AI Intrusion

I think almost everyone has a manner they express themselves besides the spoken word or throwing wrenches in the shop. Singing, drawing, painting, knitting, sewing, building things, playing musical instruments, are all other ways of expressing yourself. I write. I can't draw a straight line much less paint a portrait. I can't seem to build anything square. I gave up playing guitar 25 years ago. Even though I am a parts guy, I hate mechanical work outside of brakes, suspension, and exhaust work. And maybe starters and alternators. Yeah, I'm a tool thrower, and I've got a good arm. The front field between our old yard on the Queens Line farm and MacKay's is littered with an assortment of wrenches and screwdrivers and sockets and chisels in a fan-shaped arc a fair piece out from the yard. It'd be fun for someone to take a metal detector out in that field.

No, I find it less expensive and easier on my arm to sit in my trusty, comfortable armchair and write.

What downright ticks me off, is, because I write so much and the electronic surveillance environment that is our reality is so aware of it, I am constantly inundated with AI 'writing assistant' ads!

Those ads make me sick. They incense me. Lazy, shortcut, slapdash, cheating, irresponsible, artificial bullcrap is what that stuff is to me.

Listen, 'AI', this is 𝑚𝑦 way of expressing myself. I have not and I will not allow some digital boogeyman rewrite anything for me!

These stupid ads have college students fawning about how 'Grammarly', or some other 'writing assistant' basically wrote their assignment for them! Are you freaking kidding me? How is the product of hitting a 'Do It' button their work, and how can they be graded on it? Other ads tout the use of it for content creators or reviewers or contract writers, or, worst of all, newspaper reporters and editors!

Newspaper editors used to be considered, rough, tough, gruff, and in a huff. They arranged and corrected everything everyone of a lesser degree of literacy than them submitted for approval. Think, 'J. Jonah Jameson', or 'Lou Grant'. They had to be tough because they had to bring everyone else into line to put out a quality product day after day. Your average internet content writer or college student doesn't have anything like that kind of pressure to deal with, and yet they think they need something to make what they do actually do easier or these promotions wouldn't be out there. What a lazy, unproductive way to be.

Okay, if you are not a writer at all, and you are somehow assigned to write an article or a review or a eulogy or something, I can see the use for a 'writing assistant'. In that capacity, I begrudgingly regard the 𝑝𝑜𝑠𝑠𝑖𝑏𝑖𝑙𝑖𝑡𝑦 of the need. But, if you are a professional writer or even an amateur like me, you should be ashamed of yourself for using the bogus crutch of one of those programs to take the mental work out of it for you! It's like men in women's sports. Yeah, I said that and I'll say it again if I need to. Put in the actual effort to succeed in your field or find something else to do, period. Don't strap a rocket on your lazy round rump.

I'm a high school dropout, and a pretty much systemic dyslexic, with a kaleidoscope of upside down and backward and inside out obstacles to everything I write. Darn near everything I do. And still I turn out most articles I write in an hour or two. There is no way in a month of Sundays I would ever stoop to letting a bunch of BS 0 and 1 microswitches write an article for me no matter how smart some dumb people think they are! This is 𝑚𝑦 expression. This is 𝑚𝑦 intelligence or facsimile of it. Why would I take a creative back seat to an electronic machine in a sterile room and then take the fraudulent credit for it? That would be the most pathetic thing I could stoop to and my Grade 11 English teacher that encouraged me to be a writer would probably want to shoot me for offloading my gift to a bunch of humming capacitors, diodes, busbars, and fans. And I wouldn't blame him.

I have friends with creative gifts. Some of them have multiple ones. I would kick their butts if they gave their God-given gifts over to a voltiac master to do it for them!

Now, what in the flying flip... This article just changed right here this moment.

I am not kidding you. I am dead serious here. I am not making this up. As I was writing this very article, my laptop itself popped up this... 'copilot' 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔... that asked me what it could do for me to help me with my piece! NO! No, friggin' NO!

That wasn't even an ad. That was what I used to consider my own computer trying to take over writing my own article for me. No joke.

This is new. I mean brand new. And I'm not ready for it. I never will be, either.

This garbage is getting way out of hand. I can't believe I am going to say this but I think I have to say this: I now see it as distinctly possible that some article you may see in the future as supposedly coming from me might not actually be from me. I'm sitting here in a kind of a stunned stupor blinking at the wall contemplating that eventuality. The people that know me would hopefully recognize a literary piece that is genuinely me from a piece that is not from me, but how can we be certain? Can it duplicate my mannerisms and emotions and expressions and writing style? I guess, what I am actually asking, is can it imitate 𝑚𝑒? My old online buddies that have seen my writing for 25 years know what makes me tick, and what ticks me off. If I didn't spot a counterfeit piece, would they recognize it? I can't believe I am actually thinking that this d@mn thing could take over my writing and try to steal that identity from me. What would be next?

I don't like this AI bullcrap at all. Not one little bit.