"AI Slop" is the internet's hot new menu item. We've all seen it — hyper-slick trucks morphing into robots, pigs dressed as ninja assassins, all of it impossibly smooth and technically impressive. It looks cool, I guess. But it also feels... not intelligent.

Because intelligence isn't just about physics and rendering and all the other subjects I failed. It's about tapping into the human element with precision. And that only comes from experience.

AI is like a storyteller who has absorbed the stories of millions and can channel them in a single prompt. It can get close to the real thing. Just not close enough.

I wanted to test that gap. So I reached into my own brain and pulled out something real; the fear I felt in 2020 when I found out my wife had breast cancer. Yeah, right before the pandemic. The fear of losing her while the whole world was already coming apart was one of the hardest moments of my life. She's fine now, by the way. But I carry that memory — and others like it — into my work. It's how I stay connected to what I'm making, and to the people watching it.

This piece is about a woman calling her mom on the first day of her new life as a cop.