Copilot, go away. Please.
Attempting to remove Copilot from my computer is like Dave attempting to have HAL open the pod bay doors. I can just hear Copilot saying, “I’m sorry Pam. I’m afraid I can’t do that.”
Unlike the legendary scene in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A
Space Odyssey, my encounter with the annoying AI tool that has taken up
residence in my laptop has no reverberating soundtrack played by a symphony, nor
the cheesy special effects that look like Christmas tree lights in a cardboard box.
Instead, Copilot has an icon that keeps popping up, blinking,
no matter where I turn. It appeared with the last Windows update. No one asked
me if I wanted to cross over to the dark side, give in to the dangerous dance.
It mostly annoys me in Word, asking me if I want help
writing something. With every new line I try to type, it pops up. I’ve wasted
an afternoon trying to remove it. Delete. Uninstall. Appreciating the great
irony, I ask Copilot for help.
“I understand you’d like to uninstall me from your
Windows system. Unfortunately, as of now, uninstalling Copilot directly is not
possible.”
This is especially infuriating as I have written numerous essays,
blogs and social post rants proclaiming that AI-assisted writing is a blasphemous
insult to the industry. As a professional writer, I refuse to accept that AI
can—or should—be used to replace human-generated text. And I refuse to
participate in having my words used to train the application.
That’s wrong, very wrong. I could go on and on. But I will
spare you that rant. This one is all about removing Copilot from my
computer.
Copilot is taunting me. It refuses to leave, despite me grumbling,
fuming, trolling through settings, toggling buttons, uninstalling, rebooting,
and threatening lasting digital harm, it returns. Mocking. The icon that won’t
fade.
I open a blank Word document to start a blog on the topic. “Tell me what you are trying to say,” it prompts.
Out of pure frustration I type: Compare difficulty deleting Copilot to HAL’s famous
line 2001: A Space Odyssey.
This is what it spit back at me:
“Dave,” I type, channeling all
my frustration, “open the pod bay doors!” But there it is again, the persistent
Copilot, its cheerful icon blinking at me. “I’m sorry, Dave. I’m afraid I can’t
do that.” I imagine it saying, with a digital smirk.
Ah HA! It made a mistake. It would be HAL that is asked to
open the doors, not Dave. HAL is the computer. Dave is the astronaut. And, it
called itself a cheerful icon. I would call it an offensive, intruding icon.
And a digital smirk? No, a sneering, sneaking, conniving grimace, foretelling
doom!
Copilot blew it, as I knew it would.
And, I am proud to say I prevailed. I found how to remove it
from Word. It seems I can’t easily remove it from Windows as it is deeply
embedded. But I found where to disable it from Word, my priority. At least I think
I did.
Maybe it’s still there. Waiting to open the pod bay doors on
me, when I least expect it.
Dun. Dun. Dun.
Da Daaaaaa
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-QFj59PON4
Comments
Post a Comment