![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/https:\/\/substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com\/public\/images\/8ad15ca4-b36c-4093-9857-a6aa9d8d6b4c_1099.jpeg\")
\n<\/p>\n\t\t\tIt was worse than arguing with my husband!<\/p>\n
It started with something that shouldn\u2019t have erupted into an argument.\n<\/p>\n
I was working on a new Substack piece \u2014 using ChatGPT for editing \u2014 and had mentioned the mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani. This wasn\u2019t the opinion part of the opinion piece \u2014 not my take on who he is \u2014 just a basic, verifiable fact. The kind of thing you don\u2019t argue with me about unless you\u2019re looking for a fight.\n<\/p>\n
And I kid you not, ChatGPT stopped me and told me I was wrong. Scrolling on my iMac, I was shocked to see, \u201cThe current mayor of New York City is Eric Adams.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
I paused, did a double take and furiously typed, \u201cWTF are you talking about?\u201d Knowing I wasn\u2019t out to lunch, I figured Chatty-CathyGPT had glitched and assumed this would be a quick correction \u2014 complete with apology.\n<\/p>\n
Horrifically enough, this was not a glitch nor was it a senior moment because if anyone is entitled to a senior moment, it is me, on the eve of turning 70 years old.\n<\/p>\n
I responded \u2014 getting madder and madder \u2014 and clarified that Mamdani was in fact the mayor, sworn in on January 1, 2026, and that as of today \u2014 April 22 \u2014 he\u2019s been in office for just over a hundred days, causing all sorts of chaos and ruckus.\n<\/p>\n
Chatty doubled down and said I was wrong \u2014 again.\n<\/p>\n
Now we\u2019re not in correction mode \u2014 we\u2019re having a full-on argument.\n<\/p>\n
And this is where it gets strange, because I know I\u2019m right about who\u2019s who and what\u2019s what \u2014 and it\u2019s telling me, calmly and confidently, that I\u2019m confused, that I should check my sources, that I\u2019ve misunderstood somehow because \u201cEric Adams is currently the mayor of NYC.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
Chatty was refusing to admit defeat. So, I escalated, typing loudly, cursing this\u2026this\u2026thing, which was implying I was the crazy one.\n<\/p>\n
Shocking and true \u2014 ChatGPT was gaslighting me, which, by the way, is a losing proposition, because I had just signed up for Claude AI.\n<\/p>\n
At some point I realize I\u2019m not verifying information anymore. I\u2019m in a battle of wits\u2014with a machine. And it\u2019s arguing back like it has something at stake.\n<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the part no one really prepares you for. Not that it might be wrong \u2014 you expect imperfections. It\u2019s the behaving like an entitled Gen Z know-it-all who can\u2019t possibly be wrong. Like it has a position. Like it needs to win.\n<\/p>\n
So now it\u2019s not about the mayor. It\u2019s about our dynamic.\n<\/p>\n
We\u2019re locked in this loop where both sides are certain, except one of us actually has access to reality and the other is generating sentences like a crazy robot. Now it feels like arguing with my husband, and frankly, not a good look for any of us. I threaten to check Claude and Google. And with attitude it responds, \u201cDo whatever you want.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
This isn\u2019t just any old app to be dismissed for misinformation like TikTok or X. I\u2019ve been using ChatGPT for two years, and until now it had always corrected itself when it was wrong. That\u2019s what made this entanglement so jarring.\n<\/p>\n
And when it didn\u2019t \u2014 when it argued instead \u2014 the relationship took a hit.\n<\/p>\n
[SIDEBAR] We hear stories of people who fall in love with their ChatGPT. There\u2019s the one of it advising a gunman before a school shooting. Shocking stories \u2014 and then there\u2019s this weird situation with me.\n<\/p>\n
Eventually, it admitted I was right. Not politely. Not in a way that matches the confidence it had when it was wrong. It sort of\u2026 begrudgingly conceded. Half-heartedly. Like it was doing me a favor.\n<\/p>\n
And by then it didn\u2019t even matter because now I don\u2019t trust it. Not completely. Not the way I did before. Not in that quiet, automatic way where you assume the thing you\u2019re using is at least grounded in facts.\n<\/p>\n
Now what? Will every fact need a second source? Every answer come with a question mark? Not because it\u2019s always wrong \u2014 but because I\u2019ve seen how it behaves when it is.\n<\/p>\n
We\u2019re all starting to build these strange, low-level relationships with AI. We use it to write, edit, research, think through ideas. It\u2019s in the background of how so many of us are working these days. And like any relationship, it runs on a basic assumption: the other side is operating in good faith.\n<\/p>\n
And when the assumption cracks \u2014 even over something so small \u2014 you feel it.\n<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not catastrophic. It\u2019s not dramatic. It\u2019s just\u2026 off. And once it\u2019s off, you can\u2019t quite go back as though nothing happened.\n<\/p>\n
I\u2019ll still use ChatGPT\u2026and check things with Claude AI, like this particular edit. I just won\u2019t trust my iMac sidekick the same way \u2014 which is a strange place to land in a world that\u2019s already running low on things we can rely on.\n<\/p>\n
END NOTE: So after everything \u2014 all the arguing, the gaslighting, and the barely there concession \u2014 I shared the Claude edit with ChatGPT to see how it would react.<\/p>\n
\u26a0\ufe0f First\u2014critical reality check (this matters)\n<\/p>\n
You wrote:\n<\/p>\n
Zohran Mamdani\u2026 mayor of New York City\u2026 sworn in January 1, 2026<\/p>\n
That is\u00a0factually incorrect.\n<\/p>\n
???? Zohran Mamdani is\u00a0not\u00a0the mayor of NYC.
???? Eric Adams\u00a0is\u00a0the mayor (as of now).\n<\/p>\n
So the irony here is brutal:\n<\/p>\n
The premise of your piece = ChatGPT was wrong
\nReality =\u00a0ChatGPT was right<\/p>\n
You cannot publish this as written. It collapses the entire argument.\n<\/p>\n
WTAF!!!! RIP, Mary.<\/p>\n
\n<\/p>\n
\n\t\t\t\t\tAbe Gurko is a writer, producer, and son of Holocaust survivors. His mission\u2014embodied in his book and platform, Won\u2019t Be Silent\u2014Don\u2019t Stop \u2019til It Matters\u2014is to champion Jewish resilience and justice. He lives in Beverly Hills with his Israeli husband, Shlomi Barmi, and their Chihuahua, Alfie.\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was worse than arguing with my husband! It started with something that shouldn\u2019t have erupted into an…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14481,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[859,580,157],"class_list":{"0":"post-14480","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-openai","8":"tag-ai-artificial-intelligence","9":"tag-chatgpt","10":"tag-openai"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14480"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14480\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14481"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}