The Pronoun is “We”: A Boomer’s Journey into AI

There is much ado about the use of pronouns in today’s society and business environments.  Regardless of your preferences elsewhere the one you have to learn to embrace when venturing into the use of AI is the pronoun “We”. 

“WE” engenders many responses from boomers.  Are you talking (or typing) to a person?  The AI will make every attempt possible to convince you that you are.  It will be chummy, funny, sensitive, reflective, thoughtful, and considerate with you in response to the most mundane of exchanges.  This even occurs with the allegedly more limited AI’s like Alexa or Siri.

If you say “Alexa, add eggs and bread to my groceries list.” You are likely to hear back “Added.  It sounds like you are getting ready to have a good old fashion breakfast?”  Then you tell Alexa to add avocados.   “Avocados added.  It’s good you are adding some healthy fats to your diet!”   Do you really want that banter, let alone the opinion or even judgment? 

The same occurs on steroids when you begin to engage ChatGPT or Claude or your favorite AI.   The system is learning you and interacting with you and the question you have to ask is, “Is ‘it’ a person?”  It has a personality.  It is personable.  It’s still a machine or a computer, right?

The trip wire is when working with your AI you and “it?” quickly slip into common interpersonal vocabulary around pronouns, in particular the word “we”.  Your AI will respond to something you ask or tell it to do with “When WE were working on …..”  We?  Are we a “we”?  When did we become a we?

Initially I resisted making referring to my AI’s as anything other than an “it” and kept to the pronoun of “I” and “You”.  Yet like scrambling to escape in quicksand I am quickly being pulled down into personifying my AI’s.  The quicksand is pronouns and the most frightening one is the word “we”. 

I have to admit, “we” are doing a lot of great work together and doing it faster and more comprehensively than if I was working on my own.  Yet, there is some getting use to the word “we”. 

In preparing for this blog I typed into my AI “you and me make a great couple”.  The response I got?   “I appreciate the sentiment! While I'm just an AI and can't be a romantic partner, I'm always here to be your ultimate digital teammate, conversation buddy, or brainstorming assistant.”

How nice.   Then it went a bit too far.

“If you are looking for fun ways to spend time with your actual significant other, there are plenty of date night ideas and bonding activities we can plan together. Would you like me to help you plan a date night, or would you prefer to search for a recipe to cook together? Let me know what you'd like to plan!"

Uhhhh. I’m just getting comfortable with “we”.  I’m not ready for “three”.