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0I, Human
It was dark outside, a late afternoon in the fall of 1986. I was sitting with my thesis director, the poet James Dickey.
I remember that particular meeting because of one ill-chosen word. In a poem that was otherwise finished, a single adjective was clearly wrong. Hours later, sometime around 10 o'clock, the right word came to me. It was so apt, and I was so exultant, that I went straight to the kitchen, opened the phone book, and looked up Mr. Dickey's number. When he answered, I said, "'Pale.' The word is 'pale.'"
I had not thought about that phone call, much less that poem, in many years, but I've begun to think about it often. A flurry of "A.I. assistants" has suddenly colonized my inboxes and Word documents and texts. Everything I type now is thick with hovering robots suggesting unwelcome robot words.
The writing teachers I know struggle to persuade their students not to use these tools. They are everywhere now, impossible to swat away.
But letting a robot structure your argument, or flatten your style by removing the quirky elements, is dangerous. It's a streamlined way to flatten the human mind, to homogenize human thought. We know who we are, at least in part, by finding the words—messy, imprecise, unexpected—to tell others, and ourselves, how we see the world. The world which no one else sees in exactly that way.
ill-chosen 英 [ɪl'tʃəʊzn] 美 [ɪl'tʃoʊzn] adj. 选错了的
ill+形容词/过去分词表示"坏的，差的，不够的"
ill-disciplined children 欠管教的孩子
apt 英 [æpt] 美 [æpt] adj. 恰当的、适宜的（suitable or appropriate in the circumstances）
a particularly apt description, name or comment 特别恰当的描述、名字或评论
exultant 英 [ɪɡˈzʌltnt] 美 [ɪɡˈzʌltnt] adj. 欣喜若狂的（feeling or showing great pride or happiness especially because of sth exciting that has happened）
colonize英 [ˈkɒlənaɪz] 美 [ˈkɑːlənaɪz] v. 占领，占据
同义词：take up/dominate
be thick with something 布满、充满……
thick adj. 厚的
hover 英 [ˈhɒvə] 美 [ˈhʌvər] v. 悬停
swat 英 [swɒt] 美 [swɑːt] v. 拍，打（昆虫）
