Every once in a while, I do something a little different.
Usually, Prompt to Post is exactly what it sounds like. You get the finished article, and somewhere behind the scenes there’s a prompt, a conversation, a stream of consciousness, or a collection of notes that helped get us there.
This time, I’m posting the prompt.
Not because I think the prompt itself is important.
Because I think the process is.
People hear somebody say they’re using AI and immediately picture a magic button. Press button. Receive article. Press button. Receive image. Press button. Receive content.
That isn’t how I use it.
Let’s start before ChatGPT even enters the conversation.
Most of these articles begin while I’m walking. I pull out my phone and start talking. Speech-to-text turns my rambling into words. The iPhone handles spelling corrections, punctuation suggestions, grammar cleanup, and all the little things that used to require sitting at a keyboard fixing mistakes one at a time.
That’s before AI even gets involved.
Then we get to ChatGPT.
Not as a replacement for thinking.
Not as a replacement for creativity.
Not as a replacement for experience.
As a tool.
A tool that can help organize thoughts.
A tool that can review code.
A tool that can help diagnose systems.
A tool that can generate images.
A tool that can help me structure ideas that would otherwise arrive as seventeen separate text messages, six unrelated observations, three childhood memories, and a joke that somehow references both Star Trek and a trip to Walmart.
Most importantly, it’s a tool that will let me finish a thought before giving its opinion.
Some humans could learn from that.
If you’ve ever gotten text messages from me, you already understand the problem.
Back when text messages were limited to 160 characters, entire conversations would arrive out of order. Message number six would show up before message number two. Half the context would disappear into the void. By the time somebody understood the setup, I’d already moved on to the punchline.
Prompt to Post exists because I finally have a system that can help organize all that chaos.
It doesn’t create the ideas.
It helps translate them.
And yes, some things get toned down in the process.
That’s probably for the best.
Anybody who knows me personally knows my vocabulary becomes considerably more colorful when I’m not concerned about offending polite company. There is a reason we used to call it smack talk.
Smack talk wasn’t called smack talk because everybody politely exchanged viewpoints and then held a committee meeting.
It was called smack talk because eventually somebody got smacked.
Sometimes literally.
Sometimes metaphorically.
Occasionally by life itself.
The lesson was never “don’t speak.”
The lesson was “understand the consequences of speaking.”
Because the difference between a crime of passion and premeditation is often measured in how much time passes between having a thought and opening your mouth.
Planning matters.
Experience matters.
Thinking matters.
And after you’ve spent enough years watching people manufacture their own disasters one sentence at a time, you become very selective about who you listen to.
Which brings me back to these walks.
Most of these thoughts happen while I’m moving.
While I’m alone.
And before somebody gets clever, not that kind of alone time.
You’re welcome for that mental image.
The point is that walking gives me room to think. It gives me time to process ideas. It gives me the opportunity to chase a thought all the way to its conclusion before I have to interact with customers, passengers, readers, viewers, or anybody else who may eventually encounter the finished result.
The prompt captures the process.
The article captures the outcome.
Sometimes it’s worth showing both.
In fact, after looking back at the original prompt that inspired this article, I discovered something amusing.
For all the discussion about profanity, the original prompt contained exactly three uses of the word “fuck” and one use of “fucking.”
Four total.
That’s it.
Meanwhile, the prompt spent several paragraphs discussing why profanity exists, how people react to it, and why opening your mouth without thinking can create problems.
Apparently, age has taught me restraint.
Or maybe I’ve simply become more efficient.
Either way, the ratio of words discussing profanity to actual profanity was surprisingly high.
Which may be the most Gen X thing I’ve done all week.
So when people ask how I use AI, the answer is actually pretty simple.
I walk.
I think.
I talk.
I ramble.
The phone turns speech into text.
The software helps organize the mess.
And somewhere between the prompt and the post, the chaos becomes a story worth telling.
At least that’s the theory.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have another walk to finish and probably several more thousand words to accidentally create before I get there.
And now the prompt:
Now this is going to be one of the rare occasions that I actually go and post the prompt, then go and let ChatGPT generate the article before I post it, because let’s just go and show the factor of the tool set that I got to play with as an artist, as a person who can go and perpetually come up with bullshit to entertain other people or make people at least think about the world we’re living in. Because especially with a tool like this, where I can get speech to text, I can get grammar checks, proper spellings, and that’s just the first part that doesn’t even get to the fact of ChatGPT, because that’s by the factor of using an iPhone, because it has to use its internal mechanisms to produce the input for the prompt. Then we get into the fact that I could have images generated, code reviewed, systems diagnosed, issues resolved, and on top of all of that, somebody who wouldn’t tell me to shut the fuck up and give their own opinion about crap until I fucking finish. And yes, you can tell the difference here because of the same fact, the amount of profanity I usually use when I am not around people that I’m concerned with offending. That’s why we called it Smack Talk, children, because usually when you said this shit to another person, you got to be prepared to get smacked. And that’s your best option at that time, because some people aren’t gonna stop at smacking you. So learn the concept of what smack talk actually is. You might go and say that it’s critical thinking at the same time of realizing, no, you’re being an asshole. Thank you very much for showing up. See yourself out the door. Or if we have to give you the change and the directions and a swift boot in the ass, that’s usually what we call aggravated assault. And yes, I am proving the fact that a lot of this gets toned down because of ChatGPT. I don’t blame it. I also have to tell customers when they’re in the rideshare that maybe, just maybe, the difference between premeditation and a crime of passion is just opening up your fucking mouth. Planning is everything. And when you’ve been around people that stupid, you tend not to go and be around people that stupid ever the fuck again. So, you know, why this might be more coherent is that this is done during my walks. This is done when I have alone time. Not that type of alone time, because that’s special alone time, okay? And yes, I went there. Thank you very much. You’re welcome. Yes, I implanted that thought into your head. Now you can’t get rid of it. And since I still have time between one point to the other point, which is only less than a quarter of a mile, for me to go and express myself before I actually have to enter public view or any public discussion with people that actually could go and know who the fuck I am. It’s one of those fun times of just saying, why not? Why not make this the post about how I use AI and actually put it in a way that most of the people who got text messages from me, because I usually hooked up my computer to the phone. Back in the day with 160 characters, a lot of things got missed because when you get rapid fire text messages, sometimes they don’t arrive in the correct order. So, yes, that’s why I prompt the post exists. Thank you very much again, and have a nice day.