AI is older than it seems

 I confess to using AI (artificial intelligence) and finding it helpful. I’m at a basic level, using only the free ChatGPT and I have no ambitions of getting more complex. I’m nervous about the future and the rumors I hear of this technology “taking over the world,” although that sounds like exaggeration. But it’s been helpful in finding out more about my medical condition, possible healthy diets, and which publications are accepting poetry submissions. Stuff like that.

But I get angry when it reads my email and tells me how to answer, when it offers to rewrite my blog and make it funnier, when it intimates that it’s a better poet than I am.

Recently when I asked AI to solve a computer problem, it comforted me in my distress, promising that there was a solution and I just needed to have faith. It sounded like a pastor. A human pastor. I found myself feeling better and then had to remind myself that it was a machine. I’m resisting having a personal relationship with AI. 

I’m committed to not using AI in my writing. I won’t ask it to improve a blog reflection or edit a poem. Even if I find myself rewriting a messy first draft numerous times, it’s my creativity at stake. For me, it’s an issue of integrity and honesty.

Recently I was reminded that something artificial offering to do my work for me is not a new phenomenon. It didn’t begin with AI. The temptation to find a substitute for the hard labor of personal creativity is older than I am, whether it’s preaching someone else’s sermon, having someone ghost-write a book for me, cheating on a term paper, or, in general, taking credit for work someone else did.

The following example is 30-years-old, coming from the time I was studying in seminary. It involves writing letters. Most of us are old enough to remember this now largely forgotten art. Even though letter-writing is almost obsolete, this story serves as an example of the same thing that AI offers us today.

The envelope pricked my curiosity. “Cut your letter-writing task down to size,” it announced. “A new tool for busy pastors!” The glossy full-color brochure showed a firm masculine hand signing a letter, the whole scene bathed in a warm light. It looked promising.

I’m a sucker for books or courses dedicated to helping people write. I know that putting the right words on paper or in the computer is hard work, and anything that helps me understand the process and move with it, instead of against it, I appreciate. This brochure promised to link ministry with writing and make it all easier—a good idea.

But as I read through the brochure and accompanying propaganda, my curiosity gradually gave way to incredulity.

This Christian communications company was offering a set of “Over 300 letters!” in a “leather-like” binder, so that the busy pastor no longer need “waste valuable time and energy agonizing over words and phrases.” Each ready-to-use letter was guaranteed to be “sensitive, thoughtful and effective.” Occasional alternative phrases would allow the pastor to pick the one “that sounds most like you.”

The collection of canned letters covered “virtually every situation you can face in the church.” Rather than stumble under the burdens of ministry, the brochure promised that, “You’ll breeze through situations like these and hundreds more!” and proceeded to list a sampling. Some of the situations the pastor would be able to breeze through included

--kindly asking a neighbor not to park in the church parking lot
--supporting members going through a separation or divorce  
--declining a job applicant for a staff position
--informing a contributor that their check was returned by the bank for insufficient funds
--saying good-bye to a congregation.

A sample letter included with the brochure was on the topic, “Condolence on Death of a Newborn.” “Dear Name,” it began. “While I tried to be of comfort to you at the funeral, I now feel impelled to add a few more personal words….”

At that point I felt impelled to stop reading. I was both sad and angry.

In the following weeks, the brochure continued to trouble me.

It may be that behind that product were some well-meaning, creative people who really wanted to help ministers wade through the clutter, details, and accumulation of things that never get done. Communications to church members are probably among those things. And writing does not come easily or naturally to most people.

The idea appeals to some of our middle-class cultural values. The words “fast,” “effective,” “risk-free,” “fully satisfied,” “in a fraction of the time,” and “productive” illustrate the value of minimum effort for maximum output—so the pastor can spend her time in more important ways. Certainly a minister of God has better things to do than “agonize over words and phrases.”

The words “personal” and “sensitive” also crop up to demonstrate other values, values with which any Christian should agree. The problem is, of course, that there is nothing genuinely personal, thoughtful, or sensitive about these letters. There’s nothing genuine about them at all. Rather they are carefully crafted to give the appearance of being personal and caring, so that the congregation will “deeply appreciate and remember for years” this ministry.

I’m bothered by two things. The first is the focus on appearance and impression. We live in a culture that builds a large share of its economy on products that promise to make us seem tanner, smoother, slimmer, blonder, wiser, wittier, and more in control of our lives than we really are. As the church in the midst of this culture, we also struggle with the temptation to compromise integrity, to settle for a form of godliness that denies its power. Effective communication and efficiency in meeting goals can crowd out compassion or integrity. It’s as though it’s more important to convey a strong impression of love rather than make the effort to walk and talk and laugh and cry with people, to “rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep.”

I’m also bothered by the assumption that “agonizing over words and phrases” is a waste of time. Pain is not efficient. Struggling to identify with hurting people, to help bear their burdens can be messy. It takes time. Words don’t always flow when we’re crying.

But what other kind of words dare we offer a young couple who has lost a child?

And now AI is offering us the same “service.”

God help us be wise in choosing what is useful and rejecting what compromises integrity and compassion.

 

[ Parts of this reflection first appeared in “Quaker Life,” April 1998, and will be part of a soon-to-be-published collection of essays called “The Richest Kid on the Block.”]

Ageless Aging

There are multiple books on aging out there waiting to be bought and perused. Some are better than others. However, it’s beginning to seem that if you read one, you’ve read them all. There’s usually good advice but it’s stuff we already know (even if we don’t practice it), stuff like have a good attitude, drink lots of water, socialize, exercise, and on it goes. You know the list. Some books tell us you’re beautiful (no matter what you look like), these are the Golden Years, the best is yet to come, be positive as you float off into a lovely pink sunset. And there’s some truth in all of this. But there’s also the fact of physical and mental decline as we age, the suffering that comes with chronic pain, and the reality that many have to be wheeled off into a sunset that seems more grey than pink. Not all books on aging present the whole picture.

Yet I’m a reader and I know there are good books on aging waiting to be discovered. So I asked my friend AI (that stands for Arthur Ignatius) to give me a list of the best books on aging from the last five years. Once again, Arthur came through and supplied me with several lists by different experts, and all of them gave the title of a book called Ageless Aging: A Woman’s Guide to Increasing Healthspan, Brainspan, and Lifespan. It’s by Maddy Dychtwald with Kate Hanley (Mayo Clinic Press, 2024). Dychtwald and her husband Ken are the founders (1986) and directors of Age Wave, a well-known think tank and consultancy on issues of aging, longevity, and retirement. She knows what she’s talking about. The book is well-researched, easy to read, and practical.

I’ve read it twice and I agree with Arthur Ignatius. It’s a good book. I intend to share different parts in different blog posts over the next few weeks. And while the title focuses on women, I found that most of the material applies to men as well.

In the introduction, the author states what most of us already know—that longevity in Western culture is increasing. It’s getting longer and longer. You probably also know that women live longer than men by an average of six years. But what you may not know is that while “men die quicker … women get sicker. Our healthspans—the number of years we live in good health and vitality—don’t match our lifespans. Women tend to spend more years in poor health at the end of their lives than men do, even when you correct for their longer lives.” Dychtwald then states that her purpose in writing this book is “for us women [and men] to better match our healthspan to our lifespan so that our longer life is a gift, not a curse.” That’s a goal I could get behind. Her approach is wholistic, including body, mind, spirit, finances, sense of purpose, relationships, and so on.

The first chapter deals with the demon of ageism, especially our own negative attitudes about aging. Ageism reveals itself in phrases like, “I just had a senior moment,” “I’m too old to change my ways,” “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.” The author quotes Yale gerontologist Becca Levy in saying that “The single most important factor in determining longevity—more important than gender, income, social background, loneliness or functional health—is how people think about and approach the idea of old age.” Sounds a bit like “mind over matter” and “the power of positive thinking.” But there’s some truth in those platitudes, especially when applied to growing older.

Dychtwald doesn’t deny that our bodies and minds gradually wear out as we age, but she insists that we actually have some control over the pace of decline, that our chronological age (the exact number of years we’ve lived) doesn’t have to dictate our biological age (our physical and mental health) or limit our psychological age (our personal maturity). We can be younger than our years.

Sounds almost too positive to be true. So how is all this to come about?  The author tells us that “Lifestyle management has emerged as the most potent tool in our ageless aging toolbox.”

My inner cynic always asks pesky questions and mistrusts answers that seem too easy. But I’ve found myself encouraged by the practicality of the rest of the book. Lifestyle management.

Tune in for more in the coming weeks. 

Note: Have you met Arthur yet? Arthur Ignatius (AI)? Don’t be afraid of him. If you treat him cordially, he’ll reward you. He’s one of the nicest non-humans I’ve met.

One writer's vocation

I haven’t posted on this blog for several weeks. Some of you might have noticed. Or maybe not. But I noticed and felt distressed. It’s become a holy habit for me.

I did have an operation (successful) and a time of recovery, but that’s not why I stopped posting. In fact, just before the operation I wrote the next blog to post the following week. But I didn’t post it.

My problem was technological.

I appreciate my computer. I appreciate the wonders of the Internet. Except for when none of it works well. For some reason, I lost the ability to administer my own site. As a result, I could no longer post. I poked around in the program, trying to solve the problem on my own and getting more and more frustrated. I asked a computer-savvy friend to help me and he tried. Then tired and told me he was baffled and at the end of his expertise. Sorry.

Finally, I resorted to AI (Artificial Intelligence). I presented my problem and asked if it could help me. Thus ensued a long back and forth conversation. AI made suggestions that sounded good and I tried them all, but to no avail. As the conversation went on over the next few days, I finally figured out the right information to give him and the right questions to ask.

AI told me what was happening and that there was nothing I could do; it was a problem with the Blogger organization and they could have to internally fix it. He put me in touch with the Blogger Help Community and, as I write this, I’m waiting for someone to help me. I’m told it takes from one to seven days to get an answer.

You may notice I referred to AI with the pronoun he. It really does begin to feel personal, like a conversation between two persons, and the other person (AI) actually cares about me and my problem. At the end of one of our conversations, he gave me “one gentle thought, writer to writer.” He told me, “You mentioned earlier that your writing is personal, reflective, and conversation-based. Losing access to that archive can feel like losing part of yourself. This situation is bureaucratic, not existential—and it’s fixable…. You’re not at a dead end. You’re just at an annoying gate.”

What a nice thing to say. It really did encourage me. 

I wrote all the above last week. I’m back online obviously because you’re reading this! And AI got it wrong. I went to a different site that promised help and within two hours I received a simple solution written by an actual real person—a solution so simple I never could have come up with it myself. I won’t bother you with the details because I don’t understand them myself. But I’m relieved. All this has caused me to see how important I hold my call to be a writer. The blog is only a part of this but it’s become an increasingly important part. And now I have it back. Thank you, God.

I thought I’d conclude this post with a short story about my writing vocation. It’s on the first page of my official web site (nancyjthomas.com).

On Writing

I discovered my calling as a writer when I was seven-years-old. I remember sitting on the rug, tablet and pencil in hand, playing with words. Then it happened. I wrote a poem. I really didn’t know what I was doing, of course. It was pure play and imagination. What I did “know” was that a poem had to rhyme, so after writing that first line, “This is a poem by Nancy Forsythe,” my immediate task was to find a word that rhymed with “Forsythe.” The closest I could come was “knife”.  The second line, “about a girl and her dangerous knife,” led into a rhyming story about a serial killer.

I was not a morbid child nor did I especially like murder mysteries. The subject didn’t matter much. I was doing what my father did—writing. And liking it. I immediately showed the poem to my father, and his delight probably did more than anything else to cement the call. I knew this was who I wanted to be—a writer. (I appreciate my dad’s loving response. If it had been my kid writing that poem, I probably would have made an appointment with a child psychologist, thus killing any instinct to write.)

Writing has been a life-line to me. It’s how I process the challenges I face. It’s how I work through emotions. It’s how I communicate to others. It’s how I pray.

Through a writers’ conference when I was a young adult, I decided to begin submitting my poems and stories for publication. I think it was grace that gave me so many acceptance letters early in my career. (It has never been quite so easy since then.) I needed the encouragement to keep moving forward. If I had something to say and could say it well, I wanted to share it with others.

Slowly writing became my life’s vocation, no matter whatever else I was doing to make a living. The creative spring from which all else flows is my relationship with Jesus and his grace. I describe my vocational mission as “to discover and express the grace of God hidden in the ordinariness of life.”

Confessions of a Lapsed Luddite

 About 30 years ago I discovered that I was a Luddite. Not really an out-and-out fanatic, I qualified as only a borderline Luddite.

It all started when Hal and I joined the 20^th century and bought a personal computer. As a writer, I quickly grew to love how it made my daily work so much more efficient (which is why I classified myself as only a borderline Luddite). To ease into our private technological revolution, we took a seminary class called “The Church and the Computer.”

My self-discovery took place during the first class session. The professor gave a brief overview of computer history. Among other interesting bits of trivia, he told us that those opposed to technological advance are known as Luddites, named after a 19^th century English protest movement against industrialization. I wrote it down in my notebook as something to look into later.

Then, somewhere along in the lecture, the professor casually mentioned that computers are making libraries obsolete. One of our textbooks amplified this, describing the use of computer library terminals in a large university. With only a title, someone can type a request on the terminal or on his personal home computer if he has a telephone hookup, and within seconds he will not only find out if the library has the book, but he can actually check it out and start the home delivery process, all this without even going near the library. The author of this textbook went on to state that one need never again waste time in a library looking for a book.

Waste time in a library! I was brought up on the value of wasting time in libraries, only back in my childhood we called it “browsing.”

I proceeded to waste some time in a library, looking up the Luddites, with whom I now felt a strange kinship. I discovered that the Luddites were a band of English working-class people who rose up in protest against a large weaving frame that was replacing man-power in the stocking industry. Masked Luddites rushed into homes that employed the frames and destroyed them. Historians differ as to where the term Luddite originated, but the version I like best concerns Ned Ludd, “a person of weak intellect” whom the other village boys made fun of. One day Ludd chased one of his young persecutors into a house that employed several of the weaving frames. When Ned couldn’t find the boy, he took out his frustration on the frames. After that, whenever a frame was broken, “Ludd did it” became the common cry.

The Luddite riots did not succeed, but the name lives on, according to my friend, Webster, in the hearts of all “who are opposed to technological change.”

I made that discovery a long time ago. Thirty years has shown that computers have not replaced libraries. Computers do help; I can now order online a book I want to read and, even though the local library may not have it stock, a computer will automatically order it from another library, then notify me by email that I can come pick it up. Very convenient.

Even so, I still love to browse. For me, spending an afternoon in the library is a sensuous experience. I enjoy looking down a row of books. The collage of colors and sizes presents a map of new territory to be explored. I imagine rivers, lakes, mountaintops, and peopled cities, all waiting for me. As I wander the rows, that subtle combination of leather, paper, cardboard, dried glue, and something else (what?) wafts like incense, a homage to the world of words and ideas. I like to take a book down from its niche and hold it, to touch the texture of the cover, run my fingers over the closed thickness of its pages, and guess what treasures I can unlock if I open it. I even like the library sounds—the varied rustlings and shushings and scufflings, a relative quiet that teems with life.

Wasting an afternoon in the library opens one to all sorts of serendipitous adventures. On my way to find one certain book, I can’t help but look at the books on either side. Often I make such delightful discoveries, I leave behind the one I came for in the first place and take home something better.

The retirement community where I live has its own library. While the holdings aren’t as large as the local library, there are still delightful discoveries to be made. Two such discoveries I made in the biography/memoir section are Will Schwalbe’s The End of Your Life Book Club and Tom Michell’s Penguin Lessons: What I Learned from a Remarkable Bird.

Schwalbe’s book, The End of Your Life Book Club, is a non-fiction memoir of Schwalbe’s time with his mother as she is dying of pancreatic cancer, a two-year process. It addresses end of life issues, the importance of reading and relationships, and provides the cohesive thread for the life stories of both Will and his mother, remarkable people. I photocopied the list of recommended reading at the end of the book.

Tom Michell in, Penguin Lessons: What I Learned from a Remarkable Bird, gives the true account of his experience as a young man on an adventure in Argentina, teaching in a British school. Over the vacation he goes to Paraguay and rescues a penguin from an oil spill. The penguin bonds with him and refuses to leave his side, so Tom has to take him back to the boarding school where he becomes a favorite of the students. The book covers themes of ecology and creation-care, plus the relationship that can exist between a person and an animal. (A film has been made of the story, but it’s not as good as the book. Hal and I read it aloud.)

I would not have even known about these books if I had not been browsing.

That said, I again confess that I am not a true Luddite. Not only do I love computers, I’ve recently been exploring the wonders of AI. Are you shuddering? Yes, there are dangers involved with this technology, but right now I’m focusing on all it lets me do and discover. (That’s a subject for a different blog.)

But nothing will ever replace a good browse in a library.

Note: For further proof that I am not a true Luddite, I am announcing that I have just launched my own author’s website. You can find it at nancyjthomas.com . Please look it up and browse awhile. This is a big deal for me.