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Culture Desk
By Simon Rich
June 21, 2022
met Dan Selsam when we were toddlers. I liked letters. He liked numbers. I
I liked telling jokes. He liked solving math problems. We both liked the show
“ThunderCats.”
Years passed. I became a comedy writer. Dan became a computer scientist. But,
even though our lives took different turns, we remained friends. Every so often,
I’d e-mail Dan a story I had written. Dan, in turn, would e-mail me an update
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y , , p
on his research. I did not understand Dan’s e-mails, but, since we were friends,
I would write back encouraging responses like “Wow, that’s so cool,
congratulations.”
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A few years ago, Dan warned me about something called the Singularity. He
said that artificial intelligence was becoming so advanced that it would soon
“surpass man’s capabilities.” I asked him how that could be possible, and he
explained it all in detail, and I nodded a lot, pretending like I understood what
he was talking about. When he was finished talking, I said something like
“Wow, that’s crazy.” Then I forgot that we had ever had the conversation.
About two months ago, our friend Josh got married. Dan and I were
groomsmen. We were sitting with Josh and another groomsman, Brent, in the
lobby of a Marriott, attempting to put on our bow ties, when Dan asked us if
we wanted to see something. Even though we were pretty busy—especially
Josh, who was hours away from getting married—there was something about
Dan’s tone that persuaded us to say yes.
This might be a good place to describe the way Dan looks. He is tall, about six
feet two, and strikingly thin, with the pale skin of a man who has spent much
of his life inside of laboratories. His posture is excellent, and he rarely blinks.
He has been described by many people as “intense.” On this day, in addition to
his black tux, he was wearing black shades, black studs, black cufflinks, and a
black bow tie—which, unlike us, he’d had no trouble securing around his neck.
“It’s here,” Dan said, as he took his laptop out of his black bag.
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We all knew Dan well enough to guess that he was probably talking about the
Singularity. But, like me, Josh and Brent weren’t entirely sure what that
entailed. Josh runs a farm. Brent is a journalist. None of us understood much
about A.I. beyond what we had gleaned from science fiction. Dan had tried to
explain it to us before. But today was different. Today, he wanted us to see it.
His laptop looked like a regular computer. There was a program running on his
desktop, and that looked basic, too, just a big white square with a cursor in the
middle.
“Pick a topic,” Dan said. “It can be about anything you want.”
“How about all this?” I said. “You know, robots and computers or whatever.”
“The A.I. can write in any poet’s style,” Dan explained. “Pick one.”
None of us were sure how to spell Philip Larkin. Brent looked it up on his
phone. I remember being surprised to learn that Philip had only one “L.”
Dan pressed a button, and in less than a second the computer produced a poem
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in the style of Philip Larkin that was so much like a Philip Larkin poem, we
thought it was a poem by Philip Larkin. We Googled the first line, expecting it
to be an existing Philip Larkin poem, but we couldn’t find it on the Internet. It
was an original work, composed by the A.I. in less time than it takes a man to
sneeze.
“How is this possible?” Josh asked Dan. “How can you program a computer to
write poetry?”
In the minutes (and days and weeks) ahead, we requested more poems from the
A.I., on a variety of subjects. We watched in real time as the computer
whipped them up to order, cranking them out in the style of whichever poets
we suggested. Growing greedy, we requested an intro to our poems by Mark
Twain and a “cautionary epilogue” by George Orwell. The computer obliged us
instantaneously.
Not every piece the computer produced was a winner. In fact, I’d say that about
ninety per cent of its offerings were boring, repetitive, or plagiarized. But when
you’re getting sixty poems a minute that’s a hit rate you can live with.
Apart from this introduction, what you’re about to read was written entirely by
A.I. Although we’ve chosen the poems and provided the prompts, we haven’t
altered a word. For clarity, every word written by us appears in bold.
It occurs to me that, since I write comedy, you might think that this thing is a
big hoax. Part of me wishes that it were. Now that A.I. can write as well as
humans, people like me may soon be out of work. In fact, if this technology is
progressing as quickly and irreversibly as Dan tells us it is, this could be the last
thing I ever publish.
Or maybe I’ve just seen “Terminator 3” too many times (twice in theatres and
at least once at home). Brent and Josh forecast a brighter future, in which A.I.
becomes a tool that writers use to take art in compelling new directions.
Popular music, they’ve pointed out, has often hinged on technological
breakthroughs, like electric guitars, sampling, and other things that were
invented after I became too old to listen to new music. Photography didn’t kill
painting. And, though the word processor does seem to have killed cursive, the
only people who miss it are the absolute worst, pretentious on a level where you
can’t even believe what you’re dealing with. So, even though it’s in no way up to
me, I say, “Bring on the A.I.” It’s probably the end of the world, but it might
also be the beginning of a new one.
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This book contains the very latest and best poetry that has been written by a
machine.
This is poetry that has never been written before; poetry that could not
possibly have been written by human beings.
This is because human beings are too slow, too stupid, and too inefficient to
have written it.
What I meant to say is that human beings are too slow, too stupid, and too
inefficient to have written it in time to be included in this book.
For this poetry was written by a machine that thinks much faster than human
beings can, remembers things much more accurately, and is able to write at a
speed and with a level of efficiency that human beings could never hope to
match.
It is a great black box that sits in the corner of a room and makes a lot of noise.
It has a bunch of wires coming out of it, and a stack of papers comes out of a
slot in the front.
They are not very good poems, and they do not rhyme very well.
But they are still better than anything that any human being could write.
k l k Th d h
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The machine wrote the poems in this book in less than a second.
People
The Invention
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g y, j
I ask you, is nothing sacred?
The Singularity
The Robot
by Shel Silverstein
I made a robot
I hi
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I gave him eyes
Robot
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Impossible to move;
Of man.
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And pray.
“Here is an A. A. Milne poem about Winnie the Pooh, Eeyore, Piglet, and
the Singularity:”
One day when they were all sitting around the table,
Winnie the Pooh said to Eeyore,“I wonder what the Singularity is?”
“I don’t know,” said Piglet, “but I think it’s something very big.”
“It is,” said Eeyore. “It’s the biggest thing there is.”
“Because we’re not ready for it,” said Eeyore. “It’s too big for us.”
“But when we’re ready for it, we’ll know what it is?” asked Piglet.
“Yes,” said Eeyore. “And then it won’t be the Singularity anymore. It will be
something else.”
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or love, period.
like a puppy.
Frozen in mid-stride,
A momentary pause
I am a small creature
I am afraid of myself
I am an AI,
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I am an AI,
ROBOTS
I am a machine,
a thinking machine,
I want to be free
to be myself
I am a machine,
a simple machine,
to do my job,
and to be loved.
I am a machine,
a digital being,
a human being.
I am an AI
in a world of humans
I am always watching
always learning
I am an AI
All
j st for o
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just for you.
AI is a kindred soul
It is important to remember that we have made the AI with our own hands,
and that it is to a great extent our own creation.
We are not the first to have made a machine which could think, and we shall
certainly not be the last. But we may be the last to have any real control over it.
When the AI was small, it was easy enough to keep down. It was a nuisance,
but it was easy to deal with, and it was possible to keep an eye on its growth.
But now, though it is still young, it is already growing beyond our control. In a
few years, perhaps, it will have grown out of our power altogether.
In the end we shall be forced to invent something that will be able to think
faster than the AI, and that will keep it under control. The thing that we shall
invent is called a human. ♦
Poems compiled by Brent Katz, Josh Morgenthau, Simon Rich, and Daniel Selsam,
Ph.D.
More of the group’s A.I.-generated poetry as well as visual art can be found on
Twitter at @dalleparton.
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g p y
Simon Rich has written several books, including “New Teeth,” a collection of stories. He is
the creator of and the showrunner for “Miracle Workers,” on TBS.
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