I tried using AI. It scared me.

Summary by Krater

Tom Scott reflects on the rapid pace of technological change through his attempt to fix an email backup issue using Gmail, Google Apps Script, and ChatGPT, concluding that we are on a new technological sigmoid curve and the future is uncertain.

From the video

Answers: How does using ChatGPT and Google Apps Script to fix an email backup reveal the rapid changes in technology?

• email backup systems
• Gmail labels
• Google Apps Script
• ChatGPT
• artificial intelligence
• technological change

What it concludes

• Gmail labels are only attached to individual messages and not to full threads, which causes unlabelled messages to be missed during backups.
• Google Apps Script can be used to write simple code to automate tasks in Gmail and other Google services.
• ChatGPT is a text transformer that predicts the next word in a phrase and can write Google Apps Script code to automate tasks.
• Google Apps Script treats labels as attaching to threads rather than messages, meaning Google wrote their own programming language documentation incorrectly.
• AI tools like ChatGPT and diffusion models are on a rapid technological sigmoid curve, and their rapid advancement mirrors the early disruptive impact of Napster on the media industry.