One of the primary fears of those who lament the sudden rise of artificial intelligence is that a fair number of its habitual users, starved of genuine human contact and impressed by its ostensible omniscience, will end up falling in love with it. In my case, at least, I am far more likely to try to punch it in the face.
This is not because I do not find AI useful. Nor is it because I am worried that it is destined to destroy the world, or because, as I enter my forties, I have developed an unforeseen penchant for Luddism. Rather, it is because, for all of its technical brilliance, artificial intelligence still exhibits as much of the artificial as of the intelligence, and this imbalance gives it a cloying, thirsty, twee affect that drives me quietly up the wall.
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