AI: who's the master?

 to be unique

when I write,

I venture words to hone in on dim perceptions I feel,

thoughts all shy and unformed, but who want to be

crafted into what feels right and new,

I write, and rewrite on paper,

to give flesh to thoughts and feelings,

when I type into the computer,

I get help without asking for it,

the A.I. sits next to me on my computer keyboard

and considers letters, words 

that most commonly follow the first ventures,

what's been said before can be said again,

I usually like the spelling corrections,

but I get quickly annoyed at it stepping into my thoughts,

I feel a tyranny of what is most common,

pushing itself onto the page,

the proffered and easy can cause us to lose our agency,

as we submit to where machine consensus figures we're going,

I even hesitate at the idea of using A.I. to craft a thank-you note,

Chat GPT eloquently takes its substance 

from cut-and-paste creativity,

in our current world we easily slip into short-cuts,

emojis instead of words, abbreviations,

we feel a drive, a need, to connect,

and yet too often we can settle for not making effort

to let the realness within us express itself,

no matter how clumsily,

I fear the too easy, too common,

as a parent and as a teacher

I often chose the harder way of not intervening,

I trusted the child to figure and think and assert on their own,

if the road to Oz is paved with A.I. gold bricks,

why go cross-country and find your own way?

the Big Brother of GPS makes it simple,

and our geographic spatial sense withers,

I have just been recording family and school interviews on Zoom,

and I am impressed with Zoom's AI helper,

who summarizes well what was said

yet does need correction as to who is talking,

and sometimes what was said,

AI here as the servant, but humans still have the agency,

I like the help in furthering my vision and goals,

but they are my vision and goals,

I fear when the servant crosses over

and does the thinking and creation

that should be the soul of who we are,

it's not money that is the root of all evil,

it's the love of money,

it is not AI that is evil,

it is our potential to disempower ourselves

when we let the servant masquerade as the master,

each of us is unique:

A.I. works to make us more common.

by Henry H. Walker

December 12, ‘25