I Updated Windows; Now I'm Being Prompted to Quit Writing

Artificial Intelligence is the Sunday Issue of the Week for August 3, 2025

Screen Capture of Bender from Futurama.fandom.com.

Good morning. Happy Sunday.

I planned to write about what is worrisome about President Trump’s recent actions and words, but had trouble on where to begin. Would I start with the President inviting former NFL star Lawrence Taylor, who, in 2010, was arrested and charged with having sex with a 16-year-old? Or Trump repositioning two nuclear submarines in response to a threat from Russian President Dmitry Medevlev? And aren’t we all anxious to learn more about the $200 million ballroom Trump is generously donating to the American people?

These were tough questions, not just to choose from, but to even think about. The problem for writers, especially this one, is that listening to or reading about Trump makes me mildly nauseous. And I don’t like that.

So, as the sun was rising this morning, I fired up my computer, planning on opening a blank page and starting to write. Given the target-rich environment of today’s world, I knew I would come up with something. But then my computer prompted me to update Windows.

There is a lot of computer hacking going on, so when my computer informed me that I could update now, I decided to go for it.

About 15 minutes later, an eternity when you are watching a computer update being reported to you as 1% completions every couple of minutes, the computer was updated. I returned to my task at hand—writing something interesting about current events.

I opened a fresh MS Word page, as always. I always do a draft on Word, edit, and then paste into Substack.

Microsoft has decided to help writers with its latest update—help them quit writing. Word offered me the helping hand of CoPilot. I was offended by the offer. Although I am not asking anyone to reassure me, my writing is good enough not to resort to AI to write on Substack or anywhere else.

Fortunately, Microsoft isn’t simply hijacking efforts to write using Word, automatically rewriting whatever you write with CoPilot. You can simply ignore the prompt. I will also think twice the next time Microsoft tells me to update my computer.

After staring at my blank page for a minute, I decided that AI should be the focus of my column this morning.

Just for a second, I wondered whether AI or Trump is the bigger threat to America’s future. I also concluded that I prefer Trump in the White House over some AI Chatbot, not that the Chatbot would not be a more civil, rational, honest president. It is about going with the devil you know.

I am glad I am not a college professor reading well-written student essays and wondering if they were written by machines. I also wonder how soon we will get to a military where not only the operation of weapons, such as drones, is handled by AI, but also the decision on when and where to use them.

AI is a threat to the future of the world. Here on Substack, I read many articles that I think are machine-generated. I also take photographs and often see photos generated by AI that are so convincing that I cannot tell the distance.

Robots are taking over the world. Companies, including Microsoft, are laying off workers and replacing them with AI. It’s a good move if you are a Microsoft investor—robots don’t take vacations and can work 24 hours a day. I spoke to an airline customer service representative on the phone the other day, but I don’t know if he/she/they/or it was human.

So, the issue of the day is whether AI is already out of control and why more people are not saying, “Stop! Let’s make sure we know what we are doing.”

Thank you.

AI was not used this morning in writing this Sunday Issues, unless you count MS Word’s review (spell and grammar check) feature and Grammarly.

Thank you for reading today’s Sunday Issues. I’ll return to bashing Trump later this week. Count on that.

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