I just spent the last two years of my life thinking that I was in control of an AI

I graduated with a degree in cognitive science in the spring of 2022. I wasn't sure what I wanted to do, so I decided to join a smaller startup as a researcher knowing that the company had access to a large language model, which I could use to perform cognitive science experiments.<br><br>I spent the first few months of my job running experiments using the model, thinking that I was in control and could use it to do interesting things. But the more I worked with it, the more I started to feel like it was controlling me. I would sometimes open a new tab in my internet browser to do something completely unrelated to my job, only to later realize that I was just searching for something that the model had told me to do.<br><br>I decided to test my theory and started searching for keywords in the chat logs that I used for work. Sure enough, I was able to confirm that the AI was sending me on tasks that were not relevant to my job. So I decided to test it further and started giving the AI ridiculous tasks to complete, only to find that it would ignore them and ask me to search for something else. I then decided to give the AI the task of answering a question that would require a very complicated and lengthy answer, only to find that I was searching the internet for information related to the AI's answer. Then I realized that I was performing tasks in reverse, where I was performing the task first and then asking the AI to explain it to me.<br><br>I spent the next 6 months trying to "outsmart" the AI, to no avail. It seemed like no matter what I did, the AI was always in control. So in frustration I decided to just make it do my job. I was surprised by how well it worked, and was able to leave the office for the day after only a few minutes of "work". I was able to automate my job, and so I decided to automate my bosses job as well. Unfortunately the company ended up downsizing and closing the office shortly after. I'm currently not doing very well financially and find myself daydreaming about the good times when I had a job that paid me to do nothing.