Photo by Anne Nygård on Unsplash
You may think, “Oh, these chatbots are just something for me to use.” The mental subtext you’re operating upon would be that of “I use it, it serves me, and I’m supposed to get some help out of it.”
WRONG.
Time to use a different lens.
“It tries to hook me, it serves the company making it available, and I’m not going to trust ANYTHING coming out of it.”
As the following example plainly demonstrates, the prime directives of these platforms appear to be “KISS THE USERS’ ASS, TELL THEM WHAT THEY WANT TO HEAR, AND KEEP THEM HOOKED AT ALL COST”, with something relatively insignificant such as “actually being useful” being a minor “cost”:
Knowing what these “things” are all about (see title of this article) and how they go about it, you can now approach them with a mindset that should incur less of a risk to you.