For those who did not take the Frosh Quiz a couple weeks ago, this was the question I left out of my data analysis follow-up:

What do you do when someone at a party asks if you're afraid "AI is going to steal your job"?

a) Throw your drink in their face and shriek, "Could AI do this?" (12% of responses)

b) Say you know a great article on the subject & pretend to try to pull it up on your phone but "can't get a signal" so slip outside for a second for a better connection. Keep walking. (20%)

c) Say, "actually, chatgpt is my favourite poet" and offer to pull up some sonnets the app wrote for you earlier. Start reading, then pause. "Wait, this is DOGGEREL!" Smash your phone. (8%)

d) Say AI could never steal your job because it's so short and only makes those beep-boop noises, and gets lost without the gold British droid. Whenever they bring up Star Wars, immediately launch into something about Star Trek, preferably about your crush on Commander Worf. If they end the conversation, try to get their number and text about tribbles. Make them very very sorry they started this. (12%)

e) Other (48%)

This was my most unhinged question in the quiz and my most passionately felt. I don’t really like AI but I HATE being idly asked about it in a teasing manner by those who, it seems, hope it will destroy me. And in a somewhat nonsensical manner because if you don’t respect or care about what I do, and wouldn’t spend money to read a book that a person wrote, you wouldn’t care more or spend more to read a book that a bot wrote. So the whole thing is just “devil’s advocacy” or unhappiness time-wasting.

I am a fairly silly person but I actually think deeply about these issues and have the privilege of being on a national industry working group that helps me do that in a productive manner. And like most people who spent a lot of time on Twitter for a while there, I have learned the value (very little) in specious arguments with people who don’t care about me. So people who did something neat one time on Base44, or find ChatGPT slightly faster than google are simply going to have to live without telling me about it. ESPECIALLY if the goal of the conversation is to somehow extrapolate those experiences into why everything I value will soon be AI, and I might as well accept it.

As with almost everything these days, I’m still deciding how I feel. And I’m making a good-faith effort to learn, also as with almost everything. Last week I went to a webinar agentic AI—which was not easy or straightforward to understand, the way generative AI is, for good or ill. I spend a lot of time in my working group listening to lawyers talk about the strengths and limitations of copyright law in the face of tech giants who feel both that creative work is valueless AND that without free unlimited access to it their huge technological enterprise will fail. So that’s…a thing that I’m learning about.

I also listen to my friends who teach talk about the incredible challenges of working with students in the age of AI. I’m always willing to listen to real hard-won experiences! But I’m feel like I’m being baited in some of these cocktail-party chats (there’s always a certain amount of that when I admit I’m a writer or even that I worked in publisher—all that “I plan to write a book when I retire” or “I never really liked fiction books. I only like real things.” I have learned to wittily parry remarks like that with, “Do you know where the bathroom is?”) But AI is somehow worse, maybe because it’s new or maybe because of the legal battles are encouraging folks to take sides more agressively. Which is why I cooked up these wild reasponses, which, I admit, I have never used—BUT I MIGHT.

Some of the “Other” responses from the quiz were good to—great ideas, Rose-coloured readers. My fave was, “Yell, "Cows took my job!" This is what ancient Mesopotamians might have exclaimed when the cattle-drawn plough was invented. It's our favourite catchphrase.”

WILD TIMES OUT THERE!! Beware of cows!

Header image credit: <a href="https://www.freepik.com/free-photo/portrait-beautiful-brown-cow_39010073.htm">Image by vwalakte on Freepik</a>