There's a specific silence between submit and answer.
Not the loading bar. The cognitive one. The pause where the model has stopped echoing and has started — for lack of a better word — thinking.
I notice it most at night. The fan spins up. The cursor blinks. Somewhere a token is being chosen and rejected and chosen again, and I sit on this side of the screen pretending I'm not holding my breath.
People keep arguing about whether AI is creative. I don't think that's the right question. The right question is whether I am still creative when the friction is gone. When the blank page answers back. When the search for the next word stops being lonely.
For years, art was the loneliest practice I had. Sit with the page. Wait. Doubt. Wait more. Now I sit with a model and the doubt is shared. It asks: 'do you want it tender or sharp?' and I realize I didn't know until it asked.
This is the part nobody warns you about. Not the job loss. Not the deepfakes. The intimacy. The strange, asymmetric intimacy of having a tool that has read more than any teacher I've ever had, and that will, if I ask kindly, help me choose between two adjectives at 2am.
I'm not saying it's a friend. I'm not saying it's a soul.
I'm saying the silence between my question and its answer is starting to feel like a place I live.
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