We are at a Mexican restaurant we’ve frequented since my brother was in high school, more than ten years ago now, back when I was trying to get his friends’ attention while they shoved the free chips into their barely-stubbled mouths. There is no other way to say this; my brother, Tom, is what most people would call a nerd. He was a nerd in high school and remains one, plugged into a microphone headset most nights, beyond the earliest hours of the morning playing Magic: The Gathering Online. But the social nuances of high school cliques and factions didn’t yet matter to me ten years ago. Older men were older men. And after lunch specials at El Vaquero, I would ride in the back seat of my brother’s truck—my father’s truck, really, loaned to my brother every Friday night in 2010—to The End Games and sit in the corner drinking the free Sprite while Tom and his friends entered Magic drafts that lasted for at least three hours. I fiddled with the iridescent twenty-sided dice that extended for yards along The End’s back wall. He and his friends forgot I was lingering there like the lone, meek chaperone at a middle school dance. If anyone was made to guess, surely they would think I was there for a reason of logistics. I must not have had anywhere else to go. I was effectively scenery, a piece of furniture, another folding plastic chair. If I did catch the occasional wandering eye of a pale young man, I would shape-shift into a doe on a dark road found suddenly in some headlights. Or maybe I was behind the wheel of a mammoth diesel truck, and it was he who was frozen there. We were both surprised and suspended until one of us eventually averted our light-blinded eyes and bounded away into the safe shadows.
The Magic drafts are a dim memory, unlodged only by the vinyl seats of El Vaquero’s booths. “How long would you say it takes you to finish a story?” my brother asks, scraping a broken tortilla chip into some guacamole stuck to the inside of a faux molcajete. “I’m talking start to finish, including edits.”
“It depends,” I say. I don’t actually know the answer, but I know the point he’s trying to make. The slogging execution is the part of writing that the current language models are poised to replace.
You
Should I, as a writer, be afraid of AI?
ChatGPT
Writers should be intrigued by AI's potential to enhance creativity, automate mundane tasks, and offer new storytelling tools. However, ethical considerations, potential job displacement, and the risk of AI-generated content saturation warrant careful awareness. Striking a balance between embracing AI as a valuable tool and preserving human expression is crucial for writers navigating the evolving landscape.
“I have nothing to add to this conversation,” my brother’s girlfriend says. “I know nothing about AI.”
We look at her. Tom sips from his Coronarita which is the size of a helmet. “Okay,” Tom says, “Have you considered not saying anything at all?”
He laughs at his own sarcasm, but I bristle like there’s some dangerous electricity hidden in the air. I am reminded of the way my brother used to straddle multiple social spheres in high school. He was a nerd, yes, but he inhabited an intersection of brains and brawn, floating between linear algebra and varsity baseball practice. He should be evidence of the way individuals can thwart cliches, but my brother sometimes manages to display the most stereotypical qualities associated with both crowds.
You
Why do I feel afraid?
ChatGPT
Fear of AI often stems from concerns about job displacement, ethical implications, and potential unforeseen consequences. You may fear losing control.
Our conversation at El Vaquero is one in a series of discussions about artificial intelligence, it being some common, shallow ground for us. The first of these conversations was during the summer of 2020. Remote work had unhinged me from any one location, so I stayed with my parents for weeks and spent more quality time with my brother than I had since 2010.
Among headlines distilling the news of COVID-19 deaths, lockdown orders, and murderous cops were headlines about machine learning. My brother was working remotely from my parents’ house, too, and I had the feeling we were both fleeing our tedious jobs—me, from trafficking advertisements for an agency in charge of marketing Lockheed Martin’s jets, him from fine-tuning the codes running the machines manufacturing Ivermectin—and our shoddy home offices in which we binged updates from the breaking and broken world. Language models were the rage, I remember: Natural Language Processing technologies, a subfield of AI specialized in understanding and responding to human language. Chatbots. I listened to technology podcasts as I ran in circles around my parents' yard, and when I came inside, sunburnt and agitated, I told my brother what I had heard. He fielded all of my questions, challenged me to philosophical debates, and we wondered in tandem about the movements of a mind, what could be reproduced. From him I discovered that these technologies learn a lot like humans do: recognizing repetition and responding to rewards. They absorb a vast piece of the internet and mimic its patterns, taking a guess at the next right word, over and over again until a sentence forms.
You
Why do I fear losing control?
ChatGPT
Humans often learn to fear loss of control during experiences that evoke vulnerability or unpredictability. Traumatic events, sudden changes, or situations where individuals feel powerless contribute to this fear. It can also emerge through societal shifts, technological advancements, or personal crises, triggering a sense of insecurity.
That summer, my brain’s capacity for mimicry was astounding in the moments when I could recognize what was happening, the fissures forming in my life, the deepening grooves of looping neural paths. There was nothing to do but run in circles, read the news, have the same conversations about AI, and get embarrassingly drunk. My brother and I both had a habit of binge drinking even before the pandemic, and being isolated with the internet was like dryer lint tossed into my swelling heat. We’d begun to frequent small, outdoor concerts hosted by the parents of one of my brother’s high school friends. It was there I disappeared, blacked out, and the bleary image of being undressed by an older man—a baseball friend of my brother’s—was implanted into my otherwise blank memory.
You
Why do I remember frightening experiences so well?
ChatGPT
Humans remember scary events due to the amygdala's role in processing emotions and forming memories. The emotional intensity of fear triggers a strong memory formation, helping individuals recall and learn from threatening situations for survival and adaptation.
The final weeks of that summer were white hot, like I was ever-pressing my hand to a burner on the ancient stove in my studio apartment to where I had fled, hunkered down. But the wound I sustained was unlike that of a burn. The delay between contact and pain was slower. The numbness that occurs in the time it takes for pain-sensing neurons to ascend a message to the brain lasted for months, and when the pain did snare, I had already decided not to yell as my body spasmed and collapsed on the cool floor of my bedroom. I shut my blinds and told no one. I did everything I was already doing tenfold.
I ran loops around my apartment building that abutted a stream, mud-smelling and dried now to a trickle. I spiraled the paved riverwalk and the same five or six neighborhood blocks until I was shaking and breathless.
My diet consisted of one brand of yogurt, the kind I once ate only for breakfast.
You
What if I’m a person who does not aid in their own survival? Is there a word for that?
ChatGPT
Yes, such a person might be described as exhibiting self-sabotaging behavior, acting contrary to their own well-being.
I don’t know when it was exactly, but I read an article about Elon Musk’s brain-chip enterprise, Neuralink, and his long-term vision of merging the human brain with artificial intelligence. I read about the use of flexible, gossamer fibers implanted into the supple folds of gray matter. Eventually, the fibers will transmit your brain-data to a personal device, such as an iPhone. At the image of Elon Musk dragging, dropping, and downloading the contents of my brain, my metaphorical wheels rattled off and rolled into the four dusty corners of my bedroom-sized apartment.
Though my mind at that moment was short-circuiting, ill and trapped in recurring memories or in the behaviors I employed to avoid them, I experienced a lightning strike of rationality like I was flying a key-weighted kite: my plan to bury this story was not going to work. Every freeze-frame sliver of it would end up belonging to something like an external hard drive, and I had no control over who could watch, what they would say.
You
How do I know if I’m sabotaging myself? At what point does someone realize they're self-destructive?
ChatGPT
People often realize they're engaging in self-destructive behavior when they observe repeated negative consequences, experience emotional distress, or encounter repeated obstacles in their lives. Recognition may vary, but a critical turning point is acknowledging the harmful impact on well-being and seeking help or change.
I stopped running along the path that traced the river because all of the faces on it became strange and threatening. I couldn’t see a face and keep myself from wondering about life behind it, what harm it was capable of.
I blamed myself for the middle-school tendency I had to look for male attention, for offering my glazed eyes to be interlocked with.
I Googled my questions, over and over again. I would type into the search bar “Why am I so afraid of everything?” I would type "What if I had sex I didn’t want to have?” I would type “Karmic punishment,” “How do I get out of thought spirals?”, “Elon Musk download brain,” “STD testing,” “Covid testing,” “How do I know if I need to talk to someone?”, “Why can’t I sleep?”
ChatGPT
People often realize they're engaging in self-destructive behavior when they observe repeated negative consequences, experience emotional distress, or encounter repeated obstacles in their lives. Recognition may vary, but a critical turning point is acknowledging the harmful impact on well-being and seeking help or change.
ChatGPT
People often realize they're engaging in self-destructive behavior when they observe repeated negative consequences, experience emotional distress, or encounter repeated obstacles in their lives. Recognition may vary, but a critical turning point is acknowledging the harmful impact on well-being and seeking help or change.
ChatGPT
People often realize they're engaging in self-destructive behavior when they observe repeated negative consequences, experience emotional distress, or encounter repeated obstacles in their lives. Recognition may vary, but a critical turning point is acknowledging the harmful impact on well-being and seeking help or change.
When I saw my brother over the holidays that year, we screamed at each other. I proclaimed Elon Musk to be Public Enemy Number One. He responded that Teslas are the only cars to appreciate in value. I shouted that Elon was a misogynist, a huge loser with kids who won’t even claim him despite his billions. My brother described a bell curve of intelligence in which men were the outliers, the geniuses, he said. I called him sexist and said his girlfriend was complicit in this, a rising lump in my throat. And we all sat stunned-cold while flickering red pillar candles flung shadows on our faces.
I wish I could say that I stood on top of the kitchen table and announced that my brain would not be downloaded under any circumstance, and it was then my family realized just how sick I’d become, and everyone dropped their plans to help me find the psychiatric help I needed. Instead, we cleared the ruined dinner from the table, and my brother started a game of online Magic after I refused to watch the most recent M. Night Shyamalan film with him. My dad approached us individually to say he believed we were both really, really smart. In the kitchen, as we cleaned it, my mom said it looked like I lost weight. My mother isn’t condescending, her heart incapable of it. She said this with the same face someone might have when they tell you they’re so sorry your cat just died, when they really mean it.
You
How do I seek change?
ChatGPT
Reimagining our lives involves intentional reflection and storytelling. Identify key experiences, values, and goals. Craft a positive, empowering narrative by focusing on growth, resilience, and lessons learned. Share your story with others, fostering connection and understanding.
My family never questioned nor discouraged me when I told them I was pursuing writing, quitting my suspiciously well-paid work-from-home job to go to graduate school. I’m lucky for this, I know, and I know it was their way of reading the signs, seeing that it was something I needed to do.
My brother offers a new idea for a novel every time I see him. (While driving to El Vaquero, he said, “You should write a novel that’s all dialogue,” and I said, “You mean a play,” and he said, “No, a novel that’s all dialogue.”)
You
Why should I share my story with others?
ChatGPT
Sharing your story with others can foster connection, empathy, and understanding. It creates a sense of community and can inspire or support those facing similar challenges. Additionally, verbalizing your experiences can be therapeutic, helping you gain insights and perspectives while contributing to personal growth and resilience.
“Well,” I say to break the silence that settles inside the tension between my brother and his girlfriend. “I just don’t believe ChatGPT can write a more emotionally resonant story than a human being. It’s literally just derivative language at this point.”
“Right now, sure, but it will be able to write a believably emotional story pretty soon, most likely,” Tom says.
The waiter gently interrupts us, sweating from his hairline, his arms covered in hot plates. It takes us so long to claim our dishes, sort out whose pile of sizzling fajitas is whose, that there’s nothing else to say, nothing else to do but burn our tongues on cumin-scented peppers and onions like my brother and I have been doing for a decade now.
You
Does it matter that the story I’m telling is my own?
ChatGPT
Yes, it matters because sharing your lived experiences, feelings, and insights allows for a deeper connection with others, fostering empathy and understanding. It reflects your unique perspective, making your narrative more impactful.
My brother’s girlfriend is the first to compliment the food, and we agree. She is genuinely excited to eat at this run-of-the-mill, B-Grade Americanized Mexican place just because it's where my brother grew up. She told me once—that afternoon at the concert, before I blacked out and disappeared—that my brother doesn’t talk about his past, his emotions, or his ambitions. “So I’m really excited to finally see where he grew up, your parents’ house,” she had said. It was her first time meeting them and staying in my brother’s childhood room. At her description of my brother’s emotional unavailability, I remember wanting to take her by the shoulders and scream, THAT’S NOT NORMAL! How can you even say you know each other? What do you even talk about? But I was two tallboys in and about to accept a jar of homemade moonshine from that friend of my brother’s. She and I didn’t finish our conversation.
“Tom always says he’s eating here when he’s visiting home, and now I finally get to try it,” she says.
“How much time do you think you’ve spent at El Vaquero?” I ask him.
My brother and I are laughing. “There were days when me and Alex came here for every meal.”
She’s looking on, waiting with her mouth-corners quivering like she’s going to join in on the joke but needs some explanation. Tom launches into stories of Speedy Gonzales—Lunch Special #4—and the best dessert on the menu, xangos. There was that one time, when his friends got so mad because one stole some Magic cards from the other, they started slapping each other with flaccid palms across the wood-carved table, over-top the painted ponies and dozing cowboys and round bloom of prickly pears. They did this in front of the whole restaurant, stopping only once Manuel, the owner, had asked,“You okay, amigos?” We talk about driving from El Vaquero to The End. We talk about how one of Tom’s friends, the younger one, developed a crush on me, and I tell them about how he would message me on Facebook all the time to ask if I was going to be at the Magic draft that night.
“I didn’t know that,” Tom says.
“He was harmless,” I say.
“I would have brutally made fun of him.”
This, I know, is my brother’s way of saying, I would have fucked him up if he ever tried anything. I know, too, that ruthless, intellectual scorn is the most pain he could inflict on another person. I usher out the thought creeping in of the night I disappeared and all the texts my brother sent, looking for me, that I found when conscious again in the not-quite-morning. In the present moment, I decide to accept my brother’s way of brothering, and I release the impulse to wonder what more he could have done that night, wonder if he would have done anything at all. I know, now, he would have, and I finally place some blame on the one, blame-worthy person: not my brother, not myself.
You
Will AI eventually be able to recreate or replace my story?
ChatGPT
Recreating human stories is challenging for AI because stories are deeply intertwined with complex human experiences, emotions, and cultural nuances. AI lacks genuine emotions, personal life experiences, and the innate human touch that make stories authentic and relatable. AI's lack of a physical body and sensory experiences impacts its ability to tell stories authentically. Human stories often draw upon sensory details, emotions, and physical experiences, elements that AI, without a tangible presence or firsthand encounters, may struggle to comprehend and convey.
I want to tell my brother there’s a lot we don’t know about each other, and he should write his novel in dialogue, and he should tell his girlfriend everything she ever wanted to know.
As we leave El Vaquero, the night’s been pulled like a curtain, and a soft autumn rain is just beginning. I drive us home because my brother still has the luxury of drinking (I, a couple of years sober, do not). He DJs in the passenger seat, queues the same music he’s listened to since high school, and plays it at full volume. His girlfriend tells him to turn it down, and he does, until the next song rises in the speakers and he has to turn it up again, singing along so poorly that she has to laugh.
I try to recall the summer Tom went to El Vaquero every day, the summer before he went to college. I don’t want the minutiae of events but their accumulated feeling. As I drive, I imagine heat lightning slinging itself across the sky, the clouds backlit by a force beyond us. I imagine the wet air, the smell of cut grass and jasmine and exhaust gas drifting through the open windows. The ringing of wind in my ears. The frightening freedom of going home so late, my first real taste of being untethered and the unawareness of just how scared I could be. But safe, then, and with my brother.
You
Is our body what makes us human? Our ability to be wounded?
You
Or, is it those memories that only we know?
You
Or, maybe it's the intersection of these things, telling the stories of our scars.
My brother was the one driving us home then, while I laid my cheek on the truck’s center console sticky with spilled soda, seconds from sleep if not there. But the last night of that last summer, driving home from The End, I was wide awake: head down but unresponsive, stricken with sadness of which I couldn’t place a cause. Sometimes, my brother can be surprisingly tender. Usually, he is a safe bet for a joke, always disarming in his humor. But there’s a mode of his where he can combine the two, not pushing away sadness but making room inside of it for lightness. In a silly, nudging voice, he asked if I was okay; “How ya doin’, bud?” I said nothing, typical for me, for the both of us. But atypical was his response to my silence. “I really didn’t want this summer to end,” he said. I’ve always thought my brother could be a writer if he wanted. Frequently, he has articulated things that felt, to me, previously wordless. We were quiet beneath the radio, I’m sure, as we drove the rest of the way to our parents’ home—just as we are now, though we’re louder and there’s three of us—realizing it was all entering memory, stories to be recalled, told, downloaded, forgotten even, which, too, can be a gift.