I was linked to yet another cringy “this is how ChatGPT has already disrupted every single aspect of our lives” threads on Twitter, and I thought about posting something to Mastodon like:

Twitter should let people automatically block anyone who’s writing “thought leader” threads about ChatGPT if that person was writing these same threads about crypto in 2021.

While I do suspect the overlap of people who thought crypto was mana from heaven also think ChatGPT is god’s lips to their ears is significant, I stopped myself because it’s a dickish post and it doesn’t really express how I feel.

Yes, if you were trying to get me to buy some NFTs or back your metaverse revolution in 2021, you were resoundingly wrong. We’ll see what happens in the long run, but in case you've forgotten, you really owe it to yourself to listen to some 2021 podcasts with guests that sound patently insane.

But people get to be wrong, and just because you were wrong about one thing doesn’t mean you’re henceforth wrong about everything. Hell, in 2016 I thought the Touch Bar was preferable to touch screen Macs 🫠 I’ve written over 3,000 posts on this blog and I’m sure you can go back and find a whole host of things I’ve been either wrong about or that I’ve changed my mind on over the years.

You can’t get better if you don’t change, and when you’re wrong, it’s good to consider why you got it wrong and use that information moving forward so you maybe don’t make the same mistake next time.

I was massively critical of the crypto and web3 hallucination of 2021, but I’m more optimistic about the generative A.I. hype cycle today. I was right then, and we’ll find out if I’m right this time. The best I can say now is that you should not trust my opinion on generative A.I. because I was right about the crypto bubble a couple years ago; you should read why I’m optimistic this time. You still may disagree and I may still be wrong, but that’s a more humane way to deal with each other.

And just so I make it clear, these A.I. threads are cripplingly cringy, and I'm far from a ChatGPT hype man, I just think we could afford to be a little kinder to each other online, and that we should try to be a little more introspective when we get something big wrong.