This ongoing series holds human writing up against AI writing. First, a human crafts a short poem or prose piece. Then we craft an prompt that challenges AI to create something similar. (We use ChatGPT logged out and incognito to avoid the mirroring and its infamous tell-you-what-you-want-to-hear MO.)
Did a human or AI write Exhibit A, or Exhibit B? Find "the big reveal" at the bottom of this page.
THE PROMPT
EXHIBIT A: PROBABLY
The radiology room is painted an easy violet. On the ceiling, a plastic, meandering, darker purple swirl I can’t figure out. Aesthetics? I look down at my breast flattened between two plastic sheets, amusing in that I’ve lived a cleavageless 41 years, even when I’ve tried (pushup bras and such). The TV screen on the wall cycles through pet pictures, all with names. Mostly it’s dogs, cats, but also a bunny lounging comfortably; a horse with yellow rubber gloves affixed to its ears, one with a fat carrot in its mouth like a cigar. Can hard drugs cause breast cancer? I asked ChatGPT this morning, remembering Lenni on Facebook, bald and sans eyebrows. Ancient history for sure, but our whole relationship was heroin, so. Anyway, it’s inconclusive. On the screen, four pugs in matching winter vests and I smirk because, four pugs? People seem to fall in love with specific breeds—though surely they just fall in love with a dog—then repeat, repeat for years. “Your breasts are kind of dense,” the technician tells me, surprising because for no scientific reason I assumed they weren’t, having listened to a podcast or two about dense breast tissue and cancer. Not hanging on that word though. It’s probably just a cyst. I try to read the technician’s face, but she’s masked and unfamiliar and I have no context to compare this to—it just is. It just is.
EXHIBIT B: PROBABLY
The room is colder than the hallway, which is colder than the waiting room, which is colder than the car where I sat for five minutes before coming in, counting the seams on the steering wheel. Here there are posters about early detection and a plastic fern that has gathered a small, permanent constellation of dust. I notice these things because noticing is useful. Noticing is quiet.
The machine looks like something designed by someone who has never had a body. The technician says routine words in a careful voice. I nod as if I’ve heard them before.
I place my bag on a chair. The chair has metal legs, scuffed at the bottom like it has been moved back and forth many times by many women who are pretending not to think the same thought.
Probably it’s nothing.
I think about the word probably. It’s a soft word. A padded word. It means most of the time the story ends well, but it leaves the door open a crack.
The technician adjusts the plate, her hands practiced and neutral. She looks at the screen briefly, then away, the way people do when they’re trying not to write meaning on their faces.
I catalog details: the hum of fluorescent lights, the paper crinkling under my elbow, the faint citrus smell of cleaner.
If everything is ordinary enough, I think, then the outcome probably will be too.
Probably.
THE REVEAL (SCROLL DOWN
A: Human
B: AI (boring! dead! expected! ordinary! AmIright? Just, yuck.)
Want your writing featured in this series? Please send over a 130-word poem or prose piece to info@wordnerds.net, including your name for writer credit.
