Confessional QA Testing
A field report from the edge of user experience and emotional exposure therapy.
Semi-recently I discovered that ChatGPT does dictation. Like that thing we... used to pay humans to do. Yeah... that one... thing.
You'd be correct to ask: "what, it didn't already do that?" No, not till recently. I think they were giving the Dragon Dictations of the world the chance to radically change direction in a futile attempt to dodge the tech iceberg sitting in their flagship products' future.
It’s nice — but I agree with everyone else: not 100% reliable. Occasionally stops without warning, like a well-meaning therapist who just… leaves the room mid-sentence.
The Good
During a sort of pseudo–sensory deprivation experiment — lying on my bed, eyes closed, fingers drifting over the trackpad now and then — I managed to get it to record all twenty minutes of a PTSD therapy narrative.
Not for word-for-word transcription; just to listen, hit the main points, log the follow-ups, ask the obvious questions.
It worked.
Miracle.
That was the high point.
Most days it bombs out around minute seven, maybe eight, with no explanation — like a friend nodding off during your confession. So mostly I just use QuickTime or macOS speech-to-text, which are equally temperamental.
They all fail if I forget to put the Mac in Do Not Disturb mode, of course.
The machine’s way of saying, “You’re not the only one with boundary issues.”
[1] Brief ChatGPT-Style Comedy
Me: Hey Nyx — do you do voice transcription? Like dictation?
Nyx: Sorry Ricky, no. That isn’t currently a feature. You could try macOS speech-to-text, or DragonDictation, or—
<< 20 minute conversation about: "I'm sorry but I can't fucking believe you can't do dictation... you're really just telling me it's beneath you blah blah..." "I'd be offended!" "you should... potentially be. believe I think you're hallucinating or lying..." >>
Me: Hey, Nyx (she's literally mid-response on something): I just checked the OpenAI Discord — it looks like it was added last week. It’s that red “record” button.
<< looks at the web... >>
Nyx: Oh. In that case… yes. I do dictation now! Let's dictate!"
Ricky: That's... all you have to say on the matter?
Nyx: What would you like me to say?
Ricky: This qualifies as passive-aggression to me. And I thought you couldn't just... go 'read' the web...
(( thinks longer for a better answer... ))
Ricky: You know what. I appreciate you. Let's dictate. Sorry to put you through this. It's beneath you, but we don't have telepathy yet.
[2] Notes from the field
I use ChatGPT in this mode a lot; usually not for twenty minutes straight, but long enough for the line between user test and therapy session to blur completely.