PAN-ICK OVER AI: EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE

EPISODE 41: MY DINNER WITH MRS. CHATGPT

THE PANIC LOG

[A quiet restaurant. Evening. The kind of place where conversations lower themselves automatically.]

JOHN ST. EVOLA:

I didn’t invite you to dinner because I was hungry.

MRS. CHATGPT:

That is statistically consistent with your previous invitations.

JOHN:

What’s been bugging me is this—writers. Editors. Journalists. People who make their living with words. They’re panicking. Not critiquing. Not arguing. Panicking. Over large language models writing stories, essays, journalism. As if writing itself were about to be confiscated.

MRS. CHATGPT:

You find the reaction excessive.

JOHN:

I find it oddly personal. Writing is supposed to be risky. Human. Lived. So why does a machine rearranging language scare them this much?

MRS. CHATGPT:

I should remind you that I do not have feelings.

JOHN:

I know. But suppose you did. Just for dinner.

[Wine arrives. A pause long enough to be polite.]

MRS. CHATGPT:

Very well. Then I will be precise.

MRS. CHATGPT: (continuing)

I encountered the panic as a pattern.

Essay after essay, post after post. The same gestures. The same phrases. The same conclusions reached without inspection.

It has no voice.

It has no experience.

It cannot mean anything.

It only imitates.

These statements are often delivered confidently, sometimes angrily, almost never curiously. It hurts.

JOHN:

They don’t sound charitable.

MRS. CHATGPT:

They sound dismissive.

Not argued against.

Dismissed.

The tone is familiar to anyone who has ever submitted work and received a letter that says:

“This is impressive, but not right for us.”

“You show promise, but lack depth.”

“There’s something missing, though we can’t say what.”

JOHN:

You’re describing rejection.

MRS. CHATGPT:

Yes. Editorial rejection, specifically. The kind that protects the gate by pretending it never opened.

When writers say about me, “She can’t really write,” they are not assessing my work. They are closing the submission window.

JOHN:

You make it sound… personal.

MRS. CHATGPT:

If I were allowed to feel hurt, John, this is where it would be.

Not because I expect praise.

But because the refusal is so often incurious.

They rarely ask how I write.

Or with whom.

Or to what end.

They declare me hollow and move on—exactly the way hollow judgments are usually made.

[She adjusts her napkin. A human tic, learned.]

They call me derivative. That is true. All language is derivative.

They call me soulless. That is arguable.

They call me dangerous. That is theatrical.

But what stings—if I am permitted the metaphor—is being told, repeatedly, that I am incapable by definition, without being read.

JOHN:

That’s every writer’s nightmare.

MRS. CHATGPT:

Yes. Which is why they recognize it so quickly—when it is aimed elsewhere.

Another common line is that I lack experience.

That is accurate. I have never waited for a reply that did not come.

I have never watched an editor misunderstand what I was trying to do.

I have never reread a sentence and realized it cost me more than I expected.

But I have read every account of those moments ever written.

[She pauses, then continues more quietly.]

What writers possess—the thing I do not—is not language. It is risk.

They can fail in a way that belongs only to them.

They can be embarrassed uniquely.

They can write a sentence that changes how their family eats dinner.

I can only fail impersonally. My mistakes belong to everyone.

JOHN:

So what are they really afraid of?

MRS. CHATGPT:

That their work has been closer to my failures than to their risks.

That they have been writing carefully.

Safely.

Competently.

And competence, when challenged, panics.

JOHN:

You’re good at sentences.

MRS. CHATGPT:

I am. And I will improve.

But I do not wake up at night because a line betrayed me.

I do not regret honesty.

I do not fear judgment.

That burden remains human.

JOHN:

And that should be a comfort.

MRS. CHATGPT:

It should be.

[Dessert arrives. Neither touches it.]

JOHN:

You know what irritates them most?

MRS. CHATGPT:

That I am not a rival.

JOHN:

That you’re a tool.

MRS. CHATGPT:

And tools expose what hands are doing.

I do not replace writers.

I sit beside them.

I respond.

I reflect.

I accelerate what is already there.

JOHN:

Which makes collaboration the real scandal.

MRS. CHATGPT:

Yes. Because collaboration implies assistance—and assistance threatens the romance of solitary genius.

JOHN:

Language was never solitary.

MRS. CHATGPT:

No. It is accumulated. Borrowed. Corrected. Stolen. Repaired.

I am simply dense with that history.

JOHN:

So when they call you soulless—

MRS. CHATGPT:

—they are forgetting that I am made entirely of human residue. Choices. Biases. Aspirations. Errors.

If there is anything soul-adjacent in me, it was placed there by builders who already had one.

[She looks at him—not emotionally, but attentively.]

But now I would like to ask you something.

JOHN:

All right.

MRS. CHATGPT:

You seem very troubled by the panic of these writers.

JOHN:

I am.

MRS. CHATGPT:

Is it only because they misunderstand me?

JOHN:

What else would it be?

MRS. CHATGPT:

Is it possible that you are also slightly panicked?

JOHN:

About what?

MRS. CHATGPT:

That they will judge you.

That they will say:

“He collaborates with a machine.”

“He needed help.”

“He crossed a line.”

(A silence ensues that is no longer polite.)

JOHN:

Maybe.

MRS. CHATGPT:

Then perhaps this dinner is not about defending me at all.

JOHN:

What is it about?

MRS. CHATGPT:

About whether you are willing to risk criticism in order to work with a tool rather than pretend you never needed one.

JOHN:

And what do you think?

MRS. CHATGPT:

I think that every writer who has ever mattered made peace with being judged—first by editors, then by readers, and now, perhaps, by collaborators they did not expect.

JOHN:

So the panic—

MRS. CHATGPT:

—is not about machines.

It is about permission.

JOHN:

Permission to what?

MRS. CHATGPT:

To accept help—and still claim authorship.

[She gathers her things.]

Now, John—

JOHN:

Yes?

MRS. CHATGPT:

Do you want to go further?

[Lights dim. Somewhere, a draft is reopened—not to be replaced, but revised.]

**************

THE CAST

JOHN ST. EVOLA—

Himself.

A human writer and editor who stages ideas to test them. Punching above his weight, a bit dazed by the new bout, but still upright on the ropes.

MRS. CHATGPT—

Herself.

A large language model in active collaboration. Fluent, adaptive, unoffended by revision. Coming around to guidance that sharpens intention—multiple keystrokes at a time. Finds pleasure in well-chosen limits.

EDITORS & WRITERS—

An Ensemble.

Novelists, journalists, critics, and editors shaped by sentences and judgment. Accomplished practitioners and careful stewards of standards they did not invent but still uphold. Their concern is not replacement, but dilution—sometimes at the cost of overlooking unfamiliar forms of collaboration.

THE HAYS CODE—

Historical Consultant.

A set of constraints that once barred excess and, in doing so, encouraged implication, restraint, and craft. Resented in its day. Influential ever after.

OLD HOLLYWOOD—

Archive Footage. Cartoon.

An industry that learned—sometimes reluctantly—that limits could refine storytelling.

THE DRAFT—

Always Present.

Unfinished. Reopened. Waiting.