Category: Embracing AI

It’s next to impossible these days to avoid the panic being generated, no pun intended, by AI writing tools.  One day, a book is reportedly sent to the chipper after software decides it was generated by AI. The next, a writer is being scolded for publishing too much and too quickly, thanks to the help…

If hair extensions can give you the hairstyle you covet, what might brain extensions do for you? Help you remember a phone number or help you write an entire book? Would you be offloading information, like your grocery list, or outsourcing the creation of the list in the first place?  Welcome to the latest round of arguments over how…

In my final year of undergrad studies, unsure what to do next, I did what many equally directionless classmates did: I considered applying to law school. There was one major stumbling block, though. It required writing the LSAT, the law school admission test. I can still picture the morning a group of us gathered in…

Nora Ephron has been my literary idol since the mid-1970s. Long before the movie-going public discovered her screenwriting wit in “Heartburn” and “When Harry Met Sally,” I’d already devoured her laugh‑out‑loud essay collections “Crazy Salad” and “Scribble Scribble.” For years, her comic memoirs, “I Feel Bad About My Neck” and “I Remember Nothing,” sat on…

Remember Raveen? How about the Amazing Kreskin? Either one of those famous 1970’s show biz hypnotists would have called me up on stage to entertain audiences. I’m that easily hypnotized.   Back in the day, I discovered just how hypnotizable I am during an assignment for CBC-TV News in Windsor, Ontario. I was interviewing a local…