When it comes to adopting technology, I am always the last to jump on the bandwagon. When my mom and I switched from a flip phone with no internet to a smart phone in 2019, my mom got her first smart phone months before I did. Well, that was mostly because my prepaid phone plan hadn’t yet expired. Even when it did expired, somehow, my mom made me wait a whole extra month even though I was paying for my own phone.

Lately, it’s AI – artificial intelligence.

Once again, my mom has jumped on the bandwagon months ago when I was still reading every relevant article in the search engine. Instead of asking me questions I don’t know the answer to, she started to ask ChatGPT.

I tried AI and didn’t really like it. I still prefer the old-fashion way of getting the information I need. I think the reason being I don’t ever know what to ask it. I suck at commenting and asking questions, in case you don’t know, because growing up, if I pose questions to those around me aka my mom, she will either tell me to shut up, ignore me, or react in a bad way. If I want to know anything, I will usually look it up using a search engine.

Last week, I decide to give AI a real try. I say “a real try” because before then, I just asked simple questions like “what’s my zodiac sign,” or “how much can I put in my 401k for 2026.” I never really “talked” to it, it’s always been a Q & A type of thing. The only other times I used AI is either when I need it to generate an image for my story or write a 50 word excerpt for my posts because I suck at summarizing things, too.

Anyway, last week, I decided to tell Google Gemini to read a draft of my story and tell me what it thought. It praised my story but also gave me a few pointers for improvement. In the past, I would’ve ignored it but this time, I decided to give the pointers some thought.

We went back and fourth like a conversation. I would revise a paragraph, copied and pasted into the conversation to have AI read it. We went paragraph by paragraph until we were satisfied. In the end, I even let it give me a list of titles for the story and I chose “The Long Way Home” as the title.

Honestly, I thought it was a lengthy process. It was like sitting down with a nice copy-editor that will offer praises and critique on your work without the baggage of human emotion. It gave me clarity of what AI is capable of but reading the examples AI offered, I would never ask it to write any of my stories because it lacks the touch that comes from being human.

That’s not to say I won’t use it again. I liked how the story turned out and it gave me a chance to learn about my writing like areas of improvement and what I’m doing right. I hope you don’t think less about the story even though I did write every word. I also enjoyed the conversation with someone who doesn’t “react” as opposed to having a conversation with someone like my aunt or my mom who over-react to every word I say.