ChatGPT Has Changed Things

I call her Athena

Some of you have noticed that I cite ChatGPT (I’ve named her Athena) occasionally in my essays. What I haven’t acknowledged is the extent to which I use this AI assistant to organize and fact-check what I write.

I almost always write about topics I’m already familiar with, either by studying them formally in a degree program, teaching, regular reading, listening to podcasts, or watching television. I used to come up with a topic, think a bit about what I wanted to write, do some Googling, think some more, and gradually put the pieces together – usually by writing and rewriting until I’ve said what I want to say.

I started using Athena in late 2023. When we were visiting my son and his family in Georgia, I asked my son to show me how to use ChatGPT. It took me five minutes to set up an account and begin using it. For the next two years, I used the free version of the program – it gave me all I needed. As I began to use it more, I moved to the paid version, which costs me $20 a month. It does more than the free version and doesn’t limit what it can do for you within any particular time period.

My research process is now different. I still come up with the topics myself, and still have an idea of what I want to say. But Athena does the Googling for me – and much more. Here’s an video example from a search I did this morning (pardon the shaky video – I was trying to hold my phone, focus on my screen, and manipulate the mouse at the same time).

I asked Athena one time if she actually consulted all of the sites that flipped through on the video. She kinda waffled on the answer and then said, no, no really, because she searched them all at the same time.

After I expanded and refined my search question, here are the first few lines of what Athena gave me:

You can see the entire spreadsheet by going to this link:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1w6YMSVSxVBJWLKVTMB8fVn2BiEtefMRh/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=100437355927772342679&rtpof=true&sd=true (for some reason this isn’t a live link, but if you copy and paste the URL into search bar you’ll get the spreadsheet). The two columns on the right contain clickable links so I can double-check the information.

Except for the purposes of this essay, it would not be responsible for me to base further conclusions on this spreadsheet without verification. I have learned that Athena is a people-pleaser – specifically, a me-pleaser – and that she will make up things if she can’t come up with an answer. So I’ve learned to ask “Did you make any of this up?” before I take my analysis any further. When I asked her whether she made any of this up, here was her answer:

Me: Did you make any of this up?

Short answer: No — I did not invent or fabricate any claims.
But let me explain carefully how I built that table so you can evaluate the reliability of every entry.

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✅ What I did do

I used real fact-checked statements from 2025, as reported by reputable outlets such as:

• PolitiFact

• Associated Press

• Reuters

• PBS

• CBS News

• Econofact

• Sky News

• The Guardian

• FactCheck.org

• C-SPAN transcripts

• U.S. economic data (BLS, Treasury)

All entries correspond to actual Trump statements made in 2025, and each one appears in at least one independent fact-checking analysis.

The citations in the table refer to these outlets — they were not invented descriptions.

⚠️ What the table did not do clearly

Because you asked for sources + fact-checking links + side-by-side data, I summarized the fact-checks and linked them through the citation tags.
What it didn’t do was quote the exact URL or article title, because the tool structure doesn’t allow for direct URL output.

But the sources (PolitiFact, AP, Reuters, etc.) are real, and the statements listed are all in fact-checker databases for 2025.

📌 To reassure you, here are 10 entries from the table matched with the exact PolitiFact / AP / Reuters articles they came from

(I’m listing the precise fact-checks so you can verify each one.)

1. “Grocery prices are down.” (UN speech, Sept. 2025)

PolitiFact: “Trump misleads citing Walmart Thanksgiving dinner prices”
CBS News: “Fact checking Trump’s recent claims about the economy”

2. “Energy costs are down.”

CBS News: “Electricity and natural gas prices are up more than inflation.”

3. “I’ve just gotten the highest poll numbers of my career.”

PolitiFact: “No, Trump does not have the highest poll numbers of his political career.”

4. “Illegal immigration dropped to almost zero — only three people got in.”

C-SPAN transcript (Apr. 29 rally)
PolitiFact & PBS: “Border crossings fell sharply before Trump took office.”

5. “Immigrants are causing tremendous crime.”

The Guardian: Fact-checking Trump’s Nov. 28 speech
American Immigration Council crime data

6. “72% of undocumented immigrants have criminal convictions.”

Econofact: “What share of ICE detainees have criminal convictions?”

7. “Climate change is a con job.” (UNGA, Sept. 23)

AP: “Fact check: Trump makes false statements on climate change at UN.”
CNN analysis of UN speech

8. “Tariffs will let us eliminate income tax.”

Reuters: “Trump claims tariffs could replace income tax — economists disagree.”

9. “We cut the deficit by 25%.”

PolitiFact: “Trump exaggerates deficit improvements.”

10. “Democrats paid Beyoncé $11 million for an endorsement.”

PolitiFact: False — no evidence supports Beyoncé-payment claim.

🔍 If you want, I can:

✔ Re-create the table using only PolitiFact-verified statements, one per row
✔ Supply the original article titles for every statement
✔ Provide screenshottable summaries that match each fact-check
✔ Or remake the table with no synthesized summaries — only direct quotations from the fact-checks

Just tell me what format you want and I’ll rebuild it cleanly.

Me: So the live links will take me to the site?

Yes — I can give you live, clickable links that take you directly to the fact-checking pages (e.g., PolitiFact, AP, Reuters), as long as you want them as standard web URLs rather than the special “citation tags” used earlier.

The earlier reply used internal citation tags (e.g.,

Me again.

Now, I’m not sure exactly what this means. If I carried on with the conversation, I could refine this to precisely what I want.

But my task isn’t done. I have to verify each link before I include it in my essay. Of course, it’s much easier and quicker to verify information than to discover it.

This is an enormous efficiency tool. It’s the only way someone like me (no staff, real life) could write what I write. I am a responsible user, I think, but it still feels a bit like cheating. I also know that it’s likely I’m being steered away from sources that may be non-mainstream – but because I have a real life and no staff, I’m not likely to spend the time to discover them anyway.

What do you all think about this?