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| Detail from “The School of Athens” a fresco by Raphael (1483 – 1520) [Click image to call up all published instalments] |
A poet friend of mine posted an amazing picture, then announced it was generated by artificial intelligence.
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| “Jungle Angel,” free from Pixabay, purported to have been AI-generated |
I was not able to find out what kind of input the AI started with that led to this kind of “creation.” But it got me wondering whether creation by artificial intelligence was really possible, and should I be scared that someday poets like myself would be obsolete while boxes of silicon and rare earth minerals wax lyrically about the day’s concerns to inspire us to be better parts of robotic society?
I shiver, and yet I am inspired – in my familiar human way.
The Machines Are Taking Over
There are no wings on angels,
nor clouds of gathered spirits
celebrating lives lived
while sipping on the
mixed drinks of the gods.
We are bound to this sphere,
rooted in her soil,
only dreaming of free flight,
flesh held by weighty issues,
souls trapped in a weave of webs
preying as we are also devoured,
recycled and repurposed,
Gaia gathering speed
to break free from her own captor
who wants to put her to the fire.
| Copyright © 2023 by Maik Strosahl Michael E. Strosahl has focused on poetry for over twenty years, during which time he served a term as President of the Poetry Society of Indiana. He relocated to Jefferson City, Missouri, in 2018 and currently co-hosts a writers group there. |
The machines may or may not be taking over, but they are helping out, even in the area of psychotherapy. From an article on NPR: “Advances in artificial intelligence — such as Chat GPT — are increasingly being looked to as a way to help screen for, or support, people who dealing with isolation, or mild depression or anxiety. Human emotions are tracked, analyzed and responded to, using machine learning that tries to monitor a patient's mood, or mimic a human therapist's interactions with a patient. It's an area garnering lots of interest, in part because of its potential to overcome the common kinds of financial and logistical barriers to care.” [“Therapy by chatbot? The promise and challenges in using AI for mental health ”]
ReplyDeleteAnd I just saw this, in The New Yorker:
ReplyDelete“
Can A.I. Treat Mental Illness?”
New computer systems aim to peer inside our heads—and to help us fix what they find there.
By Dhruv Khullar February 27, 2023