Slouching Towards Zombie-Hood

Invitations to Robotics and How to Resist Them (Vol. 5; Issue 22)

Readers likely notice how emails, Word documents, and even texts offer the option to:

Help me write and help me polish.

These artificial intelligence (AI) driven prompts invite us to use the tools to improve our writing skills. Anyone familiar with AI programs (allegedly) helpful in writing, like ChatGPT, Claude, Rytr, Sudowrite, Grammarly, or Wordtune, knows how they assist in creating documents. But they beg the question:

Are they written by YOU?

As these programs proliferate, they provide students around the world the ability to generate anything from term papers to dissertations, causing quite the problem in academia. Professors must use other AI programs to ensure their students actually wrote the assigned work.

The usefulness of AI programs for personal notes is questionable, however. When it comes to more intimate missives, they can create problematic alterations. Consider notes offering a thank you, condolences, congratulations, or even the desire to “catch up soon.”

And, what about the love note? Is it a forgotten form of affection? Using AI to “help with” or “polish” one’s declarations of love, represents an entirely different challenge. For fun, let’s consider a love note sent through email. Alas, we’ve become accustomed to the impersonality of emails, so they must suffice. Imagine you’re a 29-year-old single, highly emotional man who one month ago met a fantastic woman at the Fleming’s happy hour in Pasadena. You’ve had three dates and made love once. You are planning for an amazing date for the Summer Solstice on June 20.

As it turns out, you never enjoyed writing. You suffered through the usual high school English class. Only reluctantly, you took the required writing course at your Cal State University. Naturally, you wish to compose a romantic and even sexy email expressing your excitement about the date—now just a few weeks away.

You open your Gmail and immediately see the prompts, which bear repeating:

Help me write and help me polish.

If you accept these invitations, you encounter two distinct complications:

1. You become a zombie, and;

2. You suffer Promethean shame.