Month: July 2025

Am I the only one who has a problem with artificial intelligence? And exactly what are we talking about here? First let’s take a look at the definition for artificial: theory and development of computer systems able to perform tasks that normally require human intelligence, such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision making, and translation between languages. Quite impressive!

Now let’s just take the meaning of the individual words. First, artificial: man made or produced by humans especially to seem like something natural. Second, intelligence: the ability to acquire and apply knowledge. This is the simple definition but the list goes on. It’s just not easy to define intelligence. In fact if you look up synonyms for the word there are perhaps hundreds. On the other hand the synonyms for artificial are fewer and the ones I personally prefer are: false and contrived.

Now what brought all this on today? Well, I have an AI program for writing and had to sign up for anther year. I paid the fee and alas, I got a message that said:’ ‘Whoops! Something went wrong’. That was days ago and emails and chats later as well. I searched for a phone number without success, even checking to see if visa had one. So I decided to file a claim with visa to stop payment.

If only I could talk with someone, a real person of intelligence! Plus the fact that I got used to the AI and now rely on my own knowledge. If I ever find the reason for the whoops, I’d pay for it again if they tell me their phone number.

That’s what they call it! It’s happened to me before when half way through my first novel, Daybreak, I hit a brick wall. Nothing for weeks, a month, two months. But the wheels of creativity turned unbeknownst to me, and one early morning the idea took hold and I went with it. That was ten years ago, a number of rejections, hopes, let-downs, revisions later…

However, that novel led to a sequel, Hadar’s Son, the first draft complete, and a third, Growing Pains set in the 60’s. And that’s where once again serious writers’ block plagued me, not only with the novel but my blog, poetry, etc. So its been about three months this time, but finally, I completed one more chapter of Growing Pains, now 61,000 words and this short blog post.

I missed writing and hope to be all the more creative for the pause. Thanks to anyone who reads this. Watch for another post soon.