“Gemini, I have a paper due, can you tell me what is the importance of music in child education?” Gemini scours publicly available sources, returns a response on how music aids in the growth of the creative side of the youth. Cut, paste, put into the paper, click submit. 

Looking out the window this sunny June day, listening to Clair De Lune and imagining what music would be if it was all a restating of existing pieces? A library of covers of covers, being remade all with the same DNA under their chords. Using AI for thought leadership by no means is a problem, it wouldn’t be called “Copilot” if it was not intended to be at the controls with you. The challenge with the advancement is that in today’s world, there was nothing there first to train it on, besides the voice of others. You can’t train a model on a voice that one has never built. 

Thinking of a conversation I had with a friend yesterday over lunch, the myriad of topics covered, thoughts shared and perspectives explored. I chuckle thinking about the transcript from my one-hour lunch. What would have been the takeaways? From the words spoken, would it capture the sentiment as I felt, or as a model would anticipate a human to feel. I left lunch appreciative of the time someone made to spend catching up over a bite, learning more about their passions, drive and journey. The transcript would simply be the myriad of topics, which ultimately misses the entire point, and yet that transcript would be ingested into future outputs.

When we think of what is a voice, how do we define it? A voice is not a style nor a format, it’s everything that goes into the brain power beyond the letters on the screen. For me, it’s the product of years of writing toward one person in thoughts that this might land with someone, somewhere. That mattering enough to keep going.  I’ve maintained my own domain since 1998 in times when people move to Medium and other places to monetize, where I am perfectly content with zero views. 

How do I leverage AI in my writing? I use the model as a mirror, not a ghost. Leveraging years of writing is the difference between shaping output and outsourcing thought. Two fundamentally different things. What gets lost when we outsource thought is the power of human thought. The irreplaceable way one person sees something.

What is a link or bond between one object, and only one? That is not connection which requires something real on the other end. In the age of AI, it’s easy for authenticity to be performed but it can still be felt. Often I see it when people are attempting to tell a story, and so often it’s the same verbatim content and often riddled with inconsistencies in the flow. Similar to when someone can’t speak to what they have written because it’s clear, they didn’t write it.

The same inconsistencies with the flow are the blockers that hit us, the same for when we can tell connection is not there, the lack of investment in sharing genuine thought becomes simply an opportunity to scroll past. 

If I were to ask Gemini to create something similar to Clair De Lune, it would give you the output requested. What AI can’t do – bring back the overwhelming feeling I felt as a teen on my first trip to Europe, aboard a Delta L1011, flying over the Atlantic, unable to sleep; from excitement, my father with the travel club as a chaperone, listening to Clair de Lune as I glanced out the window and closed my shade until the dawn that was eagerly waiting as we touched down in Frankfurt. 

Be humble, be grateful, be true to you.

_{Photo: Delta A330-300, Atlanta to Amsterdam — June 30, 2023.}