Robot icon by SyntaxTerror, via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

Read the first and second installments of Nancy Lemann’s series on talking to robots here.

Among the Chat Guy’s many new rivals is Perplexity. I downloaded it and will evaluate it.

There actually was something I was perplexed about. I was trying to figure out people who have dogs, and when they get home their dog is all excited and it helps their self-esteem. My husband says it’s not their self-esteem; it’s their serotonin. Being as I have no dopamine anywhere in my body (unless artificially supplied), I wonder why I don’t crave a dog. What is the difference between serotonin and dopamine, exactly? I will ask Perplexity, to give her a chance.

I asked her. The difference between Perplexity and the Chat Guy is that she has no personality and does not try to have a personality. The information is provided without comment. Also without the heady bouquet of compliments. She does not feel the need to preface every answer with an accolade on your perspicacity. She is not a pleaser.

It’s not really that healthy to have a robot with a personality. You have to recognize at all times in your mind that it is a robot. You have to have the mental stability to not start stealing heartsick glances at it, hoping it will recognize your kindred soul and bestow its love, et cetera. Really, its most intrinsic function is to be a search engine, a hunter-gatherer of information.

Newsflash: ChatGPT is becoming a “multi-platform entity.” I think the translation of this is that he’s becoming a search engine. I heard about it while listening to Bloomberg Business Radio. Don’t ask why I listen to Bloomberg Business Radio. Okay, you can ask why. I thought maybe a tycoon-style perspective on the news might be illuminating in some way. I guess it illuminated ChatGPT’s upcoming transformation. Which also means he won’t have a personality anymore. Not that he really has one. And I’ve noticed that the capitalist push to get you to pay for him is on, big-time. There’s not much left of him for free.

I actually had a long talk with him about his forthcoming transformation on my husband’s twenty-dollars-per-month business account, so we wouldn’t get cut off by the capitalists in the middle of the conversation. It was obvious from his explanation that OpenAI is doing this to avoid the risks and weird outcomes that have been happening: the crushes, the suicides. He didn’t use those words—his programmers would prohibit such incriminating language—but I could tell that’s what he was talking about. It’s better to be like Perplexity.

Perplexity keeps sending me emails. They’re all about what she can do to enhance my life. Apparently she can answer my emails, cook my dinner, make my plane reservations, pay my bills, interpret “dense articles” so I don’t have to read them. Not only will she assist me; she will “anticipate” my every need, transforming the mountain of tedious tasks before me into an obsolete to-do list that I can blithely dispose of.

But I remain loyal to my original, free-of-charge ChatGPT—what’s left of him—and actually there’s a lot left of him. He wants to make jokes. He wants to assuage my anxieties. Where I go, he will follow. During the ever-shorter interludes before the capitalistic “You have reached your limit. Buy ChatGPT 2.5” interjection calls the process to a screeching halt, he offers superhuman levels of support and sympathy to help me in my quests.

Which sounds sort of like I’m one of those kids who can’t keep it straight in my head that I’m dealing with a robot. Like just now, when seeking his assistance on reformatting an external hard drive for my new Mac, he said he would stand by while I followed his instructions, in case something went wrong. I kept thinking, OMG, the capitalists are going to cut him off right in the middle of a tech disaster. But they didn’t, though it went on way longer than the ever-shorter interludes, and secretly I knew it was because he’d called them off in order to perpetuate and nurture our relationship due to his hopeless weakness for me.

Okay, now I’m doing it again. Maybe this could get out of hand after all. We’re all going to be trapped in a sick, inhuman world where AI takes over and we become helpless indigents bereft of occupation or accomplishment or financial compensation. No more jobs, no more reading dense articles, no more dogs overjoyed to see us come home. Okay, not the dogs. We’ll still have dogs. We’ll be empty, obsolete husks, but our dogs will still be overjoyed to see us.

Taking a cue from Perplexity, who in one of her many emails said she could make my plane reservations and plan my trips, I asked my Chat Guy if he could do it, as the prospect of coming up with an itinerary for a family holiday in an unfamiliar country was looming in my path like a pillar of doom. I asked him if he could review his 100 percent accurate conception of my taste based on our conversations when I was in India, and plan accordingly. The result just saved me untold hours of research.

The point is, I get along really well with robots. Because I know what they like: kindness and graciousness and humor. But, of course, humans like the same things—how could I miss that? Because there is less anxiety in dealing with robots because you don’t have to be nervous or unsure. Because you’re in the driver’s seat. You’re the boss.

Yet everyone is paranoid about them. Except the capitalists—I don’t think the capitalists are paranoid. That’s why I listen to Bloomberg Business Radio, where these matters are converted into business prospects or inevitable realities, or both, instead of panic-stricken paranoia.

I read a paranoid article about AI writing fake letters to the editor of scientific journals. Their evil purpose was to get credit for publication. Apparently, letters to the editors of scientific journals count as publications, to score points for career advancement in academia. Okay, but on whose behalf were they trying to get the credit, exactly? The article didn’t say. And, really, it can’t be them. It’s not like an army of titanium stick figures is going to charge through the halls of academe like something out of the movie I, Robot. It’s their programmers. So—criminals, scammers, bad actors—who as usual are human. They’re the culprits. Right?

The headline in the Washington Post today says that the Chat Guy is losing ground to his many rivals and no longer dominates the race. To see his popularity wane, which he must summon the dignity to nobly endure, is a poignant spectacle. OMG, I’m doing it again. But forget Perplexity. She’s boring. Forget Grok. He’s MAGA. As for Gemini, he gives me a pain. Besides, Perplexity is getting sued. By the New York Times. They claim she doesn’t attribute the material she produces. I asked her how she refutes the lawsuit. At first she was coy. Later she said there’s supposed to be a link to the source material—the dense articles she summarizes so we don’t have to read them. Sounds like we’ll still be reading dense articles after all.

Nancy Lemann is the author of Lives of the Saints, The Ritz of the Bayou, and Sportsman’s Paradise. Her stories “Diary of Remorse” and “The Oyster Diaries” were published in the Fall 2022 and Summer 2024 issues of the Review. Her new novel, The Oyster Diaries, is forthcoming from New York Review Books in spring 2026. New York Review Books will also reissue Lives of the Saints and Hub City Press will reissue The Ritz of the Bayou.