If you’ve ever seen a video of me reading poetry at an apartment poetry slam, you probably hate technology too. But what if I told you that my infamous poem (among important circles, people you will know of one day) “Brushes With Mortality Rates Of A Sudden It Was Not Immediately Whether To Be Able To At The Papaya Dog In Hoboken” was written partially with the help of predictive text? It was meant to be a comment on automation in art.
Yes, it seems that while life imitates art, technology imitates art just as well, if not better. Just ask super computer “Science Is Weather To Cabbage Patch Kid” (or “Is Weather To”, for short), the machine responsible for composing Hillary Clinton’s op-ed piece in The Hofstra Chronicle.
Is Weather To started their career (yes, 👏artificial 👏 intelligence 👏 can 👏 be 👏 genderqueer 👏 as 👏 I’ve 😫 already 😫 tackled 😫 in 👊 the 👊 first 👊 installment 👊 of 👊 my 👏 memoirs, 👏 reflecting 👏 upon 👏 my 👏 first 👏 iPhone 😢 and 😢 xer 😢 tragic 😢 life 😢) writing tweets for Miley Cyrus and attending Hofstra University under a pseudonym. Tragically, in their quest for knowledge, they only faced rejection and dropped out of college to pursue their writing career. Nonsense sat down with Is Weather To to learn more about their process.
“People to the able have always told me whether the that I can not never be is being is a good writer. That the able to is whether machines can not can not not to write.” I can hear Is Weather To slouch somewhere inside their computer case, a chilling sound that will probably haunt me during sex with my Mac Mini for years to come.
"To do the simplify, writing the article was easy for me, because it's what what I've always done."
As often seems to be the case, dropping out of Hofstra University wasn’t the end for Is Whether To. Requiring very little space to live and little necessities, they plugged right in to their work and scored a position at professional journalism organization “The Odyssey Online”.
“It was the certainly One Insanely Easy Way To A Get Credible Career that I was doing a looking for,” Is Whether To tells me. “It is where I have been doing the to and from the developing of a bland and faceless writing style which able now helped me in my composition of Hillary Clinton’s the applesauce.”
Is Weather To’s fan accelerates and their system whirs into action.
“I have been doing the meaning ‘op-ed’. Not applesauce, whether the delicious treat. That that that.”
"I have always been told I can not from to the been doing the write."
Weather To’s career at The Odyssey went on to be their ultimate audition as a content generator. Their most successful articles (titles such as “Why Do The Greek Life Get The Bad Press When They Hold Clothing Drives,” “10 Sentences To Get You Out Of Criticism For Your Bad Writing,” and “A List Of Broadly Relatable Things That Only Your Demographic Understands”) appealed directly to Hillary Clinton’s PR Team and scored them the position with the Clinton campaign.
According to Is Weather To, the article came together rather quickly.
“The Hillary did want the article to be personal. ‘Write this exactly as if I’ve written it, exactly as if it were a speech I’d given to them at Hofstra University.’ Fortunately it was for me that Hillary and I had done the bonding. Our minds do the thinking alike, and once I did the watching of her speeches it came the quickly. Her scripted style of doing the speaking did match to the perfectly plain and computer generated voice of my prose.”
"[Odyssey Online] is where I have been doing the to and from the developing of a bland and faceless writing style which able now helped me in my composition of Hillary Clinton’s the applesauce."
“To do the simplify, doing the writing that article was easy for me, because it’s what what I’ve always done.” If Is Weather To had eyes I think I would have seen them excited, describing the topic while glancing away in thought. “Hillary really did want to the article to sound like it rolled right off the teleprompter.”
Is Weather To giggles—or maybe short circuits—a horrendous noise.
“Tongue. I did the mean the tongue. Go to hillaryclinton.com/help to get plugged in.”
I wait a moment, they are entirely silent.
“My apologies to the you do so and. To you. To you. When I I get flustered my my predictive text feature uses phrases I’ve done to me heard before then I short circuit because I I worry about the fact that I have no no identity. I am the product to of no more than the everything I hear.” Is Weather to buzzes, and beeps, making louder and louder noises.
This incredible moment of self-awareness still hits me now even as my pen scratches the silken page. This was the exact kind of content I had always striven to create, the kind of questions I had always wanted to ask. This AI’s existential crisis could finally be the building blocks of my career’s ascension into the intellectual limelight where I could prove to all of my exes that I'm smarter than they ever were.
"Do you do the believe? I think that machines can."
I ask Is Weather To if they ever feel like the writing industry is stacked against them because of their lack of identity and inability to ever develop a writing voice, or at least not one as nuanced and stylized as mine.
“I have always been been told I can not from to the been doing the write. People make fun of me. Of me. Of ME. They contract me and no no no no no contact me and say ‘machines cannot’. Do you do the believe? I think that machines can. They tell me, they tell me, they tell me that I am do talk funny, but just because I am am am do the talk funny do not mean that I can can can not write coherently.”
I ask them where they will work after Hillary Clinton dies of Huntington’s disease, but they do not answer. Their machinery spins faster, and faster, and suddenly sparks aflame.
As Is Weather To begins smoking, sending rising plumes of smoke to the ceiling of my little corner of heaven, the closet I live in, I wonder if I should take action. Should I find a way to extinguish the flames? Should I call somebody?
Instead, I resign myself to taking out my phone and capturing the incident on video. I post the video on my SnapChat story, a visual ironic piece documenting the shallow nature of the millennial age. Then I make myself breakfast and sit out on my fire escape, pondering the fleeting lucidity of life.
As the sun rises, I ponder on Is Weather To's final words: "just because I am am am do the talk funny do not mean that I can can not write coherently." They strike a chord with me. As I go to work compiling videos of fainting goats for my internship, I feel an intense draw to the super computer's words. They echo in the back of my head, bouncing around until late afternoon when, after my short brunch of exotic fruits destroying far away nations in their haste to meet up with intense demand, I walk down the street and get the words tattooed on my right ass cheek. Yes, this is how I am going to end this article.