Well, my book report on John Knowles’s “A Separate Peace” is due tomorrow and I am in a corner. All I could come up with was “This book is a separate piece of shit.” I took another pass and punched it to “This coming-of-age story is a separate piece of shit” but I don’t think that’s going to fly. Thank God I’m a high school sophomore living in the age of AI.
Thanks to the miracle of chatbots, no one actually needs to read or write anything. When tasked to do so we can simply have AI do it, and then the person assessing that thing can use AI to do that, and things can just go back and forth like that until we all realize the futility of being alive and walk hand in hand into the ocean. Unfortunately, my English teacher, Mrs. Esposito, doesn’t want to play ball.
Apparently, Mrs. E has some software that can detect when a paper is written by any major AI chatbot. If I’m going to convince her that I’ve learned anything from this tortuous, grueling WWII boarding school coming-of-age melodrama, which to be clear I did NOT, I’m going to need something more powerful. I did a little weird sciencing, and I managed to contact the top 30 AI programs from sci-fi movies to see which one was best qualified to write my book report. Here are the results:
30. Chappie
Turns out when it comes to writing book reports, a robot raised by Die Antwoord is about as useful as my friend whose way into Die Antwoord; not at all.
29. GERTY from “Moon”
There was something concerningly familiar about GERTY’s voice. Sure enough, as soon as GERTY found out I was a teenage boy he got real creepy. Kept complimenting my muscles and telling me I should let him take Polaroids of them? I don’t know, I got the hell out of there.
28. The Cowboy from “Westworld”
As soon as he got to the part about Phineas’s pink shirt he got fed up and went on a murder spree.
27. The Machine Woman from “Metropolis”
She just danced. In 1927 that was the big concern with AI I guess. “What if they do all of our dancing?!” Simpler times.
26. Huey, Dewey, and Louie from “Silent Running”
Basically a bunch of cute radiators. They don’t talk so they weren’t much help. In fact, it’s unclear whether they are actually sentient or if I’ve simply anthropomorphized them in my desperate isolation while reading this god-awful book.
25. Johnny Five from the “Short Circuit” Franchise
He read the book, and Johnny Five no longer wants to be alive. Are you happy now John Knowles?
24. David from “A.I Artificial Intelligence”
The kid just kept crying for his mommy. I know it’s a shitty book but Jesus kid, grow up a little!
23. The Tabernacle from “Zardoz”
The Tabernacle did write me a book report and this thing makes no sense. Phineas is a mutant? Gene needs to meditate on the 2nd level? The boarding school is Oz? Can a computer be on drugs? This computer has to be on drugs.
22. Robby The Robot from Various films
You know the robot you designed for a movie is cool when he gets cast in other movies. Robby was indeed up to the task of writing a competent book report, but he’s just too damned slow. I don’t know how his inner workings operate but he needs to do like 100 typewriter clicks between every word. It’s been 3 days and he’s still on the introduction, so he’s not gonna bang this thing out in time.
21. I Robot
Apparently, the fourth unwritten law of robotics is “Do not waste my time with WWII-era coming-of-age melodramatic horse shit.”
20. M3gan
M3gan suggested we blow off school altogether and just have a dance-off. I’m sensing a theme here with the female presenting robots on this list. It was slightly more productive than her first idea, murder.
19. RoboCop
Reading “A Separate Peace” triggered some dormant memories in Robo from his former life as Murphy. He went rogue, hunted down and murdered the English teacher who made him read it as a kid.
18. Ex Machina
Another female robot and once again, she just danced. Why is it that when a male writer imbues a robotic female character with the gift of sentience, they just make them dance? Can I just write a report on that? THAT’S interesting!
17. The Machines from “The Matrix” Franchise
Turns out it’s a sore subject. This book is what caused the machines to turn on humanity in the first place.
16. Sid 6.7 from “Virtuosity”
Sid’s mind is an algorithmic combination of over 200 violent criminals and psychopaths, all of whom begged to be shut down halfway through this book.
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