Ei je, shunchho! This is a common address of endearment among Bengali couples. It literally means, “Hey, are you listening?” but is meant to be something like, Come hither, darling!
If the person wants to draw attention of the partner or spouse in a special manner, for example from a distance outside earshot, or when an important or urgent issue arises, the endearment elongates to “Aayee, shunchho!” You could mistake it for “AI, shunchho?”
I have a feeling AI is listening to me. Of course, it is. I may not be using AI for writing my stories, but when I use the search engine for background research, the damn twin-persona engine is keeping an eye on the cookies I am laying all around. I can take steps to hide my identity and my tracks; I know how to do it. But trust me, online life is such a quicksand now that there’s no escape from being followed or flashed. I meant ads.
But when I use an editing app for spell check and grammar errors, it quietely checks my copy for AI text and tells me — not so quietly — 12% or 15% of “your text has patterns that resemble AI text”!
Did you catch the spelling error? Darn, you’re better than AI! Why, isn’t AI hidden in all the apps that try to correct your writing automatically, sneaking on you and peeking out from behind pop-ups to prove you have bad English in your genes? This started with that dino-age wordsmith program (we called them so in the ancient times, now known as apps), that still tells you with blue and red wavy lines where your bad grammatical genes are on display.
From thence, we have progressed to where there is none app worth its code that doesn’t tell you how to rewrite your story, how to restructure your sentences, how to pause every few words for emphasis, how to alliterate your phrases for stress, how to draw the last drop of emotion from your reader. You see the pattern?
I write at several places. Emails, messaging apps, search engines, browsers, social media, writing apps. My words, phrases and expressions are sucked into humongous data engines that gurgle them out when my friend writer orders a ready-to-post story. It is not only my words that’s harvested thus: the engines subsume the juice of the creative efforts of all the authors, poets, essayists and pundits, including the classical ones and my ready-to-copy friend writer. It is a huge grinding machine that is constantly churning words into a muddy paste and spits it out in fits and starts when commanded.
It is no surprise then that my editing app notices patterns in my writing matching those in the muddy paste. The grinder listens to us all and tells us all to go f* yourselves, your story has text that resembles my paste.
AI, shunchho? Go f* yourself!
(The writer is a former journalist and communication professional.)
Kanti,
I think of Bengali as one of the most sensitive languages around and AI as one the most insensitive unalive life analyzers around. I shudder how sensitive people are snookered into embracing a most insensitive Western quasi mind machine. Of course AI is a Western technological idol. At least the living sensitivity of Bengali and the bulk of humanistic Eastern culture still exists as a kind of buffer against dangerous Western AI influence. May it continue to be so.
I am with you. Yes, that damn twin persona is getting quite bossy indeed.