Charlotte Alter on X writes, “Want to hear a horror story?”
My very sweet husband emailed me a couple dinner options for our anniversary coming up. He listed a couple different restaurant/picnic options and asked which I preferred. I started replying to his email and that’s when I noticed…That Gmail AI had the gall to DRAFT MY ANSWER FOR ME, the audacity to select a restaurant on my behalf.
It picked badly. It picked the restaurant that is most well reviewed. I want to go to the place that is special for us because we’ve had lots of nice memories there.
But the AI wouldn’t know that. Because it isn’t me, it hasn’t been married to my husband for 7 years, and it doesn’t know what we’ve been through recently and why I would want to go to our spot.
Which is why it should stay the fuck out of my email and my marriage.”
“Different restaurant/picnic options”?! The “very sweet husband” for the win.
Pressing Pause 
This is why I disable my settings for AI or automated promptings including spelling and grammar. No voice-to-text for me. I use a text analyzer to show me the parts of my writing level that are too high for my students. I’ll resort to ChatGPT or Gemini when I can’t work out a good teaching idea, but I’ve been only about 78% content with whatever AI results I’ll get. I check at least 3 news sources of different political temperaments to ascertain the accuracy of an incident. I must be a relic or dinosaur in these times.
Love the precision of 78%. :)