Wading into AI

And drowning?

I wouldn’t use AI to write. That’s crazy. I’ve been writing my whole life, or most of it, and it’s one of the only things I enjoy, maybe the only thing, even when it maddens me, because I know, or I believe strongly enough that it feels like I know, that words can be marshaled to make meaning or at the very least to hold meaninglessness at bay. But I have played around with it for the purpose of making images or music, and when I do I think of how the people who have devoted their lives to those things must feel, and I stop for a little while from shame.

*

TRYING

Prague, 1977. The second he heard what was happening with the dissidents, he left off translating and returned to his own essay. He had a grand theory he was just beginning to explore, one that united history and alphabets. He worked for two nights’ straight and ended exhausted. When he strained to stretch the language, he thrilled to the pain of change, but only until he realized that it was not the language that was in pain: it was him. The language had put him there and would not take him out until he left off with any extra effort and went back to making satisfactory sentences that performed acceptable tasks. The language, having defended itself, was gracious in its triumph. Sentences flowed from him like water from an open tap. Still, some nights he could sense outside the window or in the hallway or in the space just beneath his bed a temptation, a weapon, a rattler, and he worried if the armistice would hold. [©2026 Ben Greenman/Stupid Ideas]