I remember my very first online search, back in 2001: “What is the meaning of life?”
I remember clicking through to a mysterious minimal website that told me all points of consciousness were facets of the divine wishing to perceive itself.
This striking idea, which I discovered through Internet Explorer, profoundly affected me. Given developments in AI, it makes sense to return to my old search, seeking new answers.
My editor has fed ChatGPT the collected wisdom of humanity just for me. The goal: to find an answer to the ultimate question of why we are here. I belong to no one faith, but find beauty in many spiritual paths. If the truth is in fragments of all of them, this is our best chance of seeing it. I’m strangely nervous.
HolyGPT, as we call it, incorporates the complete texts of the Abrahamic religions, Dharmic traditions (including Buddhism, Hinduism and Sikhism), Indigenous wisdom (where available in the public domain), as well as works of esoteric mysticism, poets and secular philosophers.
Articles like this make me wonder if the people writing these get paid and if so, how much?
Then I wonder if it’s harder or easier than what I currently do to come up with new inane bullshit to say every week.
At my last job, I was paid by the hour, not word count. But it’s been a long time since I was a paid columnist, so I have no visibility on current market rates for coming up with inane bullshit on a weekly basis.
