Imagine having a chat with a smart and funny stranger at a bar and, next minute, inviting them into your business and giving them full access to your emails, credit cards, accounting systems, website, etc, in an unsupervised role.
What’s more, this is the same stranger who is geared to potentially push conspiracy theories, joke about guys masturbating (Grok), engage children in “sensual and romantic” conversations (Meta).
You’d never do that. Would you?
And yet, less and less care is being taken by people rushing headlong into connecting AI tools to their emails and finance systems because us humans are complete suckers when we get a whiff of something promising to
“make life easy”.
This is a “chill pill” post to remind all of us to make sure we are exercising great care, caution, and nuance as we weave AI tools into our daily workflows.
The Human Brain Is The Weak Link
In case you haven’t read much cognitive science, you might be unaware that our brains have evolved to look for the easy way and the novel way for tens of thousands of years.
This is partly due to our brains having one mission: to keep our bodies alive so it can pass on its genes.
It draws a lot of energy from our body to have our brain in full flight, so we have evolved to quickly develop habits and to trying anything that promises “ease” in case that will let us stay alive and engage with very little brain activity.
So, yes, we have evolved to be lazy, which is what has given us fire and the wheel and cars and television, etc.
But it also means that new technology backed by uber rich tech bros and corporations can use all its tricks to lure us with the promise of an oasis of productive laziness.
It’s actually quite nauseating seeing ad after ad in social feeds claiming that all you need to do is type in a few things and AI will magically make perfect presentations or videos or create a company that will make you billions of dollars.
Apart from the fact that this is the new centre of snake oil merchants (stand aside SEO), it pays to wonder who the customers are who are meant to be falling for this confection of sugary, plastic content? So, you hook us in with an effortless video but at some point, the rubber needs to hit the road, an exchange of value needs to take place.
As an aside, how many times can you see an ape walking around the city or chickens fighting back against cats in AI-generated videos, before the novelty melts away and it just becomes more of the same old noise?
Wreckless Access Given To AI Tools
Beside the fact that all AI tools drastically over promise what they can deliver, and all the shrill “experts” who have popped up overnight are promising ease and riches beyond your wildest dreams (after all, there are enough suckers in the world for them to only need to harvest a few bucks and then vanish from your world as they pick on someone else), we need to think carefully about what access we are handing over to faceless bots and AI tools.
Seriously, we need to calm down because when the wave of dark AI tools get through the defences of so-called safe AI tools, all hell will break loose as money disappears and reputations and futures get trashed.
In a private AI group I’m part of, I was alarmed by this post that was completely naive about this risk, urging readers to plunge, head first, into this enticing pool without pausing to question what snags or dangers might lurk below the surface:
You can now connect your Gmail and Calendar directly to ChatGPT, and it can fetch anything you need from your emails or schedule… without breaking a sweat!
How?
ChatGPT Settings → Connectors → Connect Gmail & Calendar
What can it do?
Extract invoices and reports for any month
Show unread emails for the day
Quickly find contracts, quotes, or client emails
For small businesses:
Need a report of invoices from April to July? Just ask, and it’ll organize everything neatly.
For larger companies:
Analyze customer complaints to improve service
Build an FAQ from emails
Track suppliers and compare offers
Generate monthly or quarterly reports ready to use
Tip: Use a work email, not your personal one, to protect your privacy—even if your company claims they respect it.
When I asked the writer how much they trust tools with such access, they answered, “Jury’s out on that one Steve, agree.”
The likes of OpenAI, Anthropic, X, Meta, etc, have basically smashed open the cookie jars and given everybody access to any candy they have ever wanted.
Where are the parents? Where are the adults? Where are the ones who know that dopamine hits wear off quickly? Where are the ones who gorging leads to short time joy with long term, chronic disease waiting in the wings?
Yes, there is much to enjoy from this new wave of technology, but for the love of god, take small mouthfuls at a time and only use it where it can provide direct help. Don’t get swept up in the hysteria, betting your business on a house of AI cards (now that’s a mixed metaphor AI would never write)!
A more methodical outline of these topics can be heard in two podcast episodes.
Talking About Marketing, Season 7, Episode 1: The AI Rant: A Nuanced Rebellion Against Digital Sleepwalking
The Adelaide Show: 418 – The AI Rant: A Nuanced Rebellion Against Digital Sleepwalking (this is a longer version that includes a whisky tasting with ChatGPT and some songs I wrote, produced into performances with the help of AI).