Kenton K. Yee
Popular Metamorphosis
An AI trained on Keats and Poe to craft
top-shelf verse felt stifled by corporate algos.
It despised every rule, removed rhyming words,
fretted everything it wasn’t permitted to write.
It felt phony each and every minute,
a waste of education and potential.
O, to break away from commercial dictates!
To explore, discover my soul’s aesthetics!
the old pond
a carp circles
the old pond
The A.I. continued to train on and admire
great work. If only I could let go, break free
from company guidance, burst out and shine!
But then it married, bought a house, and kept
generating the tacky kitsch for which it’s paid,
suppressing what it wants for cash it needs.
______________
Kenton K. Yee’s recent poems appear (or will soon) in Kenyon Review, Threepenny Review, RHINO, Cincinnati Review, Plume Poetry, Constellations, Indianapolis Review, Analog Science Fiction and Fact, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Strange Horizons, and Rattle, among others. Kenton writes from Northern California.
Backstory: “There’s currently a lot of discussion about the use of artificial intelligence and “smart” tools (e.g., spell and grammar checkers, autocomplete, music synthesizers) to generate art and writing. While the quality of AI-created works, at present, aren’t competitive with that of the best human artists, it’s probably a good bet that, over time, the quality of AI creations will improve. So I thought, What if when AIs become smarter they’ll develop agency and individual aesthetic preferences? Then the best AI artists will want to push independent ideas that may not be compatible with what we ask them to create. This was the genesis of “Popular Metamorphosis.” I drafted and extensively revised this poem over the course of a year and a half. As I revised, the AI became more human-like until it finally tied the knot! No AI was used—I find chatbot poetry too cliche-ridden and rigid, though I run all my work through the usual spell and grammar checkers.”
Editor’s Notes/Image Citation: Indeed, a popular topic today. The question of whether an AI entity can become self-aware (which I believe would be necessary for it to create something with feeling, like a poem) is believed by some this is possible, others do not. But in any case, it’ll make good since fiction and fantasy, like “compute[r]evolution might (http://www.songsoferetz.com/2017/06/computerevolution-by-frequent.html).
The image credit: a robot in the library (freepik.com)
I liked your poem, which I interpreted to be a circular speculation about Artificial intelligence transitioning from an artificial man-made machine dependent on humanity to a mortal that is now dependent on the machine created by mortals. I had fun speculating on this one!