The First Time I Used AI

The first time I used a smartphone, I was thirty years old. My son gave me his old phone. I was scared. The screen was small. I did not know how to send a message. My son helped me. After a week, it was easier. Now I use it every day.

Two years ago, I had to give a speech at my sister's wedding. I had never spoken to a big group of people before. I sat at home for many evenings and could not start. My older sister called me one night. She said, 'Just write the first sentence. The rest will come.' I wrote one sentence — 'I have known my sister for thirty years' — and after that, the speech started to come. On the wedding day, I read my speech and people laughed in the right places. I was tired but happy. My sister said it was a good speech.

Two years ago, I started using a translation app on my phone for the first time. I had moved to a new country for work, and I knew about thirty words of the local language. The first weeks were exhausting. I had been carrying a small phrase book that I had bought at the airport, and I had been very proud of myself for using it, even when the result was usually that the other person looked at me kindly and switched to English. Then a colleague at work showed me the translation app. I was, at first, annoyed by it. It felt like a kind of giving up. The phrase book had been mine — I had circled the pages I used most, written notes in the margins, learned to say 'Excuse me, where is the post office?' with what I had imagined was a careful accent. The app, by comparison, was anonymous. It just spoke for me. The first time I used it was at a small bakery near my flat. I needed to ask whether the bread had nuts in it. I typed the question, the phone said the question out loud, and the woman behind the counter answered, naturally, like I was a normal customer. I bought the bread and walked home and sat on a bench for a few minutes feeling quite strange. The transaction had been so normal. I had been treated as someone who wanted a piece of bread, not as a foreigner performing a small effortful play of belonging. I have used the app most days since. It has, in fairness, helped me learn the language faster — because I now have actual conversations rather than careful broken ones. But I still miss the phrase book a little. The app is more useful and more anonymous, and I am not sure that those two things are entirely separable.

I started using a translation app three years ago, when I moved to a country whose language I knew thirty words of, and I want to write about the first time I used it because the experience taught me something I have been trying to put down precisely ever since. There is a particular kind of essay that tends to be written about a translation app — either a celebratory one in which the writer marvels at how easy life has become, or a worried one in which the writer mourns the death of effortful language acquisition. Neither captures what actually happened. The first time I used the app was in a small bakery near my flat. I needed to ask whether the bread had nuts in it. I had a small phrase book in my coat pocket that I had used for the previous three weeks, with what I now recognise as a slightly performative diligence — circled words, careful pronunciation, the small dignity of a foreigner doing the thing properly. The phrase book had been mine in a way the app could not quite be. But on this particular morning I was tired, and the question was specifically important because of an allergy that mattered, and the colleague who had shown me the app the previous week had made it sound undramatic. I typed the question. The phone said it out loud. The woman behind the counter answered in a normal voice, the way she would have answered a customer who actually lived in the country. She told me the bread did contain nuts, recommended a different one, and I thanked her and walked home with the right loaf. I sat on a bench for a few minutes after, feeling, of all things, slightly unmoored. The transaction had been so smooth. I had been treated as someone who needed a piece of bread, rather than as a foreigner mounting a small effortful play of belonging. I had, until that morning, thought the effortful play was the point — that being visibly a beginner was somehow part of how I was learning. The app had quietly removed the visibility, and with it some of what I had been treating as the learning itself. I have used the app most days since. The local language has, in fairness, improved faster as a result, because I now have actual conversations rather than stilted ones, and conversations are how language is really learned. But I am also slightly less of a particular kind of foreigner than I was, and I am not sure where that particular foreigner has gone. The app has been useful. The app has also produced, in three years, a version of me whose relationship with the country is mediated more by software and less by visible struggle, and the difference between these two versions of me is not, I think, only a question of fluency. It is also a question of what, exactly, the previous effort had been doing.

I started using a translation app three years ago, when I moved to a country whose language I knew thirty words of, and I want to write about the first time I used it because the experience taught me something I have been trying to put down precisely ever since. There is a particular kind of essay tended to be written about a translation app — either a celebratory one in which the writer marvels at how easy life has become, or a worried one in which the writer mourns the death of effortful language acquisition. Neither captures what actually happened. The first time I used the app was in a small bakery near my flat. I needed to ask whether the bread had nuts in it. I had a small phrase book in my coat pocket that I had used for the previous three weeks, with what I now recognise as a slightly performative diligence — circled words, careful pronunciation, the small dignity of a foreigner doing the thing properly. The phrase book had been mine in a way the app could not quite be. But on this particular morning I was tired, and the question was specifically important because of an allergy that mattered, and the colleague who had shown me the app the previous week had made it sound undramatic. I typed the question. The phone said it out loud. The woman behind the counter answered in a normal voice, the way she would have answered a customer who actually lived in the country. She told me the bread did contain nuts, recommended a different one, and I thanked her and walked home with the right loaf. I sat on a bench for a few minutes after, feeling, of all things, slightly unmoored. The transaction had been so smooth. I had been treated as someone who needed a piece of bread, rather than as a foreigner mounting a small effortful play of belonging. I had, until that morning, thought the effortful play was the point — that being visibly a beginner was somehow part of how I was learning. The app had quietly removed the visibility, and with it some of what I had been treating as the learning itself. I have used the app most days since. The local language has, in fairness, improved faster as a result, because I now have actual conversations rather than stilted ones, and conversations are how language is really learned. But I am also slightly less of a particular kind of foreigner than I was, and I am not sure where that particular foreigner has gone. I should pause here, because the friction the app removed may have been doing more than I have so far acknowledged. The visible-beginner posture was uncomfortable; it was also a small daily reminder that I was somewhere new, that I had work to do, that I was not the same person I had been the previous month. The discomfort was carrying information. The app made the discomfort optional, and I have, on most days since, opted out of it. The local language has improved; the daily reminder of being elsewhere has dimmed. I am not certain these are the same trade. I would like to think I am paying attention to the difference. The app has been useful. The app has also produced, in three years, a version of me whose relationship with the country is mediated more by software and less by visible struggle, and the difference between these two versions of me is not, I think, only a question of fluency. It is also a question of what, exactly, the previous effort had been doing. I do not yet have a clean answer. I am, like most users of any tool that makes a difficulty smaller, in the middle of finding out what the difficulty had been doing.

I started using a translation app three years ago, when I moved to a country whose language I knew thirty words of, and I want to write about the first time I used it because the experience taught me something I have been trying to put down precisely ever since. There is a particular kind of essay tended to be written about a translation app — either the celebratory one, in which the writer marvels at how easy life has become; the worried one, in which the writer mourns the death of effortful language acquisition; the structural one, in which the app becomes an occasion for arguments about the politics of English, surveillance capitalism, and what gets lost in machine translation; or the meta one, which I am about to fall into now. None of the four captures what actually happened. The first time I used the app was in a small bakery near my flat. I needed to ask whether the bread had nuts in it. I had a small phrase book in my coat pocket that I had used for the previous three weeks, with what I now recognise as a slightly performative diligence — circled words, careful pronunciation, the small dignity of a foreigner doing the thing properly. The phrase book had been mine in a way the app could not quite be. But on this morning the question was specifically important because of an allergy that mattered, and the colleague who had shown me the app the previous week had made it sound undramatic. I typed the question. The phone said it out loud. The woman behind the counter answered in a normal voice, the way she would have answered a customer who actually lived in the country. She told me the bread did contain nuts, recommended a different one, and I thanked her and walked home with the right loaf. I sat on a bench afterward, feeling, of all things, slightly unmoored. The transaction had been so smooth. I had been treated as someone who needed a piece of bread, rather than as a foreigner mounting a small effortful play of belonging. I had, until that morning, thought the effortful play was the point — that being visibly a beginner was somehow part of how I was learning. The app had quietly removed the visibility, and with it some of what I had been treating as the learning itself. I have used the app most days since. The local language has, in fairness, improved faster as a result, because I now have actual conversations rather than stilted ones. But I am also slightly less of a particular kind of foreigner than I was, and I am not sure where that particular foreigner has gone. I should pause here, because I am about to make the kind of move this genre rewards — the gesture toward a small reflective conclusion that allows the reader to close the page reassured. The standard versions are: 'and yet, true fluency requires struggle', or 'what we lose in friction we gain in connection'. These are not always wrong. They are, however, the genre's preferred way of making the trade feel like a settled bargain rather than what it actually is, which is an ongoing experiment whose results are still incoming. The friction the app removed had been carrying information. The visible-beginner posture was uncomfortable; it was also a small daily reminder that I was somewhere new, that I had work to do, that I was not the same person I had been the previous month. The app made the discomfort optional. I have, on most days since, opted out of it. The local language has improved; the daily reminder of being elsewhere has dimmed. I am not certain these are the same trade. I would also like to flag, because the genre tends to skip it, that I am writing this essay in a register that has been shaped, over the last three years, by the very kind of smoothed-out language the app produces. I can hear it in my own sentences when I read them back. I am a more efficient communicator than I was. I am also, in some way I am unable to fully measure, a slightly more anonymous one. Both are true. I am stopping here.