AI is the word for what computers do. It’s like thinking, but worse. In this essay I aim to learn all about AI.
Phones
Phones have the most AI of anything, except for our phones, which don’t. Our phones also don’t have any games on them, except for that awful game about dinosaurs that Daniel likes, and Tina’s spelling game, which isn’t even a game, it’s a dictionary. (Claire’s phone is broken and now she keeps nicking my phone which is why I’m writing this with a pen.)
Robots
Robots have AI instead of brains. Perhaps this is why Daniel’s robots keep falling down the stairs.
Videogames
When you play a game against the computer the computer characters are controlled by AI. Sometimes they are good but most of the time they are not very good. But they’re still better than Claire!
Music
Dad says one of the clever things about AI is that AI knows what you like better than you know what you like. This is why Dad let’s AI choose all his music for him and everything he listens to is AWFUL.
The Thermostat
When the man came and replaced the boiler he said our new thermostat has AI in it even though Mum specifically said she wanted a thermostat without AI in it, and there was nothing he could do about it, because that’s how thermostats work now, it just is. This means that when we have a bath we never know if the water is going to be hot or cold, which is an improvement on the old thermostat, where when we had a bath the water wasn’t hot or cold but lukewarm.
Daniel really likes the word thermostat and once said thermostat so much he forgot what thermostat meant. I bet an AI couldn’t do that!
Conclusion
When asked directly about AI, Mum says AI is “bloody useless”, which is a bit rude, and Dad says AI is “the most important invention ever”, which is a bit unlikely. Oya says that she “can’t really see what it’s there for,” while Anna said it’s simply “regurgitating stolen lies”.
Tina told me AI is “antithetical to poetics”, while Claire says AI is “stupid”, and that it only beat her at chess because it was “cheating”. Daniel said that if you said AI like it was a word instead of like letters it sounds almost like you’re screaming.
The witch cackled wildly when we asked her about it. (We don’t think she understood the question.) The cat has no opinion on AI at all.
In conclusion, AI is sometimes good (according to Dad) and sometimes not (according to everyone else and all my observations).
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Notes:
1. Written in June, 2025
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