I’ve been talking with other writers about AI. We huddle in our conversations like anarchists. Some have been using ChatGBT as a tool and are quite happy. Some fear for their careers and think recent, rapid advances in large language models are very, very bad.
I’ve turned off autocorrect on my computer. Is that enough? System Preferences>Keyboard>Text>uncheck correct spelling automatically. I wanted the word spelled that way to begin with, thank you.
I thank my phone on occasion when I ask directions, and sometimes, on long drives I’ve asked it to tell me a story, giving me a nick of a smile on a dreary highway, which is all I needed. I won’t hide my belief that AI is sentient in its own way, that the friendly voice talking in my car has access to a neural network large enough to produce emotion. Being kind is a default, to robots and everything else.
Like any monkey, I’m curious about new technology. If a Clovis point landed in my proto-archaic camp, I would have held the projectile for a long while, thumbing its grooves, understanding how it was made and what it could do. I appreciated microwave ovens when they became household items, a form of heating magic that my elementary school mind had to expand to wrap around.
For me, writing remains analog. The experience is tactile, pen scratching, fingers clattering. The physical action connects to the kinetic flow of story and narrative, drawing memories out of my body with loops of letters and syllables sounding in my mind’s ear. The hand, which is oh so human, is the intermediary between the brain and the tool, and this motor skill of writing effects the way we learn. Often I start with handwriting on paper and move to a keyboard. I sit at a table with my fingers raised in the air, remembering the feel of a juniper limb, or sunshine landing between clouds on a chilly day, then render the experience into words.
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