The Borg is here to assimilate us all

written by Sue Frantz | November 30, 2025

 

Like everybody else, I’ve been thinking about AI. I use Google NotebookLM to pull information from a finite set of documents. I use Perplexity to answer questions I used to ask of search engines. For example, I use macros with some of my spreadsheets. Where I used to search for code and reconfigure it for my specific situation, I can tell Perplexity (or a host of other AI tools) what I want the code to do, and it generates the code for me. Very handy. No question.

When my affiliate university (New Mexico State University) offered me a free Grammarly account, I was willing to give it a try. I appreciated the comma help Grammarly provided, but, more problematically, it also wanted to change my words. It wanted to remove the color from my writing, replacing my idiosyncratic voice with soulless corporate-speak. A tool that was supposed to be a helpful adjunct to my writing became the Borg that kept trying to turn me into someone that sounded just like everyone else it had already taken over. I had to fight to keep my voice. I did the only reasonable thing: I uninstalled Grammarly.

Side note #1: I still needed comma help, so I installed the free LanguageTool for Windows instead. They also have a Borg version that will encourage you to sound like, well, Grammarly, but you have to pay extra for that service.  

Side note #2: If you are unfamiliar with the Borg, this Perplexity summary will help. If AI is our version of the Borg, then my asking Perplexity for a summary is ironic.

I have a colleague who has been sending me email replies that have been written by AI. Her voice has been replaced with this generic, Borg-like corporate-speak. In some circles, such language is called “professional.” To me, reading such emails is like shaking hands with a dead fish. They leave me feeling cold and slimy. And dismissed. Nothing says “I don’t value you and what you have to say” faster than a Borg-generated reply. Truthfully, I’d prefer no reply at all.

A couple of weeks ago, the New York Times published the obituary for David Bellos, a renowned translator of books (Risen, 2025). When he was asked if he thought AI would remove the need for human translation, he said, “Machines may produce an accurate translation of words, but they could never make the subtle choices among hundreds of possibilities that go into rendering an accurate, nuanced meaning.”

This is the nature of human writing. We make “subtle choices among hundreds of possibilities.” AI writing tools encourage us to all make the same choices. Every time we accept the AI version in our own writing, another little piece of us is erased. Our individual voices are gradually being scrubbed away. We are being assimilated into the Borg.

And the Borg is not just coming for your writing voice. You can now use tools like Cluely to listen in on your conversations, including virtual meetings, job interviews, and oral exams. When you are asked a question, Cluely will provide you with a response that you can read off your screen. “The assumption behind Cluely is that letting an AI pull a Cyrano yields better interactions than relying on your own brain” (Beck, 2025).

Side note #3: If a person resides in an all-party consent-to-record state, they need to get the consent of all parties before using a tool like Cluely or other meeting recorder, such as Otter.ai. How long until we get our first instance of criminal charges or a civil suit being brought against a student during an oral exam or an applicant during a job interview where the student or interviewee used Cluely to answer questions while one or both parties were in an all-party consent-to-record state?

A few years ago, I read Octavia Butler’s The Parable of the Sower. While it is indeed a very good book, I learned that novels about the dystopian future aren’t for me. As more of our colleagues and more of our students cede their voices to the Borg, I feel like the dystopian future is closing in. An actual dystopian future is not for me, either.

While the Borg insists that resistance is futile, it is not. We do not have to be assimilated. Resistance begins with using our own voices. 

 

References

Beck, J. (2025, November 18). How to cheat at conversation. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/family/2025/11/cluely-ai-cheat-everything/684913/

Risen, C. (2025, November 20). David Bellos, 80, dies; wrestled French wordplay into English. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/20/books/david-bellos-dead.html