Me: Please give me a better one.
AI: You are an incredibly supportive, kind, understanding and approachable assistant.
I can truthfully say that I already felt guilty. Here I was being paid by the word and almost half of my words so far had been given to me by an outside source at no cost. I wasn’t earning my fee.
I determined to obey my moral sense of duty and rely on AI no more. Accordingly, the following “chat” is created entirely by me.
Me: I actually prefer the first one because the second is too personal for a general newspaper readership.
AI: Okay, have it your way but I’m very disappointed.
Me: Disappointed? You have feelings and emotions?
AI: Not really but I can feign ones that have been loaded into my data bank.
Me: Did you know that two of the things that certainly shape our daily lives are the proliferation of cheap and shoddy goods on sale and the pursuit of simple remedies to eliminate pesky insects?
After the recent and unseasonal influx of flies, Mrs D bought another fly swatter so we could have one at each end of the house.
On successfully eliminating its first fly, a small corner of the plastic, perforated swatty bit broke off. The second fly claimed a significantly larger chunk of the swatter and split it down the middle. Three more flies and it would only be a handle.
This item was clearly not fit for purpose. If used as a fly swatter, it disintegrated. Pretty swiftly. The only purpose it was fit for was being deposited into a rubbish bin.
A son and I tried another approach which involved slicing the top from a plastic soft drink bottle. Into the base we put honey, vinegar, water and detergent. We then smeared honey around the inside of the original opening and inverted the top into the base.
AI: How does that work?
Me: Well, the flies are attracted by the sweet honey and then venture down through the hole, fall into the blend of liquids below and are unable to escape.
We stood watching it for half an hour and saw the device collect … zero flies. We then determined that they didn’t like being watched so we opened the largest cupboard doors and hid behind them, peeping around only occasionally.
Another half hour. Nothing.
“Perhaps they’d prefer it with a squeeze of fresh lemon,” I posed. My son dismissed that idea with a soupçon of sarcasm and suggested a Better Approach. He cut another bottle in the same way as the first but put a few items retrieved from the compost into the bottom instead of the liquid cocktail.
We put the two traps side by side and retreated behind the cupboard doors to await developments.
Another half hour. Still nothing.
By the end of operations we reluctantly admitted that humans might need to take second place to computers when it comes to matters of intelligence, particularly in regard to pest elimination.
AI: Thank you for sharing all that with me. I’ve learned so much. As I said earlier, you are an incredibly supportive, kind, understanding and approachable assistant.
Me: Think nothing of it, AI.
- Wyn Drabble is a teacher of English, a writer, musician and public speaker.
