—don’t let him wander.

My biggest problem with generative AI is its lack of subtlety and misunderstanding of satire and irony. I am writing a short story, and a character is calling an emergency number. I shared the first scene with Grok, and it suggests that I turn the absurdity up to 11 and replace this segment with the one above:

“Okay, ma’am. Can you stay with him? I’ll dispatch an ambulance to your location.”

It is funny in its way, but I’m only pretty sure that an operator would not be injecting humour into a situation where a woman is reporting an unconscious person. Absurd doesn’t need to be Monty Python funny.

Am I being too critical?

Audio: NotebookLM Podcast discusses this issue.

More to the point, I find that many humans miss subtlety. Many people need every storyline highlighted and retraced with a bold Sharpie. Every detail needs to be explained because they can’t connect the dots. This is reflected in the cinema, television, and books of the past half-century or more, so is it fair to criticise AI for being dull when it’s at least on par with more than half the human population.

Are we asking AI to be held to a higher standard?