalyses to him in class led to many doubt spirals about whether I should restart the project with a different subject entirely. The spirit of the course and the project itself, however, won out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Does my use of this technology encourage me to view others as a means to an end?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was one of the concerns that came up as I played with ChatGPT’s simulations. It was clear that GPT was detecting patterns in Dr. Sample’s academic works, but the act of extracting those patterns, even if the extraction is imperfect, went beyond the ethical guidelines one can easily intuit. I believe that using the name “Mark Sample” to refer to ChatGPT’s modelings exaggerated the ethical tension, and made the experiment feel like an attempt to use his personality as a means to an end, where the end is entertainment. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, I would argue that my usage was neither targeting the personality, nor working towards entertainment as the end. It was clear to me that ChatGPT was not replicating Dr. Sample’s identity, but only his linguistic styles, which is an end in itself. Is it not the intent of the scholar when publishing their works that readers will notice, and hopefully adapt, the same critical approach to life? If so, then the scholar’s end is aligned with this usage, with the only difference being that the performer of the analysis is an AI. To prompt such usage requires a deep engagement with the scholar and their works, without which one cannot lead ChatGPT into doing a meaningful simulation. Therefore, extracting patterns is not itself a usage that encourages viewing others as a means to an end. Similarly, using those patterns to engage with other content is also an act of inquiry, learning, education. Prompting ChatGPT to psychoanalyze, to me, was a test not only of its ability to do so but also of those very psychoanalytical techniques themselves. The value lies in inquiry, experimentation, and exposure of both ChatGPT and the generalizability of said psychoanalytical techniques. This leads to the next question:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Does using this technology require me to think more or less?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I found that using GPT in this way required an abandonment of any notion of what ChatGPT is. Typically, in collegiate settings at least, it seen as something you cheat with, something to make things easier than they are “supposed to be”, an almost amusing artifact that encourages deception about how much you actually use it, like porn site. In reality, I found ChatGPT to be an educational artifact of its own. Its affordances are manyfold and mostly invisible. The nature of its processing, the LLMs, the neural networks, are mysterious and seem to mirror something that is deeply personal to all of us: thought. Using ChatGPT to simulate and psychoanalyze made it the very object of study, illuminating what it even means to study something. I believe it required more thinking than its typical usage to the extent that it should be considered an essential philosophical exercise in any class or subject.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For me, this week was defined by the Software Invasion project. Using ChatGPT for hours upon hours, reading meta psychoanalyses and simulations, it was quite the mental exercise. The biggest challenge was taking the 200+ pages of chat sessions and synthesizing them into a class presentation. I do not have the expertise in digital studies…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":221,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_vp_format_video_url":"","_vp_image_focal_point":[],"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[14,10],"tags":[21,23],"class_list":["post-205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-flog","category-hacking-and-design","tag-flog","tag-flogs"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/studbud.dcreate.domains\/flogdump\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/313941-e1742596574757.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/studbud.dcreate.domains\/flogdump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/studbud.dcreate.domains\/flogdump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/studbud.dcreate.domains\/flogdump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studbud.dcreate.domains\/flogdump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studbud.dcreate.domains\/flogdump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=205"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/studbud.dcreate.domains\/flogdump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":336,"href":"https:\/\/studbud.dcreate.domains\/flogdump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205\/revisions\/336"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studbud.dcreate.domains\/flogdump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/221"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/studbud.dcreate.domains\/flogdump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studbud.dcreate.domains\/flogdump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studbud.dcreate.domains\/flogdump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}