AI Is Artificial Intelligence, Not a Steak Sauce

Learn even more as we break a cyber sweat on your behalf

By Ed Goldman

Everyone wants to latch onto some form of AI program—to write their annual reports, novels, screenplays, term papers, speeches, Supreme Court pleadings and ransom notes.

But one size may not fit all when we’re dealing with Artificial Intelligence (also an interchangeable term for certain chapters of Mensa and most members of Congress). 

For example, the people who want to write their world-domination manifestos may also want AI to contact their parents upstairs to please bring a tuna salad sandwich to the basement. Well, neither of these tasks require much cyber-sweat breaking. 

On the other hand, a social scientist might need a super-sophisticated program to write a computer code to serve the needs of an assisted-living colony on a space station, say. 

In short, there’s the AI Platinum Series and the AI Econo Pack. Here’s a brief guide to help you discern when to deploy each.

1. The AI Platinum Series is useful for the following:

– Writing letters to the Times Literary Supplement about your quibble with a critic’s repeated use of the term “flawed.” Do London reviewers lack synonym dictionaries? Do they so despise the French that they refuse to scroll through Roget’s Thesaurus? If so, the joke’s on the Brits. “Roget” wasn’t a French guy at all. He was an English doctor named Peter Mark who lived, existed, subsisted, breathed and abided from 1779–1869. (For younger readers: a “thesaurus” is not a synonym-spouting dinosaur. Nor is “synonym” what you add to pancake batter to make it seem more like pastry.)

– Writing an angry letter to correct a bill you receive from a contractor, automobile dealership, Comcast and any hotel that tacks on an unexplained “resort fee.”

– Explaining how the local planning process works to a developer recently arrived from Europe or Asia—or, much more difficultly, explaining how healthcare insurance and Medicare reimbursements work to a native of the United States.

– Writing a speech for the U.S. ambassador in a highly unstable region of the world—such as Russia, Palestine, Sudan or Florida—and trying not to offend anyone. (AI to User: “You gotta be kidding me.”) 

2. Meanwhile, an AI Econo Pack may be all you need for the following:

– Writing a note asking to be excused from your recent five-week school absence. Some low-cost programs will even forge your parents’ signature at no extra cost.

– Rewriting the note your teacher sends home to your parents expressing concern that you were absent for five weeks and the signed excuse you brought is identical to that of 13 other recently returned absentees. 

Teacher’s Note: “I was alarmed that Lance was absent for five weeks then handed me an obviously forged note from you saying he’d had mononucleosis.” 

AI’s Rewrite: “I was so warmed that Lance has spent the past five weeks abandoning AI Chatbot and is on his way to achieving intellectual topmostness.”

– Writing a note to leave on someone’s windshield gently criticizing him or her for taking up two parking spaces presumably to protect the paint job on his or her new Prius. AI Econo Pack will offer you a selection of appropriate phrases—among them, “You blind bozo!”,  “You selfish swine!” and, perhaps most devastating of all, “You Prius driver!”

– Writing a new all-purpose résumé for nearly every job you’ll be applying for—as long as its assistant barista, carwash chamois-cloth operator, person who directs traffic around a construction site by waving a sign that says “Slow” (while wearing a cunning orange vest), greeter at Walmart, SCUBA diver for Roto Rooter, restaurant dishwasher loader, restaurant dishwasher unloader, restaurant dishwasher, restaurant dishwater.