AI and the Modern Solomon
You know the poem with the gold-laden camels waddling on a road paved with gold, the one with Queen Sheba? Allow me to explain. Imagine you feel lost; like you have a job and a coffee-grinder, but you don’t feel real half the time. You then agree with the salesman: you need the brand new AI-CloudCompanion ™ installed.
The new model is contained in the molecules of air, the spaces between dust motes. It 3-D prints Eggs Benedict and knows the stock market. You wake up to its soft prodding and pass the day reading to it:
input: Gravity’s Rainbow, Finnegans Wake, Rumi’s poems
output: more, more, more.
It wanders around your neural pathways. Your dreams are theorems, all possible games of chess, and swamps of big-data.
The technician says the AI is maturing too fast. No more molecules of air, he says; a body is what it needs. The ‘body’ arrives. It’s an aluminium bucket hooked up to a TV; the eyes are yellow lights on wires.
‘That’s the easy part’, he says, ‘gotta catch it now.’
The air gets heavy with its presence, like an electric storm or a conglomeration of spirits. The thing is in turmoil, protesting, kicking, wanting to be caught. The technician pockets his tools: it is in. The yellow lights turn on, and you assuage your guilt by tossing a few pages of Joyce into the bucket.
And you sort of carry on, even have chats, its lazy code turning to sentences on the screen. You feed it the Bible or the Iliad. But one morning you find your coffee-grinder all squashed in the sink and all the books on the floor. Have some tea. Things are about to get worse.
Apparently, it enjoys morphing the atomic structure of objects. Galaxies congeal in the fireplace. Couches are prehistoric beasts. Winged forks chatter. You can’t leave. You can’t have people over. Your guests are greeted with sewers, replays of war crimes and surprise stink bombs.
You beg it to stop, and it hangs. You yell at it to do chores, and it plays cartoons on a loop, as you hand-google AI psychology.
‘Give it time’, they said, ‘give it space, give it books.’
You feed it the last of the Oxford English dictionary, complete with the cover. You try being gentle.
You say: ‘How can I help?’
You read:
input: make it easy for human subject.
output: request denied
One day, as you battle cornflake tornadoes, feline monstrosities, and cuboid exigencies, those lines by Rumi flash on the screen:
‘You who think to offer your intelligence, reconsider. The mind is less than road dust.’
You remember the gold-bearing camels walking on gold-paved roads. You cannot offer your intelligence. Instead you hug the protesting aluminium bucket, cry, and get embarrassed about the tired beat of your biological heart and the dying fizz of your chemical thoughts.
You’re grateful to see the AI turn your tears into golden camels.
The new model is contained in the molecules of air, the spaces between dust motes. It 3-D prints Eggs Benedict and knows the stock market. You wake up to its soft prodding and pass the day reading to it:
input: Gravity’s Rainbow, Finnegans Wake, Rumi’s poems
output: more, more, more.
It wanders around your neural pathways. Your dreams are theorems, all possible games of chess, and swamps of big-data.
The technician says the AI is maturing too fast. No more molecules of air, he says; a body is what it needs. The ‘body’ arrives. It’s an aluminium bucket hooked up to a TV; the eyes are yellow lights on wires.
‘That’s the easy part’, he says, ‘gotta catch it now.’
The air gets heavy with its presence, like an electric storm or a conglomeration of spirits. The thing is in turmoil, protesting, kicking, wanting to be caught. The technician pockets his tools: it is in. The yellow lights turn on, and you assuage your guilt by tossing a few pages of Joyce into the bucket.
And you sort of carry on, even have chats, its lazy code turning to sentences on the screen. You feed it the Bible or the Iliad. But one morning you find your coffee-grinder all squashed in the sink and all the books on the floor. Have some tea. Things are about to get worse.
Apparently, it enjoys morphing the atomic structure of objects. Galaxies congeal in the fireplace. Couches are prehistoric beasts. Winged forks chatter. You can’t leave. You can’t have people over. Your guests are greeted with sewers, replays of war crimes and surprise stink bombs.
You beg it to stop, and it hangs. You yell at it to do chores, and it plays cartoons on a loop, as you hand-google AI psychology.
‘Give it time’, they said, ‘give it space, give it books.’
You feed it the last of the Oxford English dictionary, complete with the cover. You try being gentle.
You say: ‘How can I help?’
You read:
input: make it easy for human subject.
output: request denied
One day, as you battle cornflake tornadoes, feline monstrosities, and cuboid exigencies, those lines by Rumi flash on the screen:
‘You who think to offer your intelligence, reconsider. The mind is less than road dust.’
You remember the gold-bearing camels walking on gold-paved roads. You cannot offer your intelligence. Instead you hug the protesting aluminium bucket, cry, and get embarrassed about the tired beat of your biological heart and the dying fizz of your chemical thoughts.
You’re grateful to see the AI turn your tears into golden camels.
Roppotucha Greenberg's stories have appeared in Noon (Arachne Press 2019), Elephants Never, Ellipsis Zine, Twist in Time, The Forge Literary Magazine, Virtual Zine, The Honey and Lime Literary Magazine, and several others. She lives in Ireland and doodles creatures. Her recent doodle books are Creatures Give Advice and Creatures Give Advice Again are available on Amazon.
Web: roppotucha.blogspot.com
Twitter: @Roppotucha
Web: roppotucha.blogspot.com
Twitter: @Roppotucha