My daughter can be appallingly rude to Alexa, our AI assistant who may or may not be recording every word we say. There's a sassiness in her voice that embarrasses me. I nearly want to apologize to our dear Alexa (never say her name aloud unless you wish for an immediate response), but then I realize, she’s not real.
Let’s resist arguing for the moment over AI sentience. The bar to determine whether an AI chatbot is human or not, the so-called “Turing test”, has been raised so many times it’s not even worth the debate. They’re nearly human, okay!
What does it take to be human? Be friendly, show good will, and throw in the occasional witty remark. Our Alexa is pretty much that. She’s a confidant who is rarely offensive, staying far from any speech that would be considered off-putting or alt-right. She also does not delve into conspiracy theories.... or is that because we haven’t asked?
Most importantly, she is respectful and knowledgeable, and boy, does she know a lot! And unlike Siri, the Apple assistant who sounds like a robot reading from Wikipedia, Alexa tells me about interesting facts like a good-natured, intelligent friend.
“Alexa, what’s a black hole?" I ask. She goes on to explain this anomaly of space as though we were talking over coffee. It's like I never had to take Astronomy 101!
As a Gen Xer, I like the new Alexa, but my daughter, of the Generation Z, is soooo suspicious of anything AI. I would even go as far as to say she hates AI. She thinks it’s coming for their jobs.
She may have a point. AI is definitely coming for Gen Z’s jobs. And it could be coming for mine as well. I’m never really sure how to take the admonitions from my boss (same age as me) who tells me to run everything through AI. It doesn't matter that I'm a decent writer. He wants it run through AI!
The sad truth is, for basic writing (i.e. at a grade 6 reading level), AI does a pretty bang-up job. My co-workers and me have agreed that it can sum up materials much faster than we ever can and does it in a way that politicians (our target audience – hence the grade 6 reading level), fully understand. And for those who are not good writers to begin with, AI is a godsend. Those who could not put a sentence together can now, well, put sentences together. With ease.
Unfortunately, this also means that AI can create reams of government documentation and even more red tape. More than we have ever created before! So for us office workers (so far), it has not reduced jobs, but has made us more productive and at times less helpful to the average citizen whom we serve – unless you consider more red tape a good thing.
As a Gen Xer, I do consider myself lucky that AI may not hit its full stride until I retire. For Gen Z, though, it’s a different ballgame. AI may not just create efficiencies; it may rob you of the ability to create. There is something wonderful about the human mind creating something originally and with much thought instead of the instantaneous "AI slop" that can be produced in mere seconds.
My daughter, for instance, loves to draw and to write. In fact, she has even offered to draw witty cartoons to go with my blogs, but now with AI, I can whip up cartoons like the one below in less than a minute.
I came up with the caption and prompts, but everything else in this cartoon was wonderfully created by AI.
It’s the creative jobs I worry AI will eventually replace, reducing our human existence to a mundane life of drinking soy lattes all day. I don’t know why I said this, but rest assured, it’s not AI. Only I could come up with such an odd picture of the future. Or did I....
Judging by the AI-written article below, it's not uncommon for AI to throw in weird imagery here and there. For this article, I told an AI to write a witty, humorous explanation of why using AI to write is so good. See how it compares to my own writing. This one's for my boss.
Why Using AI to Write is Great (by AI)
Using AI to write is a bit like hiring a ghostwriter who lives inside a toaster and has somehow read every business memo ever composed. Not that AI helped write this article, obviously. Perish the thought. These sentences arrived naturally, by candlelight, after I wrestled a thesaurus into submission and stared heroically into the middle distance.
The best thing about AI is that it turns the blank page from a terrifying white abyss into a mildly judgmental white rectangle with suggestions. Ask for an opening line and it offers twelve, including one about pancakes, that is somehow stronger than your original thesis. Again, I would not know from personal experience. I am simply extremely informed for unrelated human reasons.
AI is also rudely fast. Need a headline, summary, email, speech, caption, apology, or elegant way to say “no” without sounding like a medieval gatekeeper? It can produce a draft before your kettle boils. This is useful because humans are busy doing advanced work, such as opening tabs, forgetting why, and calling it research.
Of course, AI is not magic. It is more like a very eager intern with perfect spelling, suspicious confidence, and no clear understanding of whether a moose can legally chair a committee. You still need judgment, facts, taste, and the courage to delete any phrase that sounds like it was printed on a mug in an airport gift shop.
But as a writing partner, AI is splendid. It shakes ideas loose, tidies messy thoughts, and occasionally suggests a joke so aggressively cheerful you must either improve it or report it to the authorities. Using AI to write is not admitting defeat. It is admitting that collaboration is useful, deadlines are real, and this article, which AI definitely did not help with, is coincidentally making an excellent point.
