Things We Should Be Using AI For

a very short list

A little space heater that will follow me around at all times and keep me warm

A feature on automatic doors so they make the swooshing-open sound doors make on the USS Enterprise (Captain James T. Kirk commanding)

Making my favorite food and playing my favorite songs when I’m sad

Shaving my head and trimming my beard. (I have to work really hard to look remotely presentable in polite society, and I need help)

AI shopping carts that won’t let some knucklehead park them in the middle of the pickle aisle while they choose a pickle shape

Writing blurbs (Let’s be honest, no one likes doing it anyway, and maybe the AI blurbs would be funny. Or they would be terrible and we could all feel superior and then go on social media and say “I cannot believe we let AI do blurbs now. Stupid Crenshaw.” Either way’s a win, right?)

Tiny AI bots that clean your nether bits

Curbing the anger of ugly men

Communicating with animals

Dungeon master for 8^th grade Dungeons and Dragons groups

Laundry

Better scanners at the airport so we don’t have to take off our freaking shoes

Planting trees. Designing cities with sunlight in mind, and alternative, clean energy. Like maybe we should ask AI how it can cut down on its own power grid

Picking plastic out of the ocean

Doing that 5-minute task you’ve been putting off for 6 months (see also: answering that email you’ve been putting off for 6 months)

Making food that looks like other food

Detecting body odor and telling you you have gross shit in your teeth and also if you have toilet paper stuck to your shoe

Fix my failing eyesight so I don’t have to hold a pill bottle at arms length to read it

Helping you remember why you walked into that room

Remembering people’s names right after you’ve been introduced

Find where my fricking phone is right now

Fact-check politicians in real time. Huge holographic screen above their heads and the words “Pants on effing fire” flash over any politician who lies. We’ll call it the DJT Screen

To translate what the kids are saying. Like wtf is 6-7? I just assume it’s a sex thing. Maybe drugs. Silly kids

Not chatbots but AI that helps people find others as lonely as they are

To order for people who take too long ordering at restaurants WHEN THEY’RE STARING RIGHT AT THE MENU

Whales (I don’t know how or what, just. . .it’s whales, man. We should do nice things for them. With AI.)

Maybe traffic? Housing? The good of the world instead of Wall Street pockets. People instead of profit for the profanely rich. Enough is enough. Let’s use AI to make the world better, not rush it past the guardrails of disaster. Feed the hungry. Help the poor. Explain to knuckleheads why it’s better to help people up instead of kick them back down. That billionaires don’t need any more help, since they already have it all. Make AI anything that helps people instead of sucking up the water supply and shoring up the bad mistakes of billionaires

Not writing. Not ever writing, not even a little bit. Not a summary or a scene. Not a paragraph or poem, not the slightest bit of prose. Not art either. Don’t give up thinking. Feeling. Words are all we have to communicate, and we need to be deliberate and careful where we place them. How we use them, and how they are used. Words are our connection to others. Our way of understanding that other people feel the same as we do, that our hearts and minds are the same beneath our skin. Words are how we tell others how we feel, and how the world feels to us. How it hurts us or helps us, how lonely it can be at times. How utterly lonely. Words describe the ache we often feel for others. For connection, for meaning, for communication, for someone else to understand what it feels like to walk around on this good, good earth. That’s not a job you can farm out, friend. That’s for you and you alone. Be as thankful for it as you would be to draw another breath. To see the sun shine again after a long, dark night.

---