Remember when we were in the Era of DOS? I don’t miss C-Prompts, not one bit. However, there was good advice back then: “Garbage in, garbage out.”

Artificial Intelligence seems to be here to stay, although that is what we thought about DOS and whatever the last new best thing was ten minutes ago.

There seem to be some useful applications for AI, especially in the medical world, when it comes to diagnosing rare diseases. We can’t expect doctors, even specialists, to know every indicator of every disease. Isn’t it interesting how right Gene Roddenberry got the tricorder in the original Star Trek series? Although, even medically focused AI designers would do well to keep in mind, “Garbage in, garbage out.”

As for scientific research and development, the results should be fact checked; go to the library. In the last few years I have seen several well prized scientists caught falsifying their data: Remember the guy who said the genetic anomaly, autism, was caused by vaccinations. It’s interesting that unvaccinated children also “get” autism.

Turning to the creative side, Amazon’s Kindle asks whether AI was used in creating the manuscript being uploaded. I ask that question to writers, too.

There are articles suggesting that AI violates copyright laws as it digests mounds of information without regard to whether or not the material is copyright protected. Not to fault AI for this, it comes from the moral compass of its creators.

Nonetheless, while AI can pirate the words of emotions it finds as it travels relatively unchecked into every digital corner of the universe, without the life experiences we mere mortals have, I don’t believe that it can write as deeply the stories that make us cry, or make us wonder, or make us imagine the possibilities of things we’ve never considered, or make us laugh when we read something a character does that is so vividly written that we can see it in our mind’s eye.

Victor Mather wrote an article for The New York Times about a book that was returned to the library 100 years overdue. In the article there was wondering of how and why this book happened to be so overdue. Of course, no one knows. Mr. Mather wrote that the answers were lost in the “mists of time.” I don’t think AI could be so brilliantly creative.

I can’t imagine that using AI brings the same level of a sense of pride or the feelings of inspiration that writing brings to writers. I don’t think we are replaceable, but I am cautiously aware of the day that the sentient robot Cylons of Battlestar Galactica fame realizes that we are not indestructible. Until then, go be creative.