My AI Needs Help
If it’s called Artificial Intelligence, does that mean it’s not sincere?
The editing software I use, reputedly one of the best on the market, sometimes still gets it wrong. It’s a work in progress, except I’m paying for the progress. A recent addition to its ‘style’ analysis calls out expressions of sexist language. Au courant, as Parisians women, sniffing the freshest baguettes, might utter. Parisian men have doubts about the topic.
In this instance my AI helper was suggesting ‘caveman’ would be better replaced by ‘cave dweller’ as the more “inclusive language.”
The sentence in the draft novel the software was analyzing ran: “Like a caveman he was dragging her from the taxi screaming ‘I can’t take it anymore!’ to see another MOMA opening.”
Is it possible in this instance ‘cave dweller’ is an elevation in clarity? Or if it takes two words to replace one, this is will make me famous enough to pay for the f — ing sofware? I’ve not heard of cavewomen carrying on like that, not even in cartoons.
The software doesn’t get simile; besides, the men did the hauling that far back. So an equal problem with this latest analytic, aside from the well intentioned misapplication, imploring me to use ‘more inclusive’ language also introduces anachronisms, specifically prolepses. [1]
In the above example, the altered noun might pass unobserved by all but the starving author, but let’s pretend the scene is set in merry old England: if one were to write ‘the sword bearer saved the as-yet virginal individual of to be determined inclinations towards fornication,’ instead of ‘the swordsman saved the maiden’ — unless you’re writing fantasy where said maidens are always wielding weapons and are thrilled to jump somebody’s bones to boot— it just wouldn’t work.
Context isn’t something this very humorless AI software grasps.
The software hates the word ‘waitress.’ I can hear the programmers screaming from here. To my way of thinking, it’s a fine, cocked-and-loaded descriptor: waitress = teenage girl protagonist working a low paying job struggling to make a living and hoping for better. Adding ‘chain-smoking’ effortlessly takes us into older divorcee and Edward Hopper diner imagery. Sorry, but ‘wait staff’ is no better than filler.
As for the word, prolepses, I enjoy the sound, the doubling of the ‘p’ and the extended ‘s.’ Though you don’t get to use it in too many sentences, humanoids of yet undefined sex included.
[1] “The assignment of an event, a name, etc. to a too early date; an anachronism.” extract from OED
