Imitative AI and the World's Worst Dad

Recovering from surgery during the Olympics definitely has its good points. I can flip around and watch what I want with no guilt and there is enough live material that I don’t have to watch NBC’s attempt to force every sport into a sad story. I swear, we are one Olympiad away from NBC straight up murdering an athlete’s loved one in order to have a hook. On the other hand, I have to sit through too many commercials. Including one starring Google’s imitative AI product and the world’s worst father.

The ad starts off cute enough — a kid is inspired to try and follow the footsteps of her favorite athlete. The imitative AI comes in first with the idea that it can create a training program for his daughter that would be effective and not harmful. That is bad enough — the kid is obviously in a sports program in the commercial. Maybe listen to her coaches, Dad, rather than trying to go around them? And if you are convinced that she needs extra help, I hope to God you spend more time figuring out how to personalize your little girl’s training than one imitative AI search. Because, as we all know, systems that are designed to calculate what comes next, on average, are perfect for highly technical, individualized requirements. Like athletic training. I’m sure what works for a high-level athlete is absolutely appropriate for a little girl.

And then it gets worse.

The daughter wants to write a letter to her hero. And so, Dad gets Gemini to write one for her. This is wrong on every level. First, what person is going to want the anodyne pap that Gemini spits out (and you see enough of the letter to know it is as exactly as bland as you’d believe an average calculating machine would produce) rather than the heartfelt words of a little girl? This is a fan letter, Dad, not a college entrance essay. Let your daughter show some of her adorable (of course she’s adorable. This is a commercial, after all) personality. I promise you, that is going to be remembered much more fondly than the corporate speak Gemini spews for you.

More importantly, Dad, how is your daughter ever going to learn to write if she never, you know, writes? Writing is not about the words on the paper. Writing is about learning how to think — learning how to walk though evidence, weight arguments, apply your knowledge and background to hash your way through and idea. Your daughter isn’t going to learn any of that if you substitute Gemini for your daughter’s own efforts. She won’t be able to write that college entrance essay, Dad, since you’ve decided that even a fan letter is too much learning for her. At best, she will be able to prompt an imitative AI system to produce precisely the same middle of the road, impersonal nonsense that everyone else who uses these systems produces. And when she gets to college, she won’t be able to write he way out of a paper bag.

Let’s recap: Dad has gone around his daughter’s coaches and implemented a one-size fits all training plan for his young daughter with no validation or outside consultation. He then uses imitative AI to write a fan letter to her hero instead of writing it herself, likely setting a lifetime pattern of dependency and aversion to writing and thus learning. He is teaching her to substitute the generic for the specific, the common for expertise, and to never, ever try herself to work through an argument or an idea.

Good job, Dad. Good job, Gemini!