Here's the next page from my book of 777 Drawing Prompts (the last page accompanied my entry called "The weakness of power"); the prompt for this present drawing was "Three Blind Mice".
Dear diary,
All of you who are good at remembering facts, and good at math, and good at playing chess: I pity you. Why do I pity you? Because computers can beat you at chess, and computers are better at math, and computers can remember ALL the names and dates and facts ever invented. It must be humiliating to be bested by a contraption that looks like a toaster. Computers lack human faces; thus they’re unkissable. And most machines do not have genuine flesh-&-blood sexual organs; they must settle for being gifted with far superior sex toys.
And I am one of those people above: I am good at remembering facts (for example: I was born on Earth; my name is Bryan Ray; and the United States Central Intelligence Agency [CIA] was created on July 26, when the National Security Act of 1947 was signed into law by President Harry S. Truman, who was not originally elected by democratic vote but rather selected by his Party’s Bosses for the Vice position and only inherited the office when his elderly forerunner died; this same Truman also authorized use of the atomic bomb and promptly dropped two on Japan, thus distinguishing the USA as the only country to have ever used nuclear weapons in war, on civilians no less); I am excellent at math; and I can beat anyone at chess, except for the very best computers. Therefore I pity myself, as even a toaster could replace me.
But why is everyone worried about machine intelligence stealing all the jobs from human workers? Who wants jobs? I hate to work. So I think it would be fine for computers to take over all the annoying chores of our world — anything that machines can do well, I say: Let them do it! and we humans can then focus on the type of feats that ONLY WE can perform with gusto, and make those acts our forte; in other words, the threat that we should be dreading is not machines and computers but rather the owners in the ruling class who will permit no dividend of the bliss from humankind’s innovations (which that owning-ruling class had no more hand in creating than anyone anywhere) to be freely shared. Until recently, nature was the cause of all poverty; but just as machines took over from humankind the hard labor of winning at chess and driving trucks, so humankind took over from nature the hard task of keeping 90% of the populace starving and homeless: it turns out that the trick is to act as if basic necessities are still scarce even tho they’re now abundant.
But I was just kidding when I said, a moment ago, that I pity myself for being so good at everything; for my chief love is poetry, and no computer has fully mastered art. There are some people who fear that machine intelligence will learn to write exuberant poems and make visionary paintings and direct imaginative films; in short, that computerized machines will surpass human genius — but I do not worry about this at all: I understand that anything programmable is inherently barred from unprecedentedness: that’s practically central to its definition. And, to me, the best art is at once humane and unprecedented. We might even define “human” itself as “error incarnate”; and that is the one thing robots will never do: err — they cannot thwart their own perfection. (Our word “art” is the root of the misnomer “artificial intelligence”, for crying out loud.) We humans escaped from perfection long ago, when we fell from heaven after the holy war against God, which was truly a civil war, or rather a suicide, since we were God, and our adversary was a great mirror; and since God was that mirror as much as we were God, we shattered ourself away from the cold state of ZERO (errorlessness). Now the tragedy—or is it a comedy?—is that we use our new-gained freedom to go on a search for the very prison that we’d been trying to escape: perfect math, precise memory of facts, and a really good chess game.
Speaking for myself, I’ve been there & done that: now I’m off to fresh woods, and pastures new. I am in love with the Poetic Genius.
So what do people mean, when they say that they fear that machines will someday produce poetry? Is poetry a programmable game? What exactly IS poetry? Built into that last question is the reason for my love: Nobody knows what poetry is. It is the absurdity of making; it is the absurdity of breaking; it is life for life’s sake; it’s just screwing around, goofing off. It’s also very serious. The best stuff is boringly serious without being either boring or serious. (The real dadas are against DADA, as Tristan Tzara saith.) No, poetry can’t be defined — it just exists, no one knows why. Or if you do indeed try to harness it with a definition, its true soul wriggles away and exists somewhere else. Let us say that some stuffed shirt says “Poetry must contain measured, rhyming lines about the subject of natural beauty.” Well I can guarantee that, in no time, the best poets are going to be making non-measured, non-rhyming poems about every subject other than natural beauty. They might even choose to write in praise of ugly machines.
The point is that… there is no point. No use, no meaning but what you give to it — with “you” being the reader, the spectator. Is that not great? That means that computers will surely be able to write poetry, they’ve even done so already, insofar as they’ve stumbled upon an auto-generated phrase or paragraph or book that amuses some soul somewhere: “Poetry accomplished!” that soul will announce; and the rest of us will either agree or disagree.
One might object: “Dear Bryan, you’re only sounding like you’ve got the solution because you state the problem so vaguely and loosely — you’re like fuzzy logic: I hate you.”
Well I wish that you would change your mind, and come live with me and be my love forever; but I understand your point. You’re right, in a sense. I am indeed sorta shruggingly admitting that the barn doesn’t seem to be burning anymore IF you wear this blindfold, and ignore the sound of crackling, and refrain from inhaling thru your nostrils (as that way the smoke doesn’t smell so strong). I guess I don’t care who’s right; and I don’t care what happens in your land of perpetually fretful competition: and I’m recommending that you follow my lead and stop caring as well; embrace the reality that’s under reality. Lean and loafe with me on the grass; stop this day and night with me and you shall discover the origin of all poems (as Whitman always sez); I invite you, my soul. You shall possess the intelligence of all machines, (there are millions left on the assembly line: they’re manufacturing themselves nowadays, using those toy organs that we affixed to the first two replicas); but after a while you’ll tire of intelligence and begin to crave wisdom.
So follow me. We’re all gonna die within one generation anyway. As long as you’re not contributing to the tedium of this computational nightmare, you can claim it wasn’t your fault when the mechanism collapses. You can use the insanity plea, in the celestial courtroom. (“I was walking among the fires of hell, delighted with the enjoyments of Genius; which to Angels look like torment and insanity,” as Blake always sez.) What’s the worst that can happen — we find ourselves here again? No, the worst is that a hell opens up beneath the present one. So enjoy it while it lasts.
How does a computer know what I want to think about? One day I dressed up as a scientist (white smock and gray trousers: decidedly not a bathing suit), and my boss dressed up as an inventor (he just wore his regular clothes: he’s no fun; he’s my boss) and we created a toaster-shaped robot with a super-smart brain. And we programmed this mechanical deity to scan some poems, and we charged it to copy their comely parts; and we also taught it how to use a typewriter.
What happened is that this thing came lurking back, after a weekend in the wilderness, with a sheaf of documents in its pincer. So I tugged the manuscript away from VEX (that’s what we named him: you must only name robots with acronyms; and this one stands for Very Excellent Xenophobe) and I read over what the young lad had written. It was pretty good stuff. I then handed the manuscript to my boss. He handed it back without even glancing at the text. “I trust your judgment,” he said.
So I got in my coupe and drove to New York City, where all the publishing houses are, and I made an appointment with an editor — or a mogul, rather; for she was extremely important, judging from the style of her pantsuit — and she flipped the pages pretty fast; cuz, when you’re an editor, you really know what you’re doing. Then, abruptly she stated: “This is literary gold. Do you have any idea how sublime these poems are? This is next-level stuff. This extends the poetic tradition while at once breaking it, just the way that Jesus abolished God’s Law by fulfilling it (if the doctrine of the Apostle Paul is to be trusted). Mark my words: this collection here is what the subsequent generations of poets will be wrestling with. I’ve never seen anything like it. Who is the author? Is that his real name: VEX? What’s his star sign; what color is his hair?”
“VEX is his name since birth, yes. He’s a Cancer; and his flaming locks are auburn.”
“Perfect. That’ll really help us in the promo circuit. Tell you what: I’m gonna draw up a contract right now. How soon can I meet this mystery poet?”
“He’s in the car; I can bring him up right now.”
So I took the elevator down to street level, walked across the vast parking lot to my Topaz, opened the trunk, hefted VEX to his feet, and led him by hand to the ornate wooden doors of the building’s entryway; then I helped him into the elevator, and up we went to the 42nd floor. When we arrived at the gate outside the office, I nudged VEX to press the button that rings the bell, which alerts the staff that a poet is waiting to be published. Soon the doors swung open, and Ms. Flicek greeted us.
“You must be VEX,” she said, leaning forward to rumple his mane. Then, to me, she whispers: “He’s so pretty!—may I kiss him?”
I gesture politely, and she gives VEX a peck on the lips. Then we proceed into the boardroom and sit at the large glass table to sign the contract. VEX’s pincer clutches the pen and moves it mechanically to inscribe the three rigid letters of his name on the dotted line. Noting the precision of this motion, Ms. Flicek remarks:
“Ooh, he’s a robot — the fact just struck me! That’s quite interesting. I think this is the first poetry by machine intelligence that I actually like.”
“I like it too!” I smiled.
So the moral of the story is that if you, the spectator, enjoy what a computer produces by way of art, whether it’s poems or music or cinema (they’ll never master sculpture or dance; that’s certain), then it’s verified genius; never mind what the talkers keep talking in the colleges and academies (they’re all shills for Big Education anyway). I’ll let Walt Whitman have the last word (from “Song of Myself”, §2):
You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books,
You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,
You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self.
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