if_ai_ate_my_soul ovenbird I was very interested in raze’s experiment outlined in ai_and_vague_metaphors. I wondered what AI would do with my own words. I was hesitant to feed it any of my writing as I know this just bolsters the machine, but I gave it some samples of my recent blathes and asked it to write me a short prose poem in the same style. It gave me this: “I held your fear like an unlit candle, waiting for the wick to remember its flame. All around us the floorboards were turning back into trees, sending up shoots of green light that split the drywall and drank the dark. You were smaller than a memory, folded into the pocket of a coat I haven't worn in years, whispering names of streets that never had pavement. I listened with my whole chest, letting the static of my ribs become a cradle. If the house dissolves into salt, I will lick the windows until we are clean. We are made of everything we refused to bury, and the soil is already singing.” It reads like a dream, which makes sense, because many of my blathes are made up of dream imagery. And like the piece AI wrote for raze, this piece has some compelling moments. I like the first sentence, though upon reflection it doesn’t make sense. Why is fear unlit? Why do we want to light it? Wouldn’t that be igniting fear and isn’t that the opposite of soothing? And though the second sentence has no obvious relationship to the first one, dreams DO have disconnected imagery, and some of my blathes follow a fragmented pattern. “Letting the static of my ribs become a cradle” mixes metaphors in a strange way, but sometimes it’s interesting to make unusual connections. It doesn’t make perfect sense but there’s a rhythm and flow to it that’s rather pleasing. Why are we suddenly dissolving into salt? No clue. But I like the last line and it does sound a bit like something I would write. Does this sound like me? Maybe it’s not so far off. And if so, is my own writing full of shitty metaphors that don’t make proper sense? Is my own writing hollow? This experiment mostly made me doubt my own voice. If someone read my writing could they mistake it for AI? If AI is a “bad” writer, am I a “bad” writer too? All of this just reinforces my desire to stay far far FAR away from AI. I want to generate my own poems, even if they fail in their attempts to convey the world through language, even if my poems are “bad.” My failures are, at least, good faith attempts at writing out my heart. AI has no heart to write. It is always, on some level, free associating. It can adopt my cadence and themes but what it writes is, fundamentally, empty because it has no source material that’s rooted in its own experience. It is a mimic, but it can’t understand. Like raze, I think I’ll just go about writing as many poems as my brain will spit out. Maybe they’re not “good” poems, but they’re human poems and that has to count for something. 261028 ... raze it would taste walnut dust and wonder wearied by the damage it was dealt through all my years of yearning, and maybe a small song or two not yet fully formed. it would chip its teeth on self-belief ground down to a jagged stone damp with doubt. it would take in all i loved and wanted not to love but went on loving anyway. and it wouldn't even have the decency to chew before it swallowed. 261028 ... epitome of incomprehensibility ovenbird - To me, it doesn't sound like you. It doesn't sound horrible, but I can't find either a core idea or a clear transition between parts. 261029 ... e_o_i I'm reminded, somewhat randomly, of something a music teacher said. This was the composition teacher who wasn't a fan of twelve-tone music because it was too restrictive. That's not toooo far from my opinion, but he also used a word like "soulless" and the example he played right after seemed to disprove this: it was an early piece by Olivier Messiaen, which to me sounded as if only Messiaen could have written it. I felt like answering, "No! It has a soul! It has Messiaen's soul!" I'd like to think AI can't capture this sort of "soul," but (o me of little faith), it might be more like a sliding scale, with some styles in music or writing more easily imitated than others, or some imitations of musicians or writers more accurate than others. But it won't be as good *as a whole* (in my opinion) even if only in the "it's not the destination, it's the journey" sort of way. All these caveats, as if to say "Don't trust too much in my Olivier-Messaienic worship." (But let me not be so irreverelevant to his Catholic Buddhist soul (a silly reference to my little_known_facts_about_Switzerland, though the dude wasn't Swiss - ah well, France can be Catholic Buddhist too sometimes).) 261029 ... ovenbird I appreciate you saying that the AI attempt doesn't sound like me, because I was a bit worried! 261029 what's it to you? who go blather from