Sarah’s House

Within minutes of my decision to hand my life over to AI, ChatGPT suggested that, if able, I should go outside and play with my dog instead of work. I had asked the chatbot to make the choice for me, and it had said that I should prioritize “valuable experiences” that contribute to my “overall well-being.”

I AM WRITING to you from my brand new desk, which is actually an enormous solid oak dining table that arrived from Paris this morning. It is enormously heavy and makes a dramatic statement in the dining-area-turned-office and I've been googling how to make the back of a computer look nice (or at least tidy), as that's what you see when you first enter the room, when your dining table is now your office. (Don't worry⏤it's still fancy.) This weekend, [...]

When we talk about artificial intelligence, we rely on metaphor, as we always do when dealing with something new and unfamiliar. Metaphors are, by their nature, imperfect, but we still need to choose them carefully, because bad ones can lead us astray. For example, it’s become very common to compare powerful A.I.s to genies in fairy tales.

YOU MOST LIKELY have seen photos of this place floating around the interwebs. They are evocative, and they’ll make you want to drop everything and travel to the Amalfi Coast, if for no other reason, than to visit Felicia’s Home Restaurant, housed in the Tramonti farmhouse where your chef, Felicia, was born.

A few months ago, the writer Alice Sebold began to experience a kind of vertigo. She looked at a cup on the table, and it no longer appeared solid. Her vision fractured. Objects multiplied. Her awareness of depth shifted suddenly. Sometimes she glanced down and for a split second felt that there was no floor.

IN THE NEW living room, there is a marble fireplace with a large mantel that we’re still trying to figure how to decorate. Currently, there is a large pelargonium in a terracotta pot on the lefthand side, as well as a tiny cutting from a larger epipremnum pictum argyraeus in a pot next to it.