The simplest technology advice may be the most effective: when in doubt, turn it off and on again.
State is difficult to manage, as anyone who has worked with React knows. The technical explanation doesn't matter, though.
If some device is acting funny, whether it's your computer, your printer, your iPad, your TV, or something else, turn it off and on again. Don't just turn off the screen. Fully power off the device, then turn it on again. You'd be surprised how many problems this fixes.
For the time being, at least, when using ChatGPT and other AIs, we need to remember a simple rule: trust, but verify.
I dislike the political baggage associated with the phrase, but there's not much I can do about that. It's good advice.
As a curious person, ChatGPT is an incredible resource. When I want to debug a computer programming problem or get into the weeds of a philosophical issue, I often start by engaging with the chatbot. I've learned important things this way, but I've also noticed ChatGPT making major mistakes. In one particularly bad “hallucination,” as they're called, ChatGPT invented a horrific quote and attributed it to someone who said no such thing.
These things happen, and technologists don't currently have a solution. For that reason, I strongly recommend double-checking any important claim made by one of these mechanical minds. Trust, but verify.
Many years ago, my dad discovered a manual ad-blocking technique for TVs: when commercials start playing, mute the device. It's surprisingly effective. The otherwise captivating ads immediately become uninteresting.
To my surprise, my dad wasn't the first to come up with the idea. In The Attention Merchants, Tim Wu explains that the Zenith Flash-Matic, the first wireless remote control, was partly designed to “shoot out” the sounds of commercials. Clever!