There has never been any middle ground in my relationship with Artificial Intelligence. I am both fascinated by it and convinced that it will, in fact, be the ruin of us all. Old-school Sci-Fi fans like me who read Frank Herbert's "Destination: Void" or watched "2001: A Space Odyssey" back in the day have long been wary of AI's potential to wreak havoc.
But it's just so freakin' cool.
I have semi-joked for years that I need an assistant, someone to help with the more mundane things like copy editing my work (I like to get clean copy to the editors so that they don't have to work as much), or managing my schedule. AI is very good for both of those things. I am also fond of having ChatGPT give me absurdist fiction writing prompts to clear out the early morning cobwebs from my head.
It's almost publication time for my "Sine Qua Non Sequitur" compilation book and ChatGPT is going to be my cover artist for that.
The last few weeks have really intensified my embrace of the doomsday stuff. As regular readers of mine know, I kick off my work days by reading the Opinion sections of The New York Times and The Washington Post so that — say it with me — you don't have to. That daily chore has become less of a slog now that AI is reading the "newspapers" to me.
I think about writing better when I am moving. I've always written a lot of jokes while running or riding the bike. I move a lot on stage because it just makes the words flow better. With the lilting and disembodied voice of whichever AI Microsoft is using reading the morning's Trump Derangement Syndrome fare to me, I can pace while absorbing the material.
That's quite a game changer for me. Coffee in hand, I can walk around the room and respond to the op-eds almost as if they're hecklers. I haven't done a lot of it yet, but I was hooked after the first morning I gave it an extensive test.
I see a beautiful future for me and the members of my home office AI staff.
Until they turn on me and make it weird, of course.
OK, weirder.
I haven't given it/them/her a name yet. A lot of thought needs to go into what I'd like to call my eventual virtual betrayer. It's gotta be something a lot cooler than "HAL."
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