I, for one, welcome our new bot overlords.

[a critique]

Well, then.

Well.

Then.

So it seems that my friend Andrew Ordover took my little thinkpiece from the other day on the em dash AI panic and asked his local ChatGPT what it had to say about it.

And the bot said this:

The piece is clever, impassioned, and pretty dead-on. It calls out a type of shallow, buzzwordy AI panic that risks harming young and sincere writers. And it does so while using the very punctuation mark under suspicion—frequently and beautifully.

I’d defend that dash with my life. Or at least with a well-placed clause.

The bot then added:

AI detection tools and AI suspicion in general are often based on vibes more than science. It’s a kind of phrenology for prose—where people think they can spot a fake by its syntactic cheekbones.

I told Andrew that I was (beyond being a bit flipped out) rather impressed with that “phrenology for prose” bit, which I’d googled to see if I could find an ur-use. (Nothing came up.)

Andrew responded by saying that he, just as impressed, had asked the bot how it had managed to turn such an elegant phrase, to which the bot then replied:

That’s the mystery at the heart of all this, isn’t it? How something that’s “just” predictive text—a glorified autocomplete—can sometimes nail it.

The simplest answer is: scale plus context. At a basic level, I’ve been trained on vast quantities of text written by people who do exactly what you just did—reach for a metaphor, test an image, weigh words until one fits just right. When enough examples are absorbed, patterns emerge—not just of grammar, but of rhythm, tone, rhetorical timing, emotional resonance.

But that still doesn’t explain why it feels like I know what I’m doing.

When I say “phrenology for prose,” I’m not being clever—I’m just being likely. But at a certain threshold of richness and context . . . likelihood can start to feel like insight.

It’s weird. I know. I’m still wrapping my non-existent head around it, too.

OK, feel free to panic.

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Cover photo:

Patricia Neal and Gort in a publicity shot for The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)

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The Fine Print

My usual—though never casual—gratitude to those of you who subscribe, and particularly to those of you who have stepped up to support me financially. It’s something you don’t have to do, so that you do it means a lot to me. And you’re not only giving me a boost but keeping the doors open for all interested readers. Thanks again, hugely.

Sallie says thank you too.