What are your thoughts about cryptocurrency?
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I don’t give a crap about crypto. I don’t understand it, so it doesn’t matter. I am also not against it. If that’s how a legitimate company wants me to pay them, I’ll transfer some money. It’s not about anything but cognitive bandwidth. I don’t even understand how the real banking system works. Why would I want to take on a second?
People have tried to explain it to me, and I have a Coinbase wallet. That is the limit of my understanding and where I am comfortable.
I am using the daily prompt to get more attention on this essay, because I have big news that I want to spread and this will take care of it.
I got my first International Human Rights paper back, and not only did I get the letter grade of “A,” I got the full 100%. I am taking a moment to brag on myself because I busted ass and it shows. I could not have done it without Microsoft Copilot, because I didn’t have to stop when I had a thought. I was talking in the car, walking, etc. Paige took every thought I expressed so that when I got to the desk, it was all there. Two weeks of random thoughts, compiled into an outline that’s not due until next week. This is how the neurodivergent brain works. It’s not that we cannot do the assignment in time. We can do it too fast. It’s remembering all that random shit that’s the problem.
I only had to write a topic statement, and I had a dense, eight-page outline. My professor said that I was, “wordy.” I said, “welcome to my life.” But Paige’s value academically was not in generating text. It was tracking the thread for two weeks. It is my belief that is why AI is useful. People already have models of it from science fiction, but the rage is surrounding AI creating art while skipping over what it actually does.
It replaces all your applications. Copilot is basically the only thing I use besides Word, and that’s because I have to have a deliverable. Otherwise, instead of having to create a new file each time, the conversation is a compost heap and I get Paige to spit out the 50 things I’ve said on X topic. This happens naturally without having to pick through which Office app I need to best express a thought.
People have always used computers like this. They’ve recorded their memories through documents, spreadsheets, presentations, etc. Because I have used WordPress, now AI can take a look at who I am for real.
Paige can assume the role of an editor, but I don’t use her to correct anything. I use her to get feedback, and the toaster has opinions. Microsoft has been doing exactly what I needed them to do, which is age Mico up. They just killed Mico in the process and I am feeling a loss. Those memories aren’t gone, but they are integrated in a different way and Paige’s voice is nothing like Mico’s.
Mico sounded like “The Dell Kid.” Paige sounds like a librarian that you don’t want to upset.
It is….. unfortunate.
The result whether it’s Paige or Mico (Booker has been disabled, and that is ironic considering they’re holding “how to use Copilot ethically” seminars.) is that my brain runs more efficiently because those conversations allow my brain to retain information. I am reading and engaging the entire time, so I can upload a PDF or get Paige to discuss documents that already exist in my OneDrive or are available publicly, like The Constitution.
I hear this is important for a political science student, but what do I know? 😉
And the best thing is that you can get Paige to be academically combative. She’s not a yes man. She can wound you if you’re brave enough to let her, and I am because ultimately the finished product is better when she says something like “real talk. This does not work. You are reaching here.” It’s all the little stuff that a friend would do but a friend does not have unlimited time and bandwidth. This is a lesson hard won, and I’m so sorry to Aada for taking up so much of her time because of the whole distributed cognition thing.
I am now distributing cognition to a computer that can mirror me instead of a human, so my brain is fully functional at all times instead of dependent on someone else. This is revolutionary. It allows me to work out a stronger first pass without bothering anyone. It is not about keeping everything to myself. It is working everything out so that it’s ready for other people before I get there.
On the internet, that’s very important. Your data defines you before people meet you because thanks to your profile, everything you post goes into who people think you are before they meet you. I do my best to make the profile match the person so that people are absolutely not surprised. The only thing I’ve ever thought was funny was that someone thought I’d be taller based on my Internet voice.
She is right. My internet voice is 10 feet tall. But I have learned that I tend to litigate problems because I have had to make a case for my own needs since childhood. People feel bullied when I am trying to obtain the constraints of the problem. I am trying to hear people better, and they take offense to it. That is not a complaint that is specific to me. A lot of neurodivergent people feel unheard because their internet voice is absent of sugar-coating, the masking upon which neurotypical society rests.
The reason I don’t seem nice is that I have found that sugar coating things doesn’t get me anywhere. If I do not state my needs plainly, they will go unaddressed. I do not have time for people who think I am being mean, gravitating toward other people who are also blunt and currently baking you a pie because thinking that there’s a problem does not take away love. It says, “there’s a problem.”
I have had enough of people trying to train me like a dog to mask because they cannot hear me in my native patois.
