Month: September 2022

It was once believed that no machine will touch the works of our great
Poets, Writers, Artists or Musicians
That no machine will surpass the works of
Hemingway, Whitman, Van Gogh or Mozart.

“Creativity is a uniquely human trait” we tell ourselves

And yet we can now see the coming tide of technology
In the forms of original art, music composition and novel writing
Encroaching itself onto the art world

Reminding us when Deep Blue defeated Kasparov

And making me question if the future of Art, Poetry and Music lay in the bowels
Of a soulless machine.

When I worked as a computer instructor at a mental health facility
I always used to tell my students that they should
Never rob a bank with a cell phone in their pocket
Because it was being tracked. (don’t rob a bank period)

People thought that this idea was madness five years ago
But today we know that our geolocation data is carefully monitored
And saved over extended periods of time and can be
Accessed through different government agencies.

However…

Similar information is now
Being traded and sold by private companies with darker intentions.

A company called “Kochava” is under investigation
For selling geolocation data
Which on the surface might seem benign

until you realize what this entails.

Companies could theoretically access information on your visits to;

A drug rehab clinic
A psychiatrists office
A homeless shelter…

And use this this information against you, leading to job loss and discrimination.

A far darker side of this powerful technology.

Years from now during the dystopian dark ages
Of our conformist non-creative futures
Engineers will develop a Sophisticated Artificial Intelligence
That writes poetry so deftly
That many will listen in awe and
Bewilderment at its rhymes and chimes.

This mechanized poet of the future will churn out mountainous
Volumes of clanging verses that will impress amateurish readers
Through its florid vocabulary
And seemingly endless knowledge of useless facts
Strung together in unusual and abstract ways.

After its creation unscrupulous engineers and scientists
Will claim that even the dim witted
Can create great poetry with a few clicks, some legal tender
And three keywords as input.

Like lemmings they will come in pursuit of their dreams
And eagerly enter words like

“Hungry”
“Rhino”
“Sandwich”

At the prompt

And presto!

The greatest poem about a
Hungry Rhino
Will be birthed;

“And so the enormous pink
Flabby rhino’s teeth sink
Into the ham sandwich that stinks”

And the dim-witted will think that this
Is very clever and hand it into their
English instructor as homework,
While the clever ones save their money
And write knowing that they will never be replaced
By either a computer or the dim witted