The AI discussion seems theoretical, until it is not. I had two experiences recently that put its infectious spread, and the repercussions of its use, into perspective.

In the first experience I had voluntarily handed in a short piece about my grandmother to a university alumni publication so that her life and name could be celebrated by her alma mater.

The emails about the piece took place over a year, including changes in editors and surprisingly long patches in which I heard nothing back at all. Eventually I received an email in which the editor that I had been communicating with most recently, sent me her revised copy of my little article.

I was not happy with what I read. The new version had words like ‘spearheaded’ and had added a plug for my grandmother’s early participation in the ‘global community’. I wrote back and told the editor that I was uncomfortable with her version and I would not want it published in that form. I told her I was happy to edit it myself. Then I never heard anything back, so I gave up on the whole project.

Imagine my surprise when I searched my grandmother’s name on the internet later that year, to check a detail from her life, and came across my article, with my byline. Alone in my small BNB in Toronto, I spoke out in alarm, ‘What! Wait, what? What in the hell’?

After a series of emails (over a few weeks) in which I pointed out that I had not given anyone permission to publish this article, I was finally given the grace of a phone call. An apologetic phone call, no less. I spoke to a woman who said she was the actual editor.

I was told that the ‘editor’ that I had been communicating with all along had been fired. Apparently, she was bad at her job. But her worst crime was that she had been sending all the writing for the publication through an AI vortex.

I had not even thought of that possibility; I was still new to the whole AI subject. And to be honest, I was feeling off kilter since she had returned my piece in such an altered state. The AI version had made me feel insecure about my own writing.

The glib piece that the editor had returned to me was smooth, flawless. The words surrounded you, slid into your mind, sounding soothingly familiar. The AI mill had ground down my words, added dust and fake gold, stuck it into a mold and popped out the crushed version.

I was stunned to discover it was an AI incident, but even more than stunned, I was alarmed. I had just applied for graduate school at King’s College in Halifax and I did not want to have my name attached to a piece that was likely recognizable, to some, as AI garbage.

The apologetic editor agreed that I could re-write my piece and replace the one that they had posted online. I thought editing would mean taking out a paragraph or an errant phrase, but I wasn’t picturing, as I do now, a huge grey machine eating up my article whole and spitting out a different piece of writing altogether.

My editing was sentence by sentence. Every time I would start a paragraph I would think, “Okay, this is fine’, but then I’d look again and see that every sentence was unclear, vague, and basically not saying anything. It was the definition of ‘bad writing’. Each time I re-wrote a sentence it became clear that the AI rewrite had flattened my voice and my vision.

I wasn’t just removing clichés; my version was an entirely different animal. It was slow work and satisfying. That’s how writing works; you need to take your actual thoughts and make them into clear sentences! I had to shake the piece out and start again.

My second experience with AI was even more upsetting than my learning experience with the AI editing. I was visiting my gastroenterologist and I had questions about the antacid that I was taking. We had always had a friendly relationship, and I was looking forward to seeing her.

As I signed in at the office, I was asked to sign a new form that released my information to an AI system that would save the doctor from taking notes for herself.  I didn’t fight it because I thought it would be harmless.

However, as we continue down the dark road into the dystopic future of digital ID and AI control, I now see that AI is never harmless. It is scraping the life out of every document, video and image, preparing to feed the Pablum back to us as something ‘real’.

During the visit I found my doctor much more cautious in conversation than was her usual style. I asked her about the adverse effects of the PPI’s that I was put on to save my throat from my hiatal hernia. When she told me I would have to go back on them without an end date, I reminded her that she had advised me at first that I would not want to be on PPIs for a lengthy time, and that later she had said that I could use them intermittently.

I wanted to hear her opinion about long term use and to hear about alternatives. I was content to pick her brain and take her advice. But during our talk she was uncharacteristically stern. Eventually I left without being able to discuss other options. I felt quite sad and disconcerted afterwards and I could not put my finger on it.

But then I remembered the form. Our conversation was being recorded!  She knew she was being recorded and it was making her extra conscious of ruling bodies and legalities. It was making her step back from me as a person and treat me as if was data.

Data that could come back and bite her if something went wrong? Words that could be used to sue her, or somehow get her in trouble with her doctor lords? 

I was no longer the healthy older woman that she once shared childbirth stories with, I was now held at a distance. She could no longer risk an off-the-cuff comment or even be seen to explore alternatives.

We want writing that sounds like a person wrote it and we want to talk to a person when we talk to a doctor. The AI that is creeping into our lives is nefarious and dangerous. Every time we give it leeway, it tightens the noose.