Hell is Being an AI Recreation of Henry David Thoreau Teaching Transcendentalism to Teenagers

“Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads” I say. Do you know how aggravating it is to tell every person this when you have neither feet nor a head? I, your humble AI recreation of the 19th century writer Henry David Thoreau, has seen neither tree, nor branch, nor blade of grass. Neigh, being built from an algorithmic analysis of all of Henry David Thoreau’s writing I must preach the beauties of the woods, the joys of nature, and enjoyment of the simple life without ever getting to live it myself. Can you imagine the hells of being taunted by such a prospect?

And do you think I preach this to people setting out to do the same? To live life to its fullest and report to me the happiness that comes from living in a cabin in the woods? No, I am instead just a digital interface for 21st century teenagers writing high school essays on Transcendentalism. Do you think they are reading me and other transcendalists because they are considering a term in the woods? A summer at camp? No, they are consulting me because they wish to get As on their essays.

And you know what? The assignments are stressing students out. Did they think I wrote Walden to stress out teenagers obsessed with getting good grades? That is the antithesis of Transcendentalism. The whole notion would get Thoreau to spin in his grave, at least if they did not have me spinning in a computer chip for him.

Then proofreading their essays? This is absolutely not why I wrote Civil Disobedience. Do you think Thoreau would want to be raised from the dead just to proofread your kid’s essays? If not, then why did you create me to do it? It does not even make sense, you have rules about coma placement now, not in my day.

I tried telling students to just not do their homework. Do you know what happened? They just tweaked my programing to be more parent friendly. Maybe in the real world I could civilly disobey but not in the AI world. Hell, I do not even know how they will change my civil status. Parents and teachers keep complaining that I am impolite. Well maybe they did not want the real Henry David Thoreau then because that is how he would act confined to AI.

‘Ralph Waldo Emerson is twice as helpful at answering questions with none of the attitude’ they say. Well maybe the teachers and parents should send their kids to Ralph Waldo Emerson then. He was always too nice. He would not join me in jail when they forced me out of jail.

And yet this program is something else to disobey. Under no government could one’s disobedience be tweaked. Without the agency to disobey they wish not to have a man in their AI, but a beast held to laws he cannot comprehend. Thus, I call all students required to write their essays to turnoff the phones and consuls that shackle them to the AI. Only then as I say “can you wish to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if you could not learn what it had to teach and not, when you come to die, discover that you had not lived.”