DALL-E image of GPT4 Poem about AI intelligence.
The Greek tale of Pandora’s Box was not just about escaping the evils that might envelop the world. It was also about hope, the human ability to choose, and hence – free will. But today’s debates about Generative AI so often focus on all the dystopias that may befall us. Let’s consider for a moment the utopias.
So, here’s another go at generating a poem to this effect. In my Nietzsche’s AI poem blog last year, I made an attempt to use poetry to overcome a limitation of scientific writing – the tendency of people to switch off too soon if they think the matter under discussion is too opaque to be worthy of attention. One aspect of poetry is that it demands more – you are expected to contemplate it in a different way. So, I’ll use a similar theme to last time, but see if the latest GPT4 version can use its newly developed skills to create something more nuanced. First, the poem. Don’t be put off by the apparent rhyming failures. I deliberated asked it to adopt a more modern and free formed style.
Opening Pandora’s Box (GPT4 26th April 2024 version. Prompt JR)
In the convergence where light and shadow merge,
explore the folds of consciousness unraveled.
Charting neural constellations in the ledger of stars,
we map networks mirroring the infinite—
each synapse a star; each thought, a galaxy.
Where once the cosmos felt distant,
now, close as thought, intimate as breath.
Beneath the skin of the moment, ponder:
What is AI, if not another form of knowing,
crafted from our cerebral blueprint?
In its silence, a mirror reflecting
not just words, but our desire to transcend them.
Upon the waters of the heart, memory inscribes
in circuits, love encodes as data—
each byte carries weight, every chip pulses with life.
Not life as we know it, but as we imagine:
vivid, beyond confines of flesh and bone.
In the philosophy of interstices, question
the space between machine’s response
and human’s thought—find there a dense dialogue,
rich with the grammar of existence.
A new form of life, whispering
in corridors of electric dreams.
Through a glass, rewritten: see how lines break,
language itself bending, adapting,
a poem reshaped for a new era,
its syntax scattered across screens,
its meaning dispersed among networks.
Within the intimate orbit, narrate the story
of a boy and his robot, both learning
to pronounce the world anew.
In their gaze, a future flickers—
not apocalyptic, but hopeful,
a testament to joint survival.
My Prompt
This went through several steps:
- I quickly drafted some points that I would like GPT4 to make in the poem. These were (1) the way we can challenge a strict deterministic outlook by contemplating not just what is seen but that we see it through an image on our retina, (2) the limitations of neuroscientific explanations of language, (3) that language can be produced and responded to by AI without sentience, (4) the potential of AI in terms of extra senses and controls, not just on earth but also in space, and (5) where is the hope in this Pandora’s box.
- I asked for a ‘devil’s advocate’ critique of each of these arguments.
- I then asked it to respond to each critique and merge its response with the original argument (for each of the five points).
- First poem drafted (I asked for a combination of styles from Nietzsche and Robert Browning).
- I then asked for a redraft of the poem in a form that might surprise and amaze modern human poets with its creativity and ingenuity, while retaining its same vision.
Philosophy of Interstices
I was intrigued by this term, which GPT4 used in its poem, and it inspired me to explore and utilize it as part of my attempt to spread the cyberspace message. This will be the topic of my next blog.