About Me — Jim the Jasper Whisperer
How embracing A.I. helped me to overcome aphasia
As a writer struggling with aphasia, I never imagined I’d discover a new career in prompt engineering and AI. But with Jasper AI, I was able to build my own business coaching others how to use AI for content creation. With new technology, anything is possible! Championing accessibility is the key.
It took a few weeks for the words to disappear.
I was bashed badly in the head in 2015. Christmas time.
I don’t know if it was a hate crime, or they were just on meth, but the two thugs in the supermarket instantly disliked me.
But it wasn’t until I reached the car park that they king-punched me in the back of the head. Somehow I didn’t go down.
They’d caught me by my scarf, like a noose, so I couldn’t escape.
I turned around and faced them. I don’t know their eye color. Their pupils were so huge as to be black discs. Zombie’s eyes. Drugged and out of control.
There were five more blows to my right temple. I’d boxed in my teens, so I knew how to take a punch. I tried to let the blows slide. I stayed on my feet.
Afterward, the paramedics said if I’d gone down, “it would be a very different scene we were attending, let’s leave it at that”.
While I waited for the ambulance, I staggered back into the supermarket for a first aid kit. They didn’t have one. Nor ice. I took a bag of peas and held it to my bruised face. They charged me for it.
It took months for the full extent of the damage to reveal itself. Before, I could read a sentence at a glance. Grasp a page at a skim. Now, trying to read was arduous, exhausting, and time-consuming. Words skidded and skittered. Letters glided off the page like hockey pucks on a gelid ice rink, or straight-up melted like butter on a hot griddle. Sentences became sand.
I stand amid the roar Of a surf-tormented shore, And I hold within my hand Grains of the golden sand — How few! yet how they creep Through my fingers to the deep - Edgar Allan Poe
The writing was harder. I’d always been a wordsmith, but now the words wouldn’t obey me. I had to relearn how to string a sentence together.
I had to learn how to think again.
Aphasia is a disorder where you have communication difficulties, and find it hard to retrieve words. Think of it like dyslexia, but for speaking/writing.
Before the incident, I’d been an academic (New Media, Communications, English) and full-time copywriter. Obviously, that career was closed to me.
I taught myself to read again — taking each word at a time. Procedurally guessing the next most likely word. Coincidentally, this is how AI writes — one word at a time, predicting the next probable word. And something clicked.
A childhood spent playing Text Based Adventure games in the early 90s had prepared me to coax the right words from Natural Language Processing (NLP). As a kid, I‘d been obsessed with robots. As an adult, AI saved my livelihood. Having an electronic co-writer that can finish my sentences gave me back my independence and brought new meaning to my career.
I never would have guessed that I’d be so inspired by AI that I’d create my own business around it. But here we are. And I couldn’t be more thrilled.
What I do now as The Jasper Whisperer
At its heart, my business is to train other writers to harness the power of AI to become more efficient and effective. I recommend JASPER AI to creators who want to be faster and better at writing content. Truly anyone can write.
In short, I want to make it easier for everyone to create amazing content.
And I think AI is the answer. I’m living proof.
It gave me a holistic understanding of how language, art, and AI tools can work together. As The Jasper Whisper, I’m on a mission to help you to use AI to create new content and experiences. I hope that I can help others learn about and use these amazing AI tools by sharing my knowledge.
Ready to join Medium?
Unlock the entire Medium catalogue with my referral link, and you’ll also be supporting my writing here at no extra cost to you. I’d appreciate it.
