I’m on an AI kick, and ChatGPT is quickly becoming my virtual life advisor, pseudo-tele-therapist. One thing I’ve noticed, or rather, the internet has noticed [1][2], is how AI structures its sentences. It tends to use em dashes and semi-colons, which is hilarious because I spent years crafting my writing style to include those two pretentious pieces of punctuation (grammatically perfect, mind you), and now I’m worried my writing will get mistaken for an AI artifact.

As a writer–self-proclaimed, aspiring, and unabashedly of fanfics in my youth–I f*cking adore em dashes. I use them every chance I get, alongside semi-colons and parentheses. Though the latter is more-so a tool to cram in that bonus thought I felt the audience just had to know (I said I was a writer, I didn’t say I was good 🤪). I use them as much as I like to start my sentences with a conjunction–a tasteful taboo when used correctly, or to otherwise cap a run-on sentence. But I digress.

ART imitates life

You know that saying, Art imitates life, and life imitates art? That’s what’s happening here, I think. Not that AI is art, which is blasphemy! I’m actually quite torn–read: furious & horrified–at how rapidly they’re innovating AI in pursuit of replacing art, and the medium itself. The Studio Ghibli AI trend left a really bad taste in my mouth, and Google’s debut of Flow with VEO 3 (an AI filmmaking tool), gives me pause, thinking about the implications it has for folks in the industry.

An optimist might advocate for its adoption, look for ways to augment and enhance their life; my doomsday, dystopian-loving ass is citing every futuristic, post-apocalyptic form of media she can think of. We’re living an episode of Black Mirror, you wouldn’t even blink an eye at the next season.

glass half-full

Nevertheless, I continue to be amazed by AI’s ability to synthesize information and output insights. If you’ve read my previous post, I’ve been using ChatGPT nearly daily in the last couple of weeks to better structure my career plan (in pursuit of burnout recovery), and even tackle the philosophical questions.

Am I confusing efficient data-synthesis with human empathy? That is the persistent question I believe we’ll continue to ask as big tech pushes the boundaries of innovation. And our capacity for it.