Skip to main content

Propeller Assist

Read this article about NaNoWriMo's position on the use of AI by aspiring writers and was quite baffled. I was not able to find the original source where the organization officially put out the statement but many have picked up on it. 

So assuming the attribution of this bizarre line of reasoning by NaNoWriMo is factual, it is not unlike me saying that I may not have the physical talent and ability of an Olympic swimmer but I still put forth some effort and learned to swim pretty late in life. Now, those minor deficiencies should not stand in the way of my dream of finishing ahead of Katie Ladeky. For powers that be, to deny me the right to fulfill my dream is them being classist and ableist. 

Let's say, my position is that notwithstanding the lack of aforementioned natural gifts, if I had been afforded the opportunity to swim and train from an early age, who knows what I might have been. As such, I need to have a chance and its only fair that I be allowed to outfit myself with a few  propeller devices when competing against Ladeky. All bodies are not equal but that should not prevent one such as myself from fulfilling the Olympic dream.

Not all brains have [sic] same abilities and not all writers function at the same level of education or proficiency in the language in which they are writing,” the organizers write in the “Ableism” section. “Some brains and ability levels require outside help or accommodations to achieve certain goals

No one should prevent a wannabe with delusions of grandeur their right to claim a spot next to Doris Lessing. They can use AI as their propeller device and see if that makes up for what is missing in the brains. This is getting to be very strange world that we live in these days.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Part Liberated Woman

An expat desi friend and I were discussing what it means to return to India when you have cobbled together a life in a foreign country no matter how flawed and imperfect. We have both spent over a decade outside India and have kids who were born abroad and have spent very little time back home. Returning "home" is something a lot of new immigrants like L and myself think about. We want very much for that to be an option because a full assimilation into our country of domicile is likely never going to happen. L has visited India more often than I have and has a much better pulse on what's going on there. For me the strongest drag force working against my desire to return home is my experience of life as a woman in India. I neither want to live that suffocatingly sheltered existence myself nor subject J to it. The freedom, independence and safety I have had in here in suburban America was not even something I knew I could expect to have in India. I never knew what it felt t

Cheese Making

I never fail to remind J that there is a time and place for everything. It is possibly the line she will remember me by when I am dead and gone given how frequently she hears it. Instead of having her breakfast she will break into a song and dance number from High School Musical well past eight on Monday morning. She will insist that I watch and applaud the performance instead of screaming at her to finish her milk and cereal. Her sense of occasion is seriously lacking but then so is mine. Consider for example, a person walks into the grocery store with the express purpose of buying detergent because they are fresh out of it and laundry is only half way done. However instead of heading straight for detergent, they wander over to the natural foods aisle and go berserk upon finding goat milk on sale for a dollar a gallon. They at once proceed to stock pile so they can turn it to huge quantities home-made feta cheese. That person would be me. It would not concern me in the least that I ha

Under Advisement

Recently a desi dude who is more acquaintance less friend called to check in on me. Those who have read this blog before might know that such calls tend to make me anxious. Depending on how far back we go, there are sets of FAQs that I brace myself to answer. The trick is to be sufficiently evasive without being downright offensive - a fine balancing act given the provocative nature of questions involved. I look at these calls as opportunities for building patience and tolerance both of which I seriously lack. Basically, they are very desirous of finding out how I am doing in my personal and professional life to be sure that they have me correctly categorized and filed for future reference. The major buckets appear to be loser, struggling, average, arrived, superstar and uncategorizable. My goal needless to say, is to be in the last bucket - the unknown, unquantifiable and therefore uninteresting entity. Their aim is to pull me into something more tangible. So anyways, the dude in ques