Last night I watched a Youtube video by Jordon Peterson on Chat GPT. My dad asked me, just before pressing play, do you know what Chat GPT is, and I said: “No”. Basically it’s Artificial Intelligence. Like the stuff we see in the movies – except this is real and it’s happening in real-time. This AI technology is so smart that you can ask it to write you a whole essay on a topic. Now you might think oh but this is just like Wikipedia but it’s not… like you can say exactly what you want it to say. Like the theme and the length and the style. It’s insane. You can even ask it to write a marketing pice for you and there’s other AI technologies that it will even look like a human that’s recorded talking about your content. I was frankly quite shocked by this. Shocked and amazed.
I was thinking to myself. I wonder now me, that loves to write and that dreams of bringing out a book one day if I’d have to put on the cover: “Written by my own brain” to state that I actually wrote it and didn’t just use AI technology to say: “write me a book about the benefits of herbs for the nervous system and how we can include herbs into our everyday lives. If I did that I would probably have a book ready to publish within one or two minutes. I hear an essay takes about three seconds to write.
How why am I talking about AI on a health blog… we were chatting about this video last night. If everything is going electronic and becoming so robotic, people are going to crave the personal touch. In the blink of an eye our lives are going to be entwined with AI technology and frankly, it scares me a bit. Imagine walking into a health shop and there’s a human look-alike robot asking you what she can help you with and she knows every herb on the planet and every drug and every contraindication and every warning and every symptom… It’s unthinkable the amount of knowledge that a computer like that can hold. I wonder how long it will take before more and more jobs could be replaced with these AI machines. Probably not too quickly in a third world country like South Africa but still. Imagine the lost jobs – in a time where jobs are already so hard to come by.
I’m trying to imagine this AI technology in each division of our business – making juice to mixing our bath salt to presenting an exercise class and giving advice on the products… the possibilities are endless! There’s also thousands of machines out there already that does massage in some way of the other but I think people will still crave human interaction if they advance AI to being a robot that can offer massages. While having a massage, having someone to listen to your heartache and actually have empathy for your situation. That hands-on touch and someone that gives you the confidence that the body can heal itself. Even in the health shop – coming in, seeing a familiar face, getting greeted with a smile and getting advise from someone that really cares and wants you to feel better.
We’re not always perfect – we’ve have off days and we make mistakes and our brain’s sometimes blank on the different between Nicotinamide Adenine Dinucleotide (NAD) and N-Acetyl Cysteine (NAC) – that last one happened today actually. But I think sometimes that within the imperfect there’s actually a lot of good stuff. I love when I really connect with a client and they’ve got a few health complaints and we chat it out and find that perfect combo of herbs for them to take. The cherry on the cake is when they come back a few days later and they that they’re feeling so much better since taking those products. I think that’s the real reward of working in my industry. I love that people are praising our business more than us at this point. It feels like a haven. A special place where people can come to just relax and find answers. They come to Namo to find quality of life. They say health is the new wealth. Another saying that I quite enjoy is that the healthy man has a million wishes but an unhealthy man has but one – to be healthy again.
I’m not sure what the future holds but I know we’ll still be here – helping people be healthier!
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