Against the machine
By Majekodunmi Ebhohon
HE says he is fighting AI.
Says it loudly.
Usually online.
He means the new kind—
the kind with opinions,
the kind that finishes sentences
before he finishes being angry.
He says it will ruin thinking,
flatten imagination,
turn the mind into a parking lot.
He says this
while using a calculator
to split a restaurant bill.
The calculator waits patiently,
its small gray face
offering no ideology.
Just answers.
He presses the buttons
as if they were innocent.
As if they had not already
replaced something once called
mental arithmetic.
No protest followed that loss.
No think-pieces.
No marches for the long division.
The calculator arrived quietly,
like the stealthing paws of a tiger,
and we welcomed it
because it saved time
and embarrassment.
He insists,
“This is different. This time
the machine thinks.”
But the calculator, too,
was accused once
of making people lazy,
of hollowing out the brain,
of ending civilization
one digit at a time.
Civilization adjusted.
It always does.
He rails against automation,
yet trusts the GPS
with his sense of direction,
the spellcheck
with his spelling,
the camera
with his memory.
He says he is drawing a line.
But the line keeps moving,
recalculated instantly,
to three decimal places.
Does he fear the machine,
or the knowing
that thinking has always been assisted
by fingers,
by tools,
by weather?
At the salad spot,
a woman kneels to her
crying daughter’s height,
“Was your cheek
patted,
or slapped?”
Two verbs held
like different keys,
waiting to see
which fits the door.
The fish fryer admits
there are days
his brain dances
whenever ginkgo walks past.
The calculator blinks,
waiting for the next number.
It has no opinion
about his resistance.
It has already won
by being useful.
And by not asking
to be loved.
Majekodunmi O. Ebhohon is a Nigerian poet and playwright. He is the author of ‘The Great Delusion’, winner of the ANA Prize for Drama, 2025. He writes from Benin City, Edo State, Nigeria.🇳🇬
+234 (0) 9139208624
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