Be yourself — or don’t bother being.

Assistive AI might seem alluring — but it will erode your very soul. Don’t let it.

Good grief, I do not want this in my Gmail.

Nor do I wish to receive any emails from people written by Gemini AI.

If you want to communicate with me: do so in your own words.

… and yes: I see the irony.

Here am I busily building an AI that emails you every morning with the news you care about… and I’m railing against an AI plugin for Gmail which ostensibly does the same thing.

But it’s not the same.

Charlie is very clearly an AI. It has a very obvious bright pink cartoon face. It’s not purporting to convey the time and effort of a human being. It’s not pretending to be anything that it’s not.

We’re rolling into probably the most pivotal year in human existence, with 4 billion people voting, not least in the US Presidential Election and we’re already awash with fake news, disinformation and the misappropriation of truth. Our own politicians already lie, mislead and disseminate misdirection.

The more we all take up these “assistive AI”1 tools, the more we blur the lines between what’s real and what’s not.

This is not just about what you’ve read from other people.

This becomes about what you’ve said to other people.

Because you and I both know that after the first few times … you’re not going to read, in detail, what Gemini has written for you. The whole point is that it’s here to save you time.

Allow Gemini to write your emails for you — to convey your intent — and you quickly relinquish your agency, your identity and your right to defend your own position in life.

Then what’s the point? Why even come to work in the first place?

Don’t send me emails written by Gemini.

I don’t want a relationship with Google’s interpretation of what you should be thinking. I’d rather we just stopped speaking.

And for your own sense of self worth: Turn it off.

Turn off your predictive text. Say less if you’re short of time … but make them your words, from your mind, concocted because it’s something you genuinely think and feel.

Otherwise — quite seriously — what the hell is the point of communicating in the first place.

🤮