'Help me write'

     I read my email. Maybe that's old fashioned of me. I do so because a) I am old-fashioned; b) I'm also interested in what people have to say; b) some readers point out mistakes that I can then fix; c) others share interesting opinions, or situations I should be aware of.
     Then I answer my email, often. Because: a) it seems polite; b) sometimes, in crafting an answer, I coin phrases I like that can use later; c) it helps cement my bond with my audience, such as it is.
     Of late, artificial intelligence, as part of its general insertion of its enormous big money bazoo into our lives, has started offering email suggestions to me.
     For instance. Ken W. of Palatine writes:

     "Donald Trump has spent a lot of time lately calling all kinds of smart people 'stupid.' This is particularly rich coming from a guy who has an IQ of 72 and has the reading ability and temperament of the average 6th grader. He may want to be America’s Hitler, but happily he’s nowhere near smart enough despite his self assessment of being a 'stable genius.' He should have gotten the opinions of the other horses first."   

     While I considered a response, I hit "Reply" and my thought process was stalled by seeing a box filled with this hint, light gray, as if being whispered by some computer Cyrano de Bergerac:

     AI was putting words in my mouth, or trying to. And trite words at that — "a way with words" is a cliche, and not my voice. I tried to delete the suggestion, and instead it became regular print, ready for me to click on SEND. I defined and deleted it, then wrote my own answer:

Ken:

What's the truism about Trump? Every accusation is a confession. Thanks for writing.

NS

     My next step was to shut the damn AI email prompt thing off. I put the matter to AI, ironically enough, and got this instruction.

         Believe it or not, I made sense of that — went to the little gear icon, clicked it, and found my way to this.

     I shut the "Smart Reply" off and a few others for good measure, then returned to answering my email.  

     Not that AI gave up. When I go to reply, there is still two little glyphs — a tiny hypocycloid that seems as if it wandered off the old US Steel logo and a little pencil. Plus the plea, "Help me write," a phrase I've never uttered in my life.

     Now, there is no way I'm going to go with my gut and pronounce AI a bubble. I've seen too many dramatic social changes — heck, I remember pundits seriously explaining how restaurants will go out of business unless diners are allowed to smoke in them. Plus all those hundreds of billions of dollars being poured into it — they must know what they're doing, right? I mean, they can't be throwing their money away? Can they? That would be idiocy.
     Then again, put that way, maybe it is a bubble. There sure is a lot of idiocy going around.