From Underwoods and IBM Selectrics to ChatGPT, every new technology seems to raise the same old question: who gets to decide what we should use and trust?

So, scrolling through emails this morning I came across a report from Axios. This line jumped out at me: “Governments need to immediately stop the creation of these superhuman, autonomous AI systems and redirect AI development toward controllable and pro-human AI tools.” Attributed to Anthony Aguirre, CEO of the Future of Life Institute, after other online sources reported that certain AI systems had gone rogue, evading human oversight, and creating mischief.

I couldn’t help but think immediately of HAL and Dave, and you know the line, “I’m sorry Dave, I can’t do that,” in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

And then, the second thought I had was, Wait! We’re going to trust the GOVERNMENT to police and monitor AI? Ever heard the line, “Hello, I’m from the government and I’m here to help you,”?

I’m not here to defend or attack AI. There are millions of others out there on that bandwagon. Decent arguments and passionate opinions exist on all sides of the issue.

I’m a writer. AI is a tool and it can be used constructively or destructively. That’s MY opinion. I use AI to spell check. Fact check. Keep plot lines organized. Flag contradictions in my writing so that I can correct them. For example, in chapter 3 of my current WIP the girl had stringy blond hair. In chapter 8 she shows up with stringy brown hair.

I do NOT use AI to write for me.

Wait. That’s a lie. I asked Chat to write an email, in Spanish, to my orthopedist today asking for an appointment for a specific foot problem. I could have done it myself but writing it and then translating it myself (my Spanish is intermediate at best) would have taken the better part of half an hour or more. Chat did it in 30 seconds. I sent it. I got the appointment. Score.

Oh. Another way I use it. A few months ago I was planning out a complicated itinerary for a trip to Morocco. I used Claude to organize all the accommodations, transportation connections, emergency contacts, and key Arabic phrases into one eight-page booklet. It was brilliant and we used it daily.

What I don’t use AI for is to generate prose for my novels or blogs or Substack posts. She isn’t writing this for me. (And yes, I just referred to Chat as a she. After all, she is organized, prompt, doesn’t argue, and is always available. And will come up with a recipe out of what’s in my fridge on a moment’s notice. Though, she won’t cook it or open the wine. Yet.)

New technologies always have champions and detractors. I taught myself to type with a manual printed in the 1920s on a thirty-pound cast iron1926 Underwood Upright I inherited from my grandfather (who had used it in his law office in Miami, Florida in the early 1930s). I was just shy of my sixteenth birthday and had lied in a job interview with a local weekly mimeograph newspaper, The Galax News (Highlands, NC) and told the man who ran it, scary Mr. Summers, that of course I could type! I learned (The Quick Brown Fox Jumped Over the Lazy Dog’s Back) and developed very nice forearm muscles. It was my first paid job and I cranked out movie notices and personals—who was having whom for dinner at which country club kind of thing. Small town news. Most were true. Some were my first fevered forays into fiction.

Fast forward a few years. I was twenty-eight, a single mother, and had always wanted to be a writer. I met a man who was a former senior editor of Look Magazine. His words, his descriptions and attention to details, were magic. He was like a god. Swanning around Atlanta in a fedora, a cape, with an eye patch. He read my first few short stories and praised my efforts. He told me I would be great. I swooned.

He introduced me to other writers and editors and persuaded one to give me a gig with Atlanta Magazine.  Then the Atlanta Journal/Constitution Sunday Magazine assigned me a series of articles. I was in heaven! Next stop, in my dreams, the cover of the Rolling Stone!

I spent some of my hard earned first paychecks on a new teal blue IBM Selectric typewriter with the self-correcting back space. Oh my god! What a dream!

When I told him about it, he practically ghosted me because REAL writers only write on yellow-lined legal tablets with real ink fountain pens and type on ancient Underwoods.

Wonder what he would say about AI?

Lots of thoughts running around. For instance, does anyone reading this remember the old Encyclopedia Britannica in the gorgeous faux leather maroon bindings with gilt lettering? They were heavy, too. Thin paper, small print, pen and ink illustrations. And the only approved source of information in my very conservative family of the 1950s.

Then I asked for a newer, more user-friendly set of World Book Encyclopedias with up-to-date yearly annexes and actual photographs. It was a battle royal in the family, with my father claiming World Bookswas part of the global one-world conspiracy by the United Nations and my mother, who actually read books, said I needed it for school. She won. I was eight.

Back to my original opening. I fed that same quote into Chat today, and she (I stand by that!) questioned the wisdom of trusting the government, the corporate developers of AI, or AI itself to do the job of monitoring, regulating, etc. Which leaves us…where?

I don’t have any answers. At least not definitive ones, and at 75 years old, I most likely won’t be around long enough on this mortal coil to see how it all turns out. Though I am very curious.

Now excuse me. I have to go back to my really swift and sexy laptop and try to come up with plausible plot lines for characters I created and who are currently stranded in Iceland in a blizzard. How will it end? I don’t know. I could ask Chat, but, honestly, while she might have suggestions, she doesn’t know either.

That’s my job. I’m the writer.