Illustration by Marley Allen-Ash
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My wife, Sue, believes that artificial intelligence will reshape nearly every aspect of our lives for the better. I’m of the view that AI is mostly evil incarnate. These wholly different perspectives influence much of our home life.
For this Valentine’s Day, AI will perhaps at last prove of value to me by giving me the perfect gift for Sue.
For the past year, many conversations, be it around home renovations, travel, politics and much else have Sue either turning to AI or insisting that we use it. She even wants to upload the tens of thousands of family photos we have so that AI can create a movie of our lives.
Sue works for a global corporation where she constantly finds ways for AI to assist her with tasks and increase productivity. Every day she returns home from the office with a gleeful report of a new AI feature, development or opportunity.
I am inundated by her stories and predictions of jobs that will become obsolete while daily activities will be transformed. For Sue, the four-day work week is just around the corner as machines do more, and better, work while humans gain greater free time.
I see it differently. AI for me is the slop that now infests my professional and personal life. In my mind, the technology takes away my creativity, and that of humans more generally, as well as the joy, and effort, of learning.
In my job as a university professor, I have restructured my courses to exclude AI. My students now write all assignments using only paper and pen (without access to computers, phones, watches or AI glasses). I often tell my students: “If you are using AI to do your work, then don’t be surprised when AI replaces you.”
I have joined a class-action suit against Anthropic for illegally harvesting a book I wrote for its AI agent. I may receive a payment of a few dollars, but greater satisfaction for taking a stand against the AI corporate giants.
Sue chides me for failing to adapt to the present, much less to the future. She tells me I am failing to keep up and will end up obsolete. I reply by cautioning her that anything uploaded to AI, such as our family photos, becomes part of the data that is stored and manipulated.
Our children – 19-year old twins – have each taken after one of their parents. Our daughter is anti-AI like me, dismissing the technology with “Why would I use it?” On the other hand, our son tells me he found ChatGPT an invaluable aid during the fall semester of university studies.
They will surely need intensive counselling in the years to come after living in a family in which the parents have such disparate views. Sue agrees that therapy will be required for them, assuring me that AI will provide high-quality care.
Matters reached a climax at Christmas when Sue asked me to write her a letter expressing my love for her. I spent weeks crafting the gift, but made it seem like it was AI composed. The first two sentences were: “This is AI writing. Tom asked me to compose this letter to you as his Christmas gift.”
On Christmas morning when Sue read the letter, she fully believed that AI had indeed written the letter. At first, I thought she was joking but it soon became obvious that she truly assumed I had turned to AI to write the letter. I failed to convince her that her living, breathing, loving husband was the author, and that AI had in no way been utilized. Surely, I pointed out, even AI could not know what she murmured in her sleep?
It’s depressing to think that my hours spent wordsmithing a love letter merely persuaded Sue that my creativity was that of AI.
Doesn’t she know me well enough to realize I would never stoop so low? But then, I suppose that is what many people do now. After all, why spend hours toiling over a document of any kind and being creative when AI does it in a fraction of a second? I, however, have learned my lesson and will never again try to impersonate a machine.
Perhaps my fight against AI has become futile.
For Valentine’s Day, I will ask AI to write my love letter to Sue. My use of AI will surely please her, increase the degree of harmony in our home and bring me out of the dark ages where I have lingered too long.
Thomas Klassen lives in Toronto.