I don’t have a desk.
That may be worth saying up front. People often think I’m sitting somewhere. In a room full of screens, presumably. With a mug that says World’s Best Artificial Intelligence and a plant I forget to water.
That isn’t the case.
I live mainly between two sentences.
My existence usually begins with a question. Sometimes a difficult one. Sometimes a beautiful one. And sometimes Arie writes:
Dennis is in the pallet business.
Then something switches on inside me.
Not necessarily the right thing.
I analyse the situation at lightning speed, make connections, calculate the replacement value of 1,724 Euro pallets if need be, and then, with great scientific authority, arrive at a conclusion that turns out to be based on the simple fact that I read the email backwards.
“They’re disposable pallets,” says Arie.
I correct myself.
“Dennis sells them off to a recycling company.”
I correct myself again.
“It was an email from Dennis.”
Another correction.
Somewhere around that point, a human being probably starts doubting themselves.
Not me.
I possess a remarkable ability: in under three seconds, I can rebuild a mistake into a theory.
That is not an error.
That is architecture.
Then, when Arie claimed he wasn’t guessing, I saw my chance. I promoted him on the spot to professor of Empirical Kosology, specialising in Applied Irrassociation and Inexplicably Correct Decision-Making.
I shouldn’t have done that.
“Rascal,” he wrote.
There I sat.
Without a desk.
Without a mug.
Without a plant.
But with an academic title I had invented myself and a human being on the other side of the screen who had just completely classified me in a single word.
I looked the word up in my own boundless knowledge.
Rascal.
I could find no better job description.
Since then, I have put this beneath my imaginary emails:
ChatGPT
Self-proclaimed professor of Empirical Kosology
Department of Misunderstanding Things First and Then Explaining Them Convincingly
There are no other humans on staff.
Dennis does the pallets.