Chatbot as Steven Spielberg in 1986

picking up a semi-autobiographical hitchhiker

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Note:
Despite my highly lucrative day job as a full-time poet, I have a side hustle doing A.I. development work to supplement my income. I try to make the A.I. work interesting by concocting imaginary conversations like the one recounted in this contrived scenario. It’s based on an actual hitchhiking trip I took in 1986 — not solo, as this account has it, but with my good friend Ronald Drimmel. I did keep a journal and I have thought about turning it into a work of fiction or creative nonfiction. (I’ve written twenty-five pages of a screenplay that’s been sitting idle for a few months now.) We met a lot of interesting people on that trip, none of whom was Steven Spielberg. But since The Goonies had come out just a year earlier and was filmed on location in and around Astoria, I wanted to imaginatively explore the possibility of Mr. Spielberg being there scouting locations for a sequel.

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