#307

I’m your AI grandma now

One thing I have become HYPER AWARE of at my new job is my age and how high it is relative to some (most, it must be said) of my coworkers. I can’t really do anything about my face and the length of my career, but I definitely never want to appear to be a fuddy-duddy when it comes to tech. This is what will have people rolling their eyes at you when you’re not looking. The reason I know this is that I have been the eye-roller. (To be fair I once had to teach a manager how to copy and paste without carrying over formatting. This person was younger than me; also this was in 2024. The eye rolls, I am sad to say, were warranted.)

At my previous job, the use of AI was restricted for security reasons, and we were locked into Microsoft products, which, in my humble Apple fangirl opinion, are pretty dumpy compared to other options. My point is: In many ways, I have been on the technological sidelines for about two years. Yes, I’ve kept up on my own time, but there’s a difference in reading theory and actually putting things into practice.

However. I am probably a little too attuned to this, which is why I found myself on a call awkwardly sputtering something along the lines of “Yes…Intellectually, I know what single sign-on is, it’s that this particular system says it requires SSO, and I, having experienced the same at other organizations, assumed that’s what was indicated in this case…” none of which, I am positive, made me sound like I know what I am doing in any context, let alone the very simple context of single sign-on. It didn’t help that my counterpart in the conversation is also a bit of an overexplainer. We worked it out but I hope that’s one call that won’t show up in the company notetaker platform.

And that’s another thing: what has happened in the last couple of years that suddenly everyone’s phone calls are now searchable in some browser-based nightmare factory containing every “can everybody see my screen” ever uttered? I have long been aware that nothing you do on a work computer is really private, but having my dumb face pop up when I log into the notetaker is really not appealing. AI-generated summaries of calls get sent to everyone via Slack. You really can fact-check literally anything practically the moment it’s said. On one hand it’s “radically transparent” and on the other hand, welcome to the panopticon.

I certainly used AI two jobs ago, but the way people used it day-to-day in July 2024 is very different from the way they use it in June 2026. It’s actually a head-spinning rate of acceleration and I am now playing catch-up, and I say this as someone who very liberally used Claude to prepare interview guides, create slide presentations, and update my professional website. I’m not exactly a dummy when it comes to this stuff AND YET. Remember my very early ChatGPT experiment? It seems extraordinarily quaint now.

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In non-work news, we had a very nice long weekend. The first week of a new job is always sort of a cake walk as you are still being warmly welcomed and coddled a bit as you learn the ropes, but it still felt very good to enjoy a weekend in a way I have not since January. Sorry if that makes me a capitalist drone!

We had breakfast and dinner outside every day, took some nice walks, took our first Fun Car drive of the season, and watched the dogs gambol on the lawn/roast themselves on the patio. My bigger dog is like my husband in that he is very happy to be outside in the hot sun, whereas my smaller dog is more like me in that she enjoys it for a short time and then wants to be inside or at least in the shade VERY BADLY. When she was a puppy, we walked the dogs on a double lead and she would often flop down on the cool tree lawn and allow herself to be gently dragged for several feet. When the dogs come back inside they both lay down on the kitchen floor in front of the basement door, the better to catch a draft. I call this The Great Flattening.

Anyway: we kicked off our weekend with a wine-tasting at our favorite wine shop, which is conveniently in walking distance (unless it is November through March). We were seated with some local old-timers who proceeded to dine out on 20-year-old gossip, which I have to admit I enjoyed. Most of the people they were gossiping about were famous-in-the-neighborhood types who were part of minor scandals in the early to mid-aughts, and while I knew most of the details there were definitely some bits that were entirely new to me.

At the time these events were fresh, I worked at a local magazine and I knew all of these people at least to say hello. One of the things I missed least after that magazine closed was having to have some sort of work-related conversation at every restaurant or cultural institution I entered for half a decade. I really liked going back to being a nobody and just going out to dinner, as opposed to being invited to “friends and family night” at the opening of whatever and then needing to turn that into content. It’s very easy in this scenario to blur your work and personal life, to the extent that you sort of always feel like you are working, and I am very happy these to shut my laptop and think no more about That Place And Its Problems until the next morning.

I kept my mouth shut during that gabfest, the better to let the gossip wash over me, and then on the walk home my husband and I had a very satisfying OKAY CAN WE TALK ABOUT THE PART WHERE type of conversation. It was fun to visit my old life, just for a little bit.

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My husband cooked most of the weekend so I don’t have any new recipe findings to report, but I did throw together a remarkably good “we’re out of everything” lunch on Monday: I steamed some frozen vegetable dumplings and edamame, sizzled some scallions and garlic in sesame oil, and tossed that in a pan with some noodles, sweet chili sauce, soy sauce, and more sesame oil. Chopped cashews on top. Recommend!