Did I even write this...

Argh...what's that quote, you know the one, the one where that you-know-who that thought of the quote was powerfully getting across the fact that it's a danger to society if we don't have the bravery to speak out? The one where they came for them and I looked away and there was no one there when they came for me?

...but I really don't want to use that as is. I don't want anyone to think I really think my point is that important. That real quote is potent, it has very somber, historical implications and I'm not trying to suggest my current comparison is anywhere close. How do I leverage that sentiment but dial it back a bit so as not to offend in this very non-offensive forum of LinkedIn?

I'm already being way too wordy introducing an article that is simply trying to spark some (as if we need more) discussion about AI. You know the feeling. Anyway, here goes:

The only thing I can tell you about this article is that there’s a 33% chance I put this all through a machine and did some minor edits, there's a 33% chance I wrote it all, word-for-word, by myself. There's a 33% chance it's somewhere in between. And there's a 1% chance we'll never know.

Wow, how disconcerting Mike.?Now your audience isn't even sure it’s you (er...me) in this conversation we’re having.

Jeez. Duly noted.

OK, dear (and also evidently demanding) reader, how do I prove to you it's me? I take care and pride in my words, spend time to define my voice and conversational style. Sometimes this leads to rambling unstructured sentences where I bore even myself, sometimes I confidently type the exclamation point with a smile on my face since I've nailed that exact thing I was trying for, sometimes I try and picture a specific reader and gauge their reaction (it's you today) and sometimes I try to ensure my audience is as broad as possible (I've hit 100 readers once or twice).

Yes they're coming for the writers.

I wonder if in essence we're all channelers of our influencers and maybe I should worry that I'm already a copycat--Tom Robbins, Kurt Vonnegut, Pynchon, Twain. Am I always just trying to replicate the things that have spoken to me?

How should I feel now that technology has hit this amazing new tipping point and every link between words is available to me as a building block, a suggestion, a correction, an influence? Should I be happy and hopeful that my style stealing is now powered by near-infinite effectiveness? Is a combining of styles just what we're supposed to do as humans anyway and what is, in effect, the true essence of progress in the first place?

If I guided the machine, was that enough??I consider myself (verbally) careful, always trying to assemble words in what I hope is at the same time readable, creative, thoughtful. Is this just a better way to craft? Do I boldly take credit for the thought, the phrasing, the cumulative end result? Is it any less mine if it's a combination of everyone's and I just found it?

Or is there something to really worry about here? Does the individual voice now drop into a cacophony nearly impossible to climb back out of?

In the career I find myself in (and presumably most of you as well), this one hits particularly hard. They came for the farmer, they came for the manufacturing worker. How are we going to react?

OK, Mike, swing hard to the positive. Hit to the opposite field. And remember, stop addressing yourself.

I remember now long, long ago on an Apple II+ when I typed a sentence into a text box and was amazed that a computer voice (yeah, that robot-ish computer voice) read the sentence back to me. I just simply knew I was seeing (hearing) the future and that this was going to lead to amazing things. My friend's grandpa stood behind us, slide rule in pocket, shook his head and sternly warned us that we were going to let our brains turn to mush if we stopped thinking for ourselves.

And now all this. That simple text-to-speech amazement wasn't all that long ago kids.

This is a way different excitement, and presumably I'm trying to play a grandpa (I'm not ready yet Erin and Kelly!) more thoughtful and careful with my warnings, a grandpa that has been in complete love with technology since my paper route and my parents funded that Apple II+.

Since AI is populated by us, it is by definition the collective us. All our good, all our bad, equally available, instantaneously, equally leveraged for positive and negative, mind-numbingly full of potential and horrifyingly scary. Are we embarking on defining a rule set around it or watching the balance of ourselves emerge from it, ungoverned?

If this stuff is capable of wielding an egalitarian power to bring out the very best and the very worst in us, isn't it just up to us to encourage the former and resist the latter wherever humanly possible? Doesn't collective benefit tip the scales towards the cure for cancer, the eradication of hunger, the seeking of peace and understanding and away from the infinite scale of pick-pocketing, the weaponization of the concept of truth, the intensity of global tribalism?

Whoa Mike, dial it back.

Bland. But OK.

How exciting that we find ourselves in careers that at least give us a chance to drive meaningful difference to the direction, to the outcomes. Not saying it's necessarily going to work, but certainly the only thing to try, no?

This new challenge to authenticity is actually hugely exciting. With a new baseline of content, of decisioning power, of access, of sheer computational might, who's going to rise above the noise? Who's going to model, at scale, one of the very best feelings in the world of catching up with your best friend?

I want to know it's you, I want you to know it's me.

Anyway, I hope the 49% warning, 49% hopeful, 2% random tone I plugged in to the machine worked. We've all been recently presented with a pinhole look into what will, can, should and shouldn't be. It's up to us to nudge the wave.

And though I started us in a rainy April impression of melancholy, I leave us in an incredible sunny palace of hope for May.

And while I didn't paint that first painting, I took this photo. I promise. You know me.