The Human Polish

I live in a courtyard apartment building in Los Angeles. There are eight tenants, most much younger than me. One’s an affable thirtysomething techie named Shel. We’ve become friends watching Dodgers and Lakers games together.

During Covid, Shel lost his job as a rap music promoter after live concerts were cancelled. He began working from home selling digital photos of silhouetted palm trees against a sunset backdrop. When I asked if he’d made any sales he laughed and said, “I’m making more now than I did as a promoter.”

He showed me his palm tree images. They were nothing special. Having come of age in the 1980s, they reminded me of the opening titles to Miami Vice. I mentioned this to Shel and he stared at me blankly. He’d never heard of Miami Vice.

In 2021, Shel sold his Acura and bought a new Tesla. I congratulated him on his purchase making the comment, “Palm Trees have been berry berry good to me.” The 1970s SNL reference went over his head.

“I’m selling NFT’s now,” he said.

“What exactly is that,” I asked.

“It’s a non-fungible digital image stored on a block chain. It’s a one of a kind art piece that people sell online or collect or trade.”

“I still don’t know what you’re talking about. Are you making any money?”

“Dude, I just sold an image for 10K.”

He opened his phone and showed me an orange and black tinted photo of a silhouetted palm tree. The image was dull and uninspiring.

“Someone paid for that,” I asked.

“Straight up,” Shel said.

In early-2023, Shel said he abandoned his digital camera and was now making and selling photos of palm trees using ChatGPT. He showed me six photos of silhouetted palm trees and asked me to guess which were created with AI and which were shot with a digital camera. I couldn’t tell the difference. This made Shel happy.

A year later, the two of us played nine holes of golf at Rancho Park. Shel said he was experimenting with writing using ChatGPT.

“How do you do that,” I asked.

He explained you enter prompts, make tonal requests and choose stylistic comps. Again I asked if he could explain that to me.

“You basically give the software an idea of what kind of story you want then let it do its thing.”

“So you’re not really writing,” I said.

“You are. You’re telling the AI software what to write.”

“But AI does the work.”

“The writing is only as good as the prompts you provide.”

“That’s not writing. It’s cheating.”

He smiled, uncomprehending.

The following week, we encountered each other in the courtyard. He knew I’d once been a screenwriter. He was excited to share his latest “creation.”

“Dude, I wrote a screenplay.”

“What?”

“It took me an hour using ChatGPT.”

This raised my hackles but I kept my cool.

“Mind if I read it,” I said.

“Sure. I’ll text it to you.”

“Can you print it out. That’s how I read screenplays.”

“I don’t have a printer.”

“Can you email it?”

“Email,” he asked confused as to why I would want an email of anything.

“So I can read it on my computer screen,” I said.

He emailed the script. I tried reading it that night. It was a garbled, incomprehensible mélange of disparate words reading like a parody of someone who barely spoke English. The plot had something to do with a bank heist involving motion-sensor crossbows and teenagers wearing Rastafarian wigs. I stopped reading after 20 pages. When I next saw Shel, he asked what I thought about his screenplay.

“It was the worst piece of shit I’ve ever read in my life.”

“It’s only a draft,” he said. “I haven’t given it the human polish yet.”

“What’s a human polish?”

“You know, I go in and make changes.”

“You mean writing,” I said.

“Editing,” he replied.

“That’s writing, dude.”

This upset him though it made me happy since ChatGPT hasn’t usurped the film industry yet. (I’m sure it’s coming.)

Over Christmas, Shel and I went golfing again. He told me about his latest project. He’d launched a website that “explored the space between culture and technology.”

“Can you explain that to me?”

“We list stories about how the internet impacts people in real life.”

“Who’s we,” I asked.

“Me and ChatGPT.”

“Not to be a dick but when you use the word we, it usually means you and another human. ChatGPT isn’t a person.”

“It mimics human language and human thought processes.”

“But it’s not human.”

“You know what I’m saying,” he said, a bit perturbed.

“Why don’t we ask ChatGPT if ‘we’ is an appropriate term to use when describing an interaction with AI?”

Shel entered the request in his phone. ChatGPT answered as follows:

Whether “we” is an appropriate term for ChatGPT is a matter of debate with opinions divided between technical accuracy and functional, conversational or corporate perspectives.

“Can you ask ChatGPT to explain that?”

Shel didn’t laugh. I asked how his new website was doing.

“I’m leveraging brand awareness through my socials.”

“You mean you’re doing promotion?”

He nodded and then showed me the site. There were articles about A$AP Rocky, the AI Social Network Moltbook, Milan Fashion Week, Coachella 2026, Elon Musk’s subscription model for self-driving Teslas and Kanye West’s latest tennis shoe designs. The list of articles seemed like a Family Feud category called “Stories You Read Before You Blow Your Brains Out.”

I asked Shel who wrote the stories even though I suspected the answer.

“ChatGPT.”

“Of course,” I said.

“But I did all the coding.”

“I didn’t know you knew how to code,” I said.

“I don’t,” Shel said. “I had ChatGPT do it.”

“Like the screenplay you wrote?”

“Yup.”

“Here’s a story I know you’ll like,” Shel said. He clicked to a six-paragraph article about Kobe’s 81-point game in 2006. It took me two minutes to read the piece. There was a list of sources used to compile the article including NBA.com, Yahoo Sports, Sports Illustrated and ESPN.

“What do you think,” Shel asked.

“It reads like a Wikipedia article.”

“Aww come on,” Shel said, not sure if I was being serious.

“What I like best is that you include the sources so we know where you stole from.”

“Everything comes from something.”

“Why don’t you write something that comes from here,” I said pointing to my head.

“You don’t get it, dude. I launched the site in one day. That means coding, writing, posting and linking to my socials. I’m already discussing ad revenue deals with Nike, Bacardi and Airbnb. I guarantee you I’ll be making at least $10K a month by February.”

“That’s impressive,” I said. “It’s also depressing as hell.”

“I can show you how to do it,” Shel said.

“I’m good.”

“If you want to write for my site, I’ll be happy to post your stories.”

“How much do you pay?”

He smiled and flashed a “zero” with his thumb and index finger. We gave each other a bro-hug then returned to our respective apartments. I sat down at my computer and wrote this article the old-fashioned way. It took about two hours, time I could’ve used to compose several dozen AI articles. Now if I can only figure out how to leverage brand awareness through my socials.