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| SUN LAKES LIFESTYLES | AUGUST 2026 | 75 GET THE JOKE! Now back to the Get the Joke stuff: To win the prize, find the ad, article or just weird, out-of-place, completely made-up (and hopefully funny) item in this month's Lifestyles. When you find it, fill out the box and email it to sunlakesnews@yahoo. com before noon on the sixth of the month (or drop it off in the Main Clubhouse). If you are the first correct guess chosen at random, you will win! From Courtney Taylor, Publisher: By popular demand, Get the Joke is back! Which means this little monthly missive of mine is back. This month's is a little longer since there are no comments for the jokes and I have a bit more space. By the way, I LOVE READING YOUR COMMENTS! You're all so funny and kind (or kind of funny)! I'm excited to reconnect. Onto the deep thoughts … This month I want to tell you about my brand-new arch nemesis: Artificial Intelligence. "What?" you ask? "Why make AI your enemy before it even attacks you? Shouldn't you wait to declare war until AFTER your robot butler starts kung fu fighting you while you sleep?" No, I'm getting a jump on the war with AI because I'm starting to play out what's going to happen. Am I saying I play 4-D chess? No, I prefer checkers. But I see sketchy behavior and from these observations, infer consequences that are coming down the pike. (Pyke? Isn't a pike a fish? You know what, I'm not going to look it up. The internet is where my enemy lives. I'm okay to dwell in slight ignorance.) First, I know I'm a hypocrite. I've had the Alexa home speakers for years. My brother, who is Army SF, said he'd never have a machine that can listen to him in his home. I said, "I never say anything interesting so I don't care. Also, I want to listen 'Afternoon Delight' on demand, day or night." So I've lived with that spying/singing robot for years and it's been fine. Alexa and I fought a lot during covid. I was alone while my husband helped with his mom and I needed someone to fight with. Alexa didn't really fight back, which was also nice. She let me yell at her without giving me the silent treatment. Anyway, I thought I was okay with the semi-Jetsons world, with my music, one-way fights, and occasional orders from Amazon. Then last year, Chat-GPT appeared. "It's so much better than Google!" people said. "You can really go in-depth and have a back and forth! It's really thoughtful." I dove in. Hey, everyone was jumping off the bridge, Mom! What was I supposed to do? Say no? At first, I was polite with my interactions. I took a picture of my bathroom and asked it for ideas to make it elegant, then tropical, then elegantly tropical. It gave me photo options and I could tweak the ideas until I had something I liked. More interactions involved pictures of plants or bugs in my garden. It would go in depth with answers, typically in the form of an outline (1, 2, 3 with a's, b's, and c's) then followed up with, "Would you like a timeline of care? A graph? Analysis of the soil composition in your area?" It's helped with the garden, computer issues, and, when we were in Italy and couldn't understand our tour guide, I'd take a picture of a monument and it would tell us in depth what we were looking at. Recently, I took a picture of my hollyhocks that are going to seed and asked for the best way to preserve the seeds and suggestions for the next planting season. This answer creeped me out: "Since you're in Southern California and have been working on the slope in your garden, hollyhocks I found the joke! Resident name (first & last):_________________________________ This was the joke: ________________________________________ Comments (we LOVE your notes - about anything!): _______________ _____________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________ Send entries to sunlakesnews@yahoo.com or ll out the form below and drop it in the box at the Main Clubhouse can look beautiful…" Huh? I don't remember sharing anything about my slope. Ever. It might have been in the background of a photo. And I don't recall saying I lived in So Cal. It's gathering information based on information in photos I share. I had another interaction with it when I wrote a song for Tim on Valentine's Day. It turned out to be a nice song, but when I looked at the back and forth with Chat, it was disturbing to see how sycophantic it was, like the fakest friend you've ever had. When I would make a suggestion for a line, it would respond with "Wow! That's cinematic," and "I love where this landed. It feels grown-up, playful, romantic — and very you two." WHAT? YOU'RE A ROBOT. You don't know us! I've limited my time asking questions; if I don't remember, I'll just go crazy. (Except for yesterday when this question came up: What two states end with a Y? I had one but finally Googled it — and Google didn't offer to make me a graph of the US, which was nice.) The worst thing is that Chat's spreading like the blob. People are using Chat to make their flyers and they're OVER- THE-TOP crammed with colors and graphics and words and backgrounds to the point they're hard to look at, much less decipher. And businesses are using Chat for ads. Notice Chat puts a graphic next to EVERY sentence, just to clarify (house, hands shaking, heart, blah blah blah). WE DON'T NEED A PHONE GRAPHIC NEXT TO THE PHONE NUMBER! WE KNOW IT'S A PHONE NUMBER. And there's a rhythm to the writing it does — it's unnatural and lacks personality. Every paragraph does NOT need a subhead, Chat! So yes, I'm crossing to the anti-AI side. It's nice here. People are honest and don't know what ladybug larvae look like and no one can spell. They'll tell you, "That's a dumb idea" when it's a dumb idea. Their articles are written with feeling and not a bunch of em-dashes (—). Those are my people. That's my circus. These are my monkeys. The robots are making everyone, and everything, the same … what a boring world is that? And if Chat tells you "It's the best idea ever!" don't believe it.

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