‘AI’ & ‘REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST’: POEMS & GRAPHICS
The poems were inspired by conversations with the artist, Evie Chapman. The poems, in turn, inspired Evie Chapman’s artwork.
AI
For Evie Chapman
Not ‘artificial insemination’, nor
a cry of dismay or woe, nor a
two letter word approved by Scrabble,
nor a three-toed sloth from the Guianas,
but ‘artificial intelligence’.
***
I set the computer on my exercise
bike – with its read-only-memory –
and, as I pedal nowhere in the study,
sometimes to engage my mind on the journey
I pick a book at random from the shelves.
Today it is THE FACT OF A DOORFRAME,
Adrienne Rich’s selected poems.
Again at random, I access it
at page forty six. Helpfully the poem,
entitled ‘Artificial Intelligence’,
is dated: 1961. The poet
has been bested at chess by a computer.
‘I’m sulking,’ she says, ‘in the great tradition
of human waste’ and, deliberately,
personifies the ‘digital’ machine,
addressing it directly: ‘…denied
our luxury of nausea, you
forget nothing, have no dreams’.
***
We live much of our lives in metaphor,
frequently when ‘the tables have been turned’
and life becomes ‘an uphill battle’.
We often like to think ‘the grass is
always greener on the other side’,
especially after ‘it’s been raining
cats and dogs’. ‘Artificial intelligence’
was ‘coined’, yes, in that great tradition –
by USA computer scientists
nearly seventy years ago. So
why the current razzmatazz, the last ten year’s
of increasingly noisy razzle-dazzle,
about what AI will do for us
or to us now, as if it were some
recently arrived sentient being,
a software Golem come to redeem us,
a binary Godzilla bringing
the end of days – not something that needs
the electricity to be switched on
to work? Maybe somebody somewhere
is looking to make a fortune or two
out of our gullibility – yesterday’s
news become today’s snake oil?
REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST
For Evie Chapman
Now that I have been summoned to bear witness
to the ‘swinging sixties’, a decade
half my lifetime away – when Liverpool,
according to the poet, Allen Ginsberg,
was the centre of ‘the human universe’,
when the empires of the USA
and the Soviet Union curtailed
the lives of millions, and raced, like small boys,
to be the very first men in the moon –
I shall make some notes in order to
blow the dust off the archived albums
of my memories: I was 17
when it began, a high school student,
and a poet, and 27
when it ended, husband, father, teacher,
property owner, and still a poet;
from adolescence to adulthood,
from dependence to independence,
in ten long sometimes joyful, sometimes
unsteady steps; from falling in love
with a pretty girl, and staying in love;
from youthful insouciance to the pride
and awe at having a daughter; commonplace
wonders, shaping futures.
GRAPHICS: ©Evie Chapman 2024
Howard Gardener
June 14, 2024I read somewhere that a good test for a computer, in true Turing style, was to see what it made of the phrase ‘The ball crashed right through the table because it was made of polystyrene’, the theory being that the computer would not know which was made out of polystyrene – ball or table?
We of course – the omniscient ones – would know instantly. I wonder if that is still the case. I wonder whether the USA computer scientists of seventy years ago ever envisaged a time when their novelty would theoretically have the power to wipe out humanity.
Press 1 for yes; press 2 for probably not; press 3 to be connected to an operator. Casually mention to the operator the statement in the first paragraph and see what they say…
David Selzer
June 15, 2024If the computer had been properly programmed then its knowledge of English grammar would tell it that the table was made of polystyrene and not the ball. For it to have been the ball the sentence would to be re-written – either preferably as ‘The ball crashed right through the table because the ball was made of polystyrene’ or perhaps as ‘The ball crashed right through the table, because it was made of polystyrene’.
Howard Gardener
June 15, 2024‘The ball crashed right through the table, because it was made of polystyrene’. Isn’t that what I said – plus a comma?
Confused of Chester…
David Selzer
June 16, 2024No comma, sadly – and also happily. If there had been a comma there would have been no test – and no comment, and correspondence.
Sarah Selzer
June 14, 2024Firstly the graphics. As mother of the artist, I’m incredibly proud of her skill and modesty – and love the fact that, while we knew you two (Grandpa and the youngest family member) were working on this, it’s such a delight and emotional surprise to see what’s come of it! Then the poems themselves – always so ‘rich’, that’s the word. You paint pictures as richly as Evie interprets them!
Mary Clark
June 14, 2024AI so far appears to be the latest version of the supercomputer with the ability to summarize its data into language that the average human can understand. This distillation often misses the point or tries to hit all the possible points.
Old is new again: electric cars were first made in the 1830s (and possibly earlier) along with work on better batteries. A chemist named Robert Davidson of Aberdeen, Scotland is usually credited with making the first electric vehicle. According to Wikipedia, ‘it was destroyed by railway workers, who saw it as a threat to their security of employment’.
Alan Horne
June 14, 2024More than half a lifetime, David. Great graphics by Evie: she’s got your sideburns right too!
Ashen Venema
June 15, 2024Congratulations to Grandpa and Evie … such beautiful and impressive teamwork!
Jeff Teasdale
July 1, 2024Well, the 60’s. What is left to be said? Plenty! Falling in love to ‘Just one look’; ‘she was just seventeen’ (Well, you know just what I mean?)’, raving over Dylan, Cohen, McLuhan, The Stones, John Coltrane, John Mayall, Peter Green, Robert Johnson, Ronnie Scott’s, The Marquee Club, Cream, art college and Brown Ale (Newky), Francis Lee scoring a belter in 1968 right in front of us amongst all the Geordies. It just went on and on…. The many friends with whom I am still in touch from those days agree that they were indeed ‘the times of our lives’. We all seem to be outliving ‘the odds’. Thank you for your poem, David, it has set the memories running again, yet again…