I Now Require All Purchases to Pass an Intelligence Test

I have finally found a practical use for artificial intelligence. I don’t need it to compose a symphony, diagnose the economy or create a lifelike video of Donald Trump riding a dolphin. I need it to stop me buying rubbish from Facebook.

This has become necessary because the internet has apparently identified me as a woman with skin, joints, teeth, hair and several functioning insecurities. Every time I open Facebook, I am offered something miraculous. A cream that removes age spots in fourteen days. A strip that whitens teeth without damaging them. An oil that repairs joints, erases wrinkles, improves circulation and possibly fixes the transmission in the car. There is always a distinguished-looking doctor involved, although he may actually be a dentist from Belgium whose photograph was stolen in 2017.

In the old days, I would look at the before-and-after photographs, read three glowing reviews from women called Susan and Janet, and begin to wonder. Perhaps this really was the discovery dermatologists had been trying to suppress. Perhaps a small company operating from an undisclosed warehouse had finally cracked the secrets of human ageing. Perhaps all I needed was two bottles for $79.95, plus another bottle mysteriously added at checkout.

Now I ask ChatGPT.

I send it the link and say, “Does this work?” Then it goes rummaging through the ingredients, the evidence, the company’s claims and whatever independent information can actually be found. 

Usually, the answer is a beautifully diplomatic version of: No, Carol. Put your credit card away.

It has become my official Department of 'Suspicious Purchases'. Most of which I cleaned out the other week...

The pattern is remarkably consistent. The product often contains one perfectly reasonable ingredient, surrounded by moisturiser and magnificent advertising. There may be a tiny amount of something that has shown promise in a clinical study, but nobody tells you how much is actually in the jar. The advertisement then leaps from “this ingredient may modestly improve the appearance of pigmentation over several months” to “YOUR HANDS WILL LOOK 25 AGAIN BY THURSDAY.”

They all have thousands of delighted customers. They all sell out regularly. They have all been discovered by a woman who had tried absolutely everything and was about to give up. Sometimes her dermatologist is “amazed.” There is usually a countdown clock informing me that the special price will disappear in eleven minutes, although I can return three days later and find that the clock has made a miraculous recovery.

Since I began checking before buying, I have discovered that most miracle products fall into one of three categories: they might help slightly, they probably do nothing, or they will moisturise the area beautifully while leaving the original problem exactly where it was.

The money I have saved must be considerable. I can’t give you an exact figure because that would require admitting how many times I have been tempted by a bottle of hope with a gold lid. But between the whitening strips, memory supplements, age-spot creams, joint oils, circulation devices and mysterious magnetic objects, I may have saved enough to purchase an entirely new body. Admittedly, it would probably arrive flat-packed and require a subscription.

This doesn’t mean I never buy anything. It means the product now has to survive questioning. Are the ingredients proven? Are they present in useful amounts? Are the reviews independent? Is the dramatic photograph merely the result of different lighting, makeup and someone turning down the contrast? Is there an actual business address? And my personal favourite: if this cream genuinely removed every age spot in two weeks, why wouldn’t every dermatologist on Earth already be using it?

Occasionally, the answer is that a product may be worth trying. More often, I am told that the active ingredient is sensible but the claims are inflated, the evidence is weak and a cheaper product from the chemist will probably do the same thing. It isn’t nearly as exciting as discovering a forbidden anti-ageing breakthrough, but it is considerably better for my bank account.

So I now have a rule: before buying anything advertised as revolutionary, miraculous, clinically proven, ancient, secret, doctor-approved or “not available in shops,” I send it for interrogation.

Artificial intelligence may eventually take over the world. Until then, mine is standing between me and a $69 jar of moisturiser claiming to reverse thirty years of sun damage.

Frankly, it has already paid for itself. :')