The one where I go head-to-head against A.I.

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The one where I go head-to-head against A.I.<br>The most unnecessary competition ever.

Pablo RIvera<br>Jun 17, 2026

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Gemini generated but the prompt was 100% corn-fed organically thought up by yours truly. I’m the guy on the left, in case you are wondering if my head is square.<br>I heard David Sedaris say in some TV show he had used ChatGPT to write something in his style. Or maybe I heard someone gave him something ChatGPT wrote in his style. Either way, he rewrote the piece in his own words.1 Well, now I’m not sure, but the point of this introduction is to tell you the premise of the whole article and to bring David Sedaris into the picture for the sake of SEO. I asked Gemini, Google’s A.I., to write something in my voice and style. Gemini is one of the tools I use to fix spelling and grammar issues in my articles. It acts as a super spell-checker who really enjoys hyphenating words just because. Not to mention its use of the em dash, something I never learned to use, and will probably never will. English is my second language, next to Spanish, or specifically Puerto Rican Spanish. We have our own version of Spanish with the speed set to warp. Not even Spaniards can keep up with our speed. That is why Gemini became a very useful tool. It allows me to write well without really having the ability to do so.<br>OK, back to the point of this piece. I wrote and submitted the prompt below (yes, it has some obvious spelling mistakes I only noticed afterwards):

“Give my past writing work, I want you to write something in my voice. You choose the topic, you write the jokes. Just write it in my exact style. It needs to read like I wrote it. Ensure the length of the article is similar to the length of my articles. You only get one chance to do this, so make sure to do it right. Ensure you match my style, flow, and voice. Ensure there are no spelling or grammatical errors.”<br>For the sake of transparency I will also share that I am not a paying member of the Gemini club. I use the free version and am careful to not waste the daily “free” limits for the more powerful features. Meaning I used the Gemini 3.1 Pro in Extended Thinking mode. That name reminds me of the name of older Japanese cars like the Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution III GSR. What’s in a name? At this point, I’m too old to bother asking.<br>Gemini went ahead and “thought” for a while, and produced an article. It did not provide a title for the article, so I asked for it to provide one as the only follow up prompt. Now, onto the Gemini-generated article:

The Dumb Appliance Manifesto

It finally happened. After six years of faithful service, my toaster gave up the ghost. It didn’t go out with a dramatic spark or a cloud of smoke—it just quietly decided that room-temperature bread was the absolute best it could do.<br>Now, you need to understand something about me. I spend my days deep in the trenches of enterprise IT. I configure active directories, I wrestle with network protocols, and I spend an inordinate amount of time explaining why turning it off and on again is not just a joke, but a foundational pillar of modern technology. My brain is constantly swimming in digital complexity.<br>So, when I clock out, I want my physical environment to be as blissfully ignorant of the internet as humanly possible. I want “dumb” objects. I want things that do one job, do it well, and absolutely never ask me for my Wi-Fi password.<br>Naturally, I went to the store to buy a replacement. I anticipated a five-minute errand. I walk in, I find a metal box with slots, I pay the man, I leave.<br>Instead, I was confronted by a wall of sleek, touchscreen-enabled, Wi-Fi-connected breakfast hubs.<br>A very eager salesperson—let’s call him Kevin—approached me. Kevin looked like he had never eaten a carbohydrate in his life, which immediately made me suspicious of his toaster recommendations.<br>“Are you looking to upgrade your morning routine?” Kevin asked, gesturing to a machine that looked like it belonged on the bridge of the Starship Enterprise. “This model has an integrated app. It sends a push notification to your phone when your bagel is done.”<br>I stared at him. “Kevin,” I said gently. “If I am making a bagel, I am standing two feet away, actively monitoring the situation. I am committed to the bagel. I don’t need a push notification. I just need it to not be raw dough, and ideally, not be charcoal.”<br>Kevin was undeterred. “But what if you’re in the other room? You can adjust the browning level via Bluetooth.”<br>“If I am in the other room while the toaster is running, I have abandoned my breakfast post,” I explained. “And frankly, I don’t want my toaster communicating with my phone. My phone already knows too much. It knows how many times I snooze my alarm. It doesn’t need to track my exact preferred shade of pan de agua.”<br>This is the absurdity of the modern age. We have engineered ourselves into a corner where even the...