So... thoughts on A.I.?

Unless you're rich enough to watch the world implode from the safety of a luxurious underground bunker, odds are generative artificial intelligence makes you uneasy.

How could it not? If you actually need to work for a living, A.I. doesn’t feel like some gleaming miracle of the future so much as an extremely efficient asshole with a demo reel. And as a writer, I’ve spent the last few years watching it get better in ways that are impressive on some days and borderline terrifying on others.

In my experience, people who rely on a paycheck tend to have two opinions about A.I., and the one they offer depends on the room. The first is the honest one, usually reserved for friends and family: “I’m not an idiot, I have a car payment, and I do not love the idea of competing with infinite computer power.”

The second is the job-interview version, which requires a controlled amount of enthusiasm and a strong resistance to panic: “The efficiencies it can provide are mind-blowing. Talk about a new paradigm! I for one am eager to see how my ability to provide for my family is now at the mercy of a tool that doesn’t take breaks, get sick, or steal toilet paper from the company restroom.”

I suspect the strategy is that if you sound confident enough, people will assume you know something they don’t. More often, they’ll simply assume you’ve memorized the same corporate talking points as everyone else and are trying very hard not to make eye contact with the future.

As for me, I think A.I. is a little like the smartphone: something I may never have wanted, but it's now so thoroughly embedded in daily life that wishing it away is mostly an exercise in nostalgia. And nostalgia, for all its flaws, has one great advantage over the present: it’s safely out of reach.

p.s. -- yes, I used A.I. to copyedit this. It was irritatingly efficent.