ChatGPT doesn't understand the nuances of human interactions

and neither do I, apparently

Things have been kinda shitty here lately (in ways that I can’t get into), plus winter came back for two whole days, raining on my long-ago-dry laundry and making everyone sad.

That is to say, I didn’t have much time or energy this week to do things that cheer me up, like language learning or lifting heavy things that do not scream they don’t want to take a shower.

Instead, I went on ChatGPT and asked it to write a headline for my post. Not this one, but the one I’d written back in November. It’s called “How (not) to buy a horse in Bangkok” but it’s about learning the Thai tones rather than purchasing horses in Thailand.

I’m presenting to you our conversation in its entirety. Because, I figured maybe someone else out there had their laundry rained on this week and needs to see these:

Then I provided some more specific instructions:

Either ChatGPT has a great sense of humor or it’s completely absent, it’s hard to say which. It’s hard to say with humans too.

Speaking of funny, I have an embarrassing Purim story that happened to me during my first Purim in Israel that I’ve never told anyone before. It might have to do with language. Or with breadcrumbs. You tell me.

Purim is a Jewish holiday when we dress up in costumes and celebrate not being killed. Every Jewish holiday, it seems, is a celebration of not being killed.

On Purim, kids come to school dressed up and stage plays based on Megillat Esther (Book of Esther, e.g. the book that tells the story of how we were not killed this time.)

This year in their Purim play, Maya is going to be the Evil Haman Number Three. There is only one Evil Haman in the story (the guy who wanted to kill all the Jews). But because there are 40-something 3rd graders and only about 5 major characters, I guess each character will be played by eight kids in turn. The “number three” part is important. Every time I tell someone that Maya is going to play the Evil Haman, she corrects me and says that it’s “The Evil Haman Number Three.”

That’s the difference between schools in Israel and other countries I’m familiar with. In England, where Yannai did most of his primary school, they produced an elaborate Christmas play every year, complete with auditions and master-class sessions with real actors. It was very impressive actually.

Enter Israeli schools. Last year, as I was sitting in the audience during another one of Maya’s performances, a teacher from a higher grade sitting next to me leaned over and said “It doesn’t matter what they do: move left, move right, it’s just sweetness on the stage!”

That pretty much summarizes the attitude here.

That’s one reason why I like this country.

Another popular Purim tradition in Israeli schools is called Gamad-Anak ‘Gnome-Giant.” It’s an Israeli version of a Secret Santa. You get randomly matched with another person in your class and are supposed to bring them a secret gift without revealing your identity, or sometimes shower them with little gifts for a whole week.

During my first Purim in the country, I got into a situation.

I came to Israel at 15, as part of a project that helped families from the former Soviet Union immigrate to Israel. It placed teenagers in Israeli boarding schools, while their parents back in the former USSR packed their five-thousand book libraries and Hungarian furniture sets before making the move themselves.

We were a class of Russian-speaking kids from all parts of the former Soviet Union. We lived in dorms in a youth village on the shore of the Mediterranean (it was a lot less romantic than it sounds) and went to school in a Hebrew immersion environment, slowly getting over our culture shock, and learning to talk back at teachers.

On Purim that first year our houseparents told us about the Gamad-Anak tradition and had us pull names out of a hat to be randomly matched with another person from our class. My Gamad (gnome, i.e. the person I would secretly shower with presents) was a girl called Vika.

Because we had no parents in the country and no money, we had to get creative with our gifts. We drew little cards. We made string bracelets. We grabbed an extra piece of fruit from the cafeteria at lunch and wrapped it up for our Gamad.

Apart from fruit, our cafeteria food was generally awful. But on Tuesdays, we had schnitzels, those crispy breaded fried things that everybody looked forward to. That day everyone grabbed an extra schnitzel for their Gamad.

That is, everybody but me. Because I generally find out about social trends long after they’re over, I only discovered the schnitzel trend the next day.

The next day we had meat patties for lunch, which were much less appealing than schnitzels but still, I thought, who wouldn’t appreciate an extra meat patty?

I decided that this was what my Gamad would be getting that day.

Only I miscalculated. Because Vika wasn’t just any girl. Vika was a fat girl. That piece of information turned out to be important later.

I did what my friends did the day before. I wrapped the meat patty in pretty tissue paper, attached a bow, and wrote a pretty note saying (in Russian, which was what we all spoke): Nadeyus’ tebe ponravilsya obed. Vot dobavka! “I hope you enjoyed your lunch. Here is a second helping!” Then I asked someone else to secretly place the package on Vika’s desk, which is how we delivered gifts without revealing our identity.

It wasn’t long before a commotion started in our dorm. People were giggling in the halls, covering their mouths and whispering, "Oh my god, did you hear what happened? Somebody gave a meat patty to Vika!!”

Vika herself was fuming. She was roaming the dorms, entering each room, and demanding people tell her who that bastard was who gave her the meat patty so she could bash their head in. Vika might have been the fattest girl in our class¹, but she could also beat me up very easily. Only she didn’t know it was me. And the three girls that I shared a room with didn’t give me in.

Her suspicion fell on a couple of girls who were thin and popular but she couldn’t bash their heads in before she had any proof. She had to wait until the end of the week for the big reveal.

Meanwhile, I was trembling in fear and embarrassment, but also trying to understand what the hell just happened. How is it that I did exactly what other people did the day before but it came out offensive? Was the note somehow offensive? Was it because it wasn’t a schnitzel?

It’s true that everything I said those days was tinged with a bit of disdain for life, traditions, and everything humankind held dear.

But it wasn’t possible for me to make fun of someone’s weight if only because I had long awarded myself the title of the fattest person on the planet. Was I making fun of Vika without realizing it? No! I would have written the same note to anyone else. And herein lies the problem.

I didn’t get beaten up. I was so horrified that I had offended her that I spent the rest of the week making up for it: I drew Vika pretty pictures and made her a beaded key-holder, not caring anymore that that would reveal my identity because nobody else could do these things. Eventually, she did guess it was me and understood that I didn’t mean to make fun of her. In fact, she so appreciated the gifts that at the end of the week she came to my room and assured me that from now on I would always have a krysha which translates as ‘roof’ but in Russian slang means that if another criminal organization threatens me Vika would always be there to beat the shit out of them (I never needed that, thankfully, but I appreciated the offer.)

Still, for years after that, I was trying to parse what happened, pinpoint exactly what made it so offensive, and what life lesson I could take away from it: “Don’t gift meat patties to fat people”? “Breadcrumbs make things less offensive”? Was there something insensitive in my note that made it read like “I hope you enjoyed your lunch you fat pig”? Or is the general rule not to give overweight people food items as gifts (but I still don’t get it: shouldn’t everyone be able to enjoy an extra meat patty?)

As you see I’m still confused.

I guess the art of human interactions involves more than knowing the language.

It requires subtle and hard-to-pin-down knowledge of how the world works (which might also differ by culture and language). I wonder how ChatGPT would have dealt with this situation. Does it know the unspoken rules of human interactions that I don’t, or would it like me, simply-mindedly give a meat patty with a note to a fat person?

That’s me (second left) on some high school trip to the desert, shortly before I found out about the Meat Patty Rule.

1. Because, obviously, it’s a competition.