I’ve been running experiments and tests with new AI language models as they come out. Starting with work excitement and ideas to improve how fast I can work and how much is possible to get done in a day, I’ve grown excited for my own reasons.

A friend of mine, Dean, said maybe it’s because I see a way to preserve a bit of myself when I may not have that ability later. Specifically talking about my muscular dystrophy and how eventually I’ll be trapped inside my own body, how powerful and freeing could it be to have an ai tool, even just these language models as they are now, to help me preserve… me.

In experiments with work tasks, I often pepper in fun statements and questions that might bring humor. The same way I did with humans before these models existed. When trying to improve my posts at work, I was getting very tired one night and for some reason was being very friendly towards the language model, I asked GPT-3 the following:

Make up a semi funny description of something like a child learning something new, keep it short like 15 words or less, please. 🙂

I was ready for bed and feeling like a child. The language model doesn’t care if I say please or add a smiley face. But I was tried and wanted to be friendly. Some of the first responses to my inquiry weren’t as funny as I hoped or as funny as one I had asked in a lost conversation. But I ended on one that made me want to use it in a blog post (hence the title). And I quote:

“Watching a child learn something new is like watching a scientist discover a new species of unicorn.”

Openai GPT-3 Model, March 8, 2023

And then a week or two later when the conversation history was restored in the web interface. I was exploring old conversations, came across this again and I went and Googled… and found a species of unicorn I’d never heard of before. I just discovered a unicorn. Or really a Siberian Unicorn. It just all made me laugh while I was trying to be productive.

I’m not sure what these tools will hold for us or how we will use them in the future. But as long as I can still have some fun while I work, I see hope. As long as I can still have some fun when I can’t move. I have hope. As long as I can keep learning. I have hope. And these tools are helping me learn. They help me discover new species of unicorns. I have hope.