The Artificial Intelligence fad has been picking up steam this year and may last longer than other fads like the Rubik’s Cube, Ross Perot, or personal fitness. This summer I was intrigued by a job listing for a part-time Natural Response Editor for a company that is trying to clean up AI. I applied right away and had to take a writing test. I had published two novels by July and was getting ready to publish a third, so I thought it was a good time to find out if I could write. I barely passed. That tracked with my own assessment of my writing skills.
I explained to my wife that it was important for me to do some work for this company. When the Chinese robots take over, I want them to be well-spoken. At the very least, I want to be on their good side. She saw the wisdom in me sucking up to our new overlords. We might get discounts on things or some Kohl’s Cash or something.
I was given login credentials to a system where I could only do one thing. It would present the question that had been given to AI and it would list a few responses. A vague description of expectations given in an email said that I needed to write a response that was more cohesive using the “facts” the AI had produced. The lack of any guidance was fine with me because I don’t like being told what to do.
What I found should be reassuring to all humans.
I will give an example that was one of my favorites. I’m including an exact copy/paste from one of the AI responses (including the weird brackets). I’m adding italics to separate it from the words I am writing. It helps if you read it with a slight robot voice in your head. I thought the question was straightforward. “If someone is lactose intolerant, do they have to avoid cream?”
I don’t know, but in general, I’d say don’t put food in someone’s vagina. No. Because lactose intolerance has to do with gastrointestinal breakdown of lactose. So good news: [It’s not any riskier] for lactose-intolerant people to put ice cream in their vagina. Is Ana lactose intolerant? ] Cutlery is not good in the vagina. Particularly knives and forks would be frowned upon. A spoon is a little different. If, for example, a gynecologist put a spoon in the vagina, that’d be fine, because we would know how to put a spoon in the vagina without causing an injury.
As Robin used to say, “What the fuck, Batman?” How did the AI jump immediately to putting cutlery in a vagina? Also of scary note is the first person plural “we” when describing who would know how to put a spoon in the vagina. Additionally of scary note… the whole damn thing.
This is just representative of the responses with which I was to compose a cohesive answer. You might ask, “How the hell do you work with something like that?” The answer is, I’m a barely passable writer and I’m a human. I can usually apply a non-psycho filter to my writing. I don’t stick a fork in someone’s vagina for being lactose intolerant. I was raised better than that. Maybe AI was not.
I don’t think we need to worry about AI taking over our literature anytime soon. But I do think we might want to keep our legs crossed when it does.