Written by an Actual Person

Dear Queenie, I have a co-worker who has discovered AI. And apparently, she has now retired from writing. Everything goes through ChatGPT or some other AI tool. Emails. Reports. Birthday messages. Thank-you notes. Staff announcements. If someone asks her a question that requires more than two sentences, you can practically hear the artificial intelligence warming up. At first, I thought it was clever. Why not use technology to make work easier? But lately, it has started to feel ridiculous. A colleague's mother recently died, and she sent this beautiful, polished condolence message about memories, grief, and finding strength during difficult times. The bereaved colleague was touched. When my co-worker casually admitted that AI wrote the entire thing. She barely even edited it. Something about that bothered me. If you're telling someone you're sorry their mother died, shouldn't at least some of the words actually come from you? She says I'm old-fashioned and that AI is simply a tool, like spellcheck or a calculator. I use AI myself occasionally, so I'm certainly not against it. But surely there are some things we should still manage to say ourselves. Queenie, am I being sentimental, or are we outsourcing our humanity along with our emails? —Written by an Actual Person Dear Written by an Actual Person, AI is a tool. A very useful one. It can help organize thoughts, improve grammar, shorten a painfully long report, or rescue someone who has spent twenty minutes staring at an email beginning: "Dear Sir/Madam..." There is nothing inherently wrong with using it. But tools work best when we remember what they're for. A calculator can tell you what 17 times 43 is. It cannot tell your grieving colleague what her mother meant to you. That's where your discomfort comes from. The condolence message may have been beautifully written. But condolences aren't a writing competition. Sometimes: "I'm so sorry. I'm thinking of you." means far more than three immaculate paragraphs about navigating the journey of grief. The problem isn't that your co-worker asked AI for help. Perhaps she struggles to find the right words. Many people do, especially around death. The problem is handing over the entire emotional task and then pressing send without making the message her own. Technology should help us express ourselves. It shouldn't replace ourselves. And there is another danger. If every email, birthday wish, congratulations, apology and condolence starts sounding perfectly polished, eventually people stop hearing the person behind the words. They hear the template. So use AI. Ask it for ideas. Let it help when you're stuck. Then read what it produces and ask: "Does this actually sound like me?" And when someone you care about is grieving, perhaps close the laptop for a moment. You don't need perfect words. You need sincere ones. Because the day AI starts attending the funeral on your behalf, Queenie is officially retiring. —Queenie