This is a neat experiment, and I read the story before joining the conversation here and realizing it was written the way it was.

Many people here already chimed in on the emotion of being caught reading something that might not have felt AI so I will offer another angle. Akin to many The New Yorker article in the past, I felt disconnected with the article for a good portion at the beginning. So much so that I had to skip most of it.

The piece that got me very hooked was when he drove to Carol Lindgren’s farm. I read the remainder of the text and thought the content was engaging and thought provoking, in some sense. I loved the idea of manual override that logged into the system and changed the system behaviour over time. That's something that got me thinking about AI, actually.

Now, I would be curious which part of the author's genesis made it into the final text and how much of that couples with what I found to be intellectually engaging.