The AI Gap: Outing America’s Guilty Pleasure

WEST CHESTER, Pa. — Americans now report a record AI gap, the distance between how much they claim to hate artificial intelligence and how often they use this guilty pleasure. Experts say that closing this gap may no longer be possible without surgery.

“We measured it nine ways to Sunday, and it’s widening on all of them,” said Dr. Renata Pollworth, 52, director of the Center for Ambivalence Studies at a small liberal arts college she asked not to name. Pollworth has kept the same fern alive since 2018 by refusing to learn what kind it is.

Her team’s Pollworth Gap Index tracks the distance between a subject’s stated contempt for AI and daily query count, adjusted for sighing.

“The average respondent rates AI a two out of ten and consults it thirty-one times a day,” Pollworth said. “Some of them even ask AI how to feel about that.”

Linda Marchetti, 61, office manager at a Downingtown septic company, who prides herself on being prompt, signed a petition against a proposed data center in her township two months ago. She has since used a chatbot to reword the petition, schedule the protest, plan her daughter’s rehearsal dinner, and find out whether her cat was judging her.

“I’m against it on principle,” Marchetti said. “I just need it for everything.”

Her case is not unusual. Derek Salansky, 38, a driver’s education instructor who still carries a flip phone “in case the smartphone goes down,” founded Unplug Chester County. The group’s flyers, mission statement, and logo were generated by AI, as was the name.

“It came up with ‘Unplug Chester County’ on the fourth try,” Salansky said. “The first three were OK, honestly, but they felt too corporate.”

Clinics offering AI gap reduction have opened in King of Prussia and Exton. Treatment options range from a twelve-week guided digital fast to what one brochure calls “practical reconciliation,” in which patients are encouraged to admit, out loud, that AI wrote their Christmas letter.

Results so far are mixed. Of forty patients enrolled in the Exton program, eleven closed the gap by learning to like AI. Three closed it by quitting. The remaining twenty-six asked a chatbot whether they were making progress.

AI gap reduction, which can cost thousands of dollars, is not covered by insurance. “Our position is simple: nobody dies of mixed feelings,” said Gordon Tsakiris, 56, Keystone’s vice president of claims review, who has worn the same brown tie to work since his wedding and considers it bad luck to discuss either.

“If a policyholder believes treatment is medically necessary, they can file Form AG-12, a Declaration of Reluctant Use, with two years of chatbot history and a notarized statement that they don’t even like AI. In twelve months, no one has gotten past the chatbot history.”

The Pennsylvania Insurance Department has scheduled a hearing on whether treatment should be covered. Pollworth agreed to submit expert testimony and opened her laptop.

“Make me sound like I can do this without you,” she typed.

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