The Noise Is Getting Loud
Lately, my social feeds have been flooded with posts telling everyone to stop using ChatGPT.
Cancel your subscription.
It’s gaslighting you.
Your conversations are exposed.
Your work is being stolen and sold for profit.
The tone is urgent, emotional, and absolute.
What’s interesting is that while all this noise is happening, I’m quietly building more than I ever have before.
So I want to explain — from my own experience — why I don’t agree with the outrage, where the real misunderstandings are, and why this backlash says more about expectations than it does about the technology itself.
“ChatGPT Gaslights You”
This is one of the most common accusations I see.
The claim usually goes something like this:
ChatGPT gives one answer, then later contradicts itself — therefore it must be gaslighting users.
Here’s the reality from someone who actually uses it daily:
ChatGPT isn’t a human.
It doesn’t have beliefs.
It doesn’t “remember” a stance and then lie about it later.
It’s a probabilistic language model. Small changes in prompts, context length, or framing can produce different outputs. That’s not manipulation — it’s how the system works.
Yes, it can be frustrating.
Yes, you still have to think.
Yes, you have to verify outputs.
But calling that gaslighting assumes malicious intent. I’ve never once experienced intent — only limitations.
The moment you treat it like a collaborator instead of an authority figure, that frustration disappears.
“Your Conversations Are Exposed and Up for Grabs”
This one spreads fast — and it’s largely misinformation.
No, your chats are not public.
No, random people cannot read them.
No, ChatGPT isn’t selling your conversations like some kind of data flea market.
Like nearly every modern online service, anonymized and aggregated data may be used to improve the system — and users can opt out. That’s not new, and it’s not unique to AI.
If someone is truly concerned about this, I have one honest question:
Where was this outrage when we handed search queries, browsing behavior, analytics, cloud logs, and telemetry to every other platform we’ve used for the last 20 years?
AI didn’t invent data collection — it just made people finally notice it.
“ChatGPT Is Stealing My Work”
This claim hits an emotional nerve, and I understand why. But it’s also deeply misunderstood.
ChatGPT does not:
- Store your personal code or writing
- Know who you are
- Retrieve your past conversations for other users
It doesn’t have a filing cabinet of stolen work.
The real debate people are having is about training data — how models learn from large portions of public information. That’s a legal and ethical conversation that’s still evolving, and it’s not exclusive to OpenAI or even AI in general.
Humans learn the same way: by reading, observing, and synthesizing.
The courts will define boundaries.
Social media outrage won’t.
Why I’m Still Using ChatGPT
Let me be clear: ChatGPT is not perfect.
We’ve broken code.
We’ve crashed websites.
We’ve had to roll back changes and recover.
But here’s the difference — we recovered.
Because I don’t blindly trust outputs.
I test.
I verify.
I iterate.
And because of that approach, I’ve:
- Built apps I wouldn’t have attempted before
- Accelerated learning by years
- Solved problems faster
- Explored ideas I would have otherwise shelved
ChatGPT didn’t replace my skills — it amplified them.
That distinction matters.
Why the Backlash Is So Loud Right Now
From what I can see, this wave of negativity comes from a few overlapping issues:
- Unrealistic expectations of perfection
- Frustration from misuse or blind reliance
- Fear of job displacement
- A sudden spotlight on skill gaps that already existed
When expectations collapse, anger fills the vacuum.
It’s easier to blame the tool than to accept that it still requires thought, responsibility, and judgment.
Tools Don’t Replace Responsibility
ChatGPT is a power tool.
Used correctly, it saves time and expands capability.
Used carelessly, it can cause damage.
That’s not a flaw — that’s reality.
We didn’t ban databases because someone dropped a table.
We didn’t cancel servers because someone misconfigured permissions.
We learned.
AI is no different.
Final Thoughts
I’m not canceling my subscription.
I’m not panic-posting.
And I’m not pretending this tool is either magic or evil.
I’m building.
And if ChatGPT disappeared tomorrow, I’d still be ahead — because it didn’t do the work for me. It helped me do better work myself.
The loudest voices will move on to the next outrage.
The builders will keep shipping.
I know which group I’m in.