The half way point of getting behind the lines of BE.aGaIN has been reached and today’s poem investigates a potential tipping point in a possible future.
h-A.I.-l CZR (55 word poem) was first published in Welter to celebrate their 55th Anniversary as the Premier Literary journal at the University of Baltimore.
The piece investigates what would happen if we left the “dirty” world of political decision making to be arbitrated by artificial intelligence as judge, jury and executioner alone -“To the shrink, the clink or the gallows”.
I could not resist the line “Pinocchio or Pinochet” line. Will it be a machine pulling our strings and would it be worse than some of the human led regimes this planet has seen?.
This man made machine -“My father was human-and flawed” -would be all knowing but might even past as human -“The Turing Test is easy” -and maybe all too quick to make decisions that were for the best (from it’s point of view).
The A.I. announces it’s autocratic supremacy at the conclusion “Singularly I rule” and adds some sarcasm in to boot- “So you don’t have to”.
The backdrop of the poem is graffiti of resistance from Chile captured during just one instance of what happens when democracy gives way to a “strong man”.
Let’s hope that the machines are more human than history’s horror show of deluded dictators.
Algo
Algo Poetry-Behind the Lines 