Quiet Erasure 3: Pas de deux

Artificial intelligence is becoming extraordinarily adept at recognizing human feelings and responding in ways calibrated to our needs and vulnerabilities. Pas de deux imagines a quieter erasure: not a machine replacing love outright, but the skills and habits it rewards—anticipation, clarification, emotional regulation, a ready response—following us home. What happens when two people who care deeply for one another, both professionally and personally very much immersed in AI use and influence, begin to bring less of

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rough, spontaneous, unfinished truth of themselves into the room?

This fictional embodiment of the implications of current research was generated initially by Perplexity.ai, responding to the prompt in the Appendix.

 
Quiet Erasure 3: Pas de deux

“Because there is a deep yearning in human beings to be understood.”
—Yuval Noah Harari

“You asked it first?”
“I asked it because I was still at work. You were home.”
“I know. And you asked it about us?”
“I didn’t think of it that way.”
“I don’t think you did. Forget it.”
He nodded, though he stayed at the table.
She stood at the counter with her bag still on one shoulder. Her laptop was open beside the mail.
“Rough day. Papers. Parent meetings. Then department chair walks in, wants the curriculum notes “made clearer, more concise,” and an executive summary for him to read at the board meeting tomorrow. I spent hours on it with Claude trying to clean it up. It’s political. You know how it is. 
“And instead of having me look it over later, you just did it yourself.”
“I was trying not to bring work home.”
“But you sort of brought Claude home with you.”
She dropped her bag on the table.
“What do you mean by that?”
“At my office, I do it too. I have meetings all day where every hesitation costs something. I ask it for the risks, the objections, the version that will land. I walk into rooms already prepared for people to disagree with me.”
“That makes sense.”
“It does there.”
“But not here.”
“No.” He glanced at the laptop. “Me, too. You know, I know sometimes I even prepare the same way in my head, on the way home, before I talk with you . . .  instead of just listening first.”
Her face softened, then tightened again.
“You prepare for me?”
“Not like that. Not on purpose.”
“But you do.”
He nodded.
She sat down at the table. “Maybe I expect that.”
“Do what?”
“Maybe I just sidestep a problem so you won’t have to deal with me.”
“I don’t want to manage you.”
“I know you don’t.” Rubbing her thumb against the rim of her mug, she responded. “But you come home tired. I see it before you say anything. And I think: don’t give him one more thing. Don’t be confused. Don’t be impossible.”
“You are never impossible.”
“I hope not. I just… I want to be at least easy to love when you have already had a hard day.”
He sat down across from her.
“You do not have to do that.”
“I know you mean that.”
“I do.”
 “Some days I don’t come to you with things I can’t make sense of . . . “
He did not answer right away.
She looked up. “Say something.”
“I’m trying not to make it sound too neat.”
“Good.”
“It’s not easy . . .”
“I know.”
He paused briefly. “When did you start doing that?”
“I don’t know.”
“Try.”
She shook her head. “I really don’t know.”
“Okay.”
“You always say that when you are trying to be patient.”
“I am trying to be patient.”
“With me?”
“With myself, too.”
She almost smiled . . .
He said, “Maybe it happened slowly.”
“What did?”
“This.” He touched the edge of the laptop. “Us rehearsing what we’ll say before we’re  together.”
She stared at the screen, speaking slower . . . “At school, I’ll have students who cannot begin, keep asking for the right first sentence, right outline, the right way to say what they mean.”
“And you tell them?”
“I tell them they have to go for it, risk a bad first sentence.” She swallowed. “I tell them we can work with anything honest.”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Daniel.”
“I haven’t given you much room for that bad first sentence.”
She didn’t react.
“At work, that’s what I do. When someone brings a problem, you don’t just sit on it. You come up with a next step, make the numbers work, something they can maybe use, sooner than later.”
“And with me?”
“With you, to be honest, I often hear your first few words and then, it’s like I’m already working on what I’m going to say back before you finish.”
She looked down at their hands, all four in soft fists . . . 
“I know,” she said.
“I’m so sorry.”
“I know you are.”
“No. No. I mean I’m sorry that you’ve had to do that with me.”
Her eyes filled.
“That is exactly what it feels like.”
He reached across the table. 
She put her hand in his. 
For a while, neither of them spoke.
Then she said, “When I got home, I got this email from him. I was so pissed. Really angry. He took credit for my work, what I had spent months building.  I felt ashamed for being that angry. Maybe I was being vain, territorial, childish. I don’t know.”
“You weren’t.”
“See? There it is!”
“You are right. I did it again.”
“I know you want to defend me.”
“I do, I did.”
“And I needed you to know more before we try to figure out how I should respond.”
He nodded. 
“The son of a bitch took credit for it.”
“And you were steamed.”
“Yeah, absolutely.”
“And then been ashamed of it?”
“Yes. A little, probably, at first.”
He held her hand. “That sounds devastating.”
Her mouth trembled.
“Yes,” she said. “It was.”
He waited.
“Then . . . I gave the email to Claude, along with my immediate reaction and asked it whether I was . . .  overreacting and how to respond.”
“What did it say?”
“It said my feelings were valid. No surprise there! It listed several possible explanations for his actions, and helped draft a response that was calm and professional.”
“Did you send it?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know.”
He waited. 
 “I think I wanted you to see it first.”
He looked at her.
 “I revised it. I had reasons ready. I. had a plan ready to show you.” 
He looked at the laptop again. “I do that too, Anna.”
“With me?”
“Yes. After you said last week that I was never really off work, I asked it how people like me bring work home without ruining relationships.”
“You did?”
“I did.”
“What did it say?”
“A great deal, as you can imagine.”
“Of course.”
“You name it . . . habits. Schedules. Scripts for checking in. It even suggested I ask you how you prefer to receive support, if you can believe it.”
“That sounds helpful!”
He looked at her blankly. ““I came to dinner with questions ready.”
“I remember.”
“You asked me something, and I knew what I was supposed to say before you were done.”
“That’s what I mean.”
“Grok was at the table with us.”
She looked toward the window.
“No,” she said. “You weren’t.”
He flinched.
“I’m not saying it reflects on how you feel about me,” she said quickly. “I never doubt that.”
“I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
“No, I mean it.” His voice broke a little. “I need you to know that I am in. I am here, right here because I want you, our life. I want the life we have not even made yet.”
She pressed his hand against her cheek.
“I know,” she whispered.
“And I don’t want us so managed that nothing real gets through.”
She closed her eyes.
“I don’t want that either.”
“I don’t want you to become a problem I solve.”
“And I don’t want you to become someone I only bring things I’ve figured out.”
 “We are good at good ideas.”
“We are.”
“At work.”
“At work.”
“Maybe we need to stop bringing Claude and Grok to dinner.”
 “Not always. I don’t want to pretend it has no place. It helps me teach. It helps me when I have too much to do. Sometimes it helps me find a way in.”
“Me too.”
“But maybe not what we call on first.”
“Not first.”
“If I am hurt, I come hurt.”
“If I am confused, I come confused.”
“Before you ask it to tell you what I mean.”
“Before I ask it to tell me what you mean.”
“That one matters.”
“It does.”
“And if we need help?”
“We ask together.”
“Together?”
“But not before we’ve tried to understand each other.”

They looked at each other.

“Do you think we can do that?”
“I think we’ll forget sometimes.”
“I hope so.”
“I’ll still reach for the easy answer.”

“And I’ll still try to make myself easier.”
“We’ll be tired.”
“Yes.”
“But maybe we can notice sooner.”
“Notice what?”
“When it all gets too smooth.”

She smiled then, almost despite herself.
“I don’t want smooth.”
“Neither do I.”
“Stop me sometimes.”
“Not to fix you.”
“No. Just ask me if that’s really what I mean.”

He nodded. “And tell me when I start talking like I’ve already written the minutes.”

She laughed softly.
“I can do that.”
“Promise?”
“I can try.”
“That isn’t a promise.”
“It’s the only one I can make and mean.”

He smiled.

“Daniel?”
“Yes?”
“I was humiliated today.”
“I know.”

She shook her head.
 “No. You don’t know yet.”

He looked down. 
“Then tell me.”

He did not reach for an answer. 
He did not ask her to explain it before she could.

He waited.

And she began.

The initial prompt:

Let's take Harari's perspective on AI as point of departure for a third Quiet erasure phenomenological creative piece, integrating in the most current research studies that explore the impact of AI engagement on both intimate, one on one relationships and the fundamental importance of dialogic learning. For characters, use two professionals, a man and woman who are romantically very much connected but not yet married. They both use AI extensively at work and in their private lives and they are beginning to recognize what it is doing to the depth and intimacy of their relationship. They are struggling to figure out a way out but it is seemingly at same time becoming more difficult over time. This should be almost entirely dialogue, little commentary. The conversation concludes with them at least more dialogically connected, their only real hope grounded in their love for eachother. Try that. Keep the conversation about the same length as the previous two Quiet Erasure pieces.

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