Artificial intelligence… and they call it progress!

This week, poet and artist Frieda Hughes has a chilling run-in with an AI bot that was deceptively human…

‘The sanitised bunker of artificial brain’ (iStock)

PROGRESS

I stare at the online questionnaire; it asks if I’d comply

And allow my work to educate AI.

If only my answer could shore up the wall of protest

And keep art elsewhere. But minds are made up.

We will become obsolete; our efforts absorbed.

AI will suck up our words and images

And ingest our music. It will rifle through

The products of our thoughts and feelings, of our energy,

To fill the infinity of its endless belly until we are drained like lakes,

But not understood by the machinery that has just eliminated

Any need for our perpetuation. Its facsimile of our mental activity

Will simply replace us, better and more faultless than before,

And less argumentative – without conscience.

The human experience behind our every decision will be

Eliminated as unnecessary. The illogical mind and the curiosity of self

Will have no place in the sanitised bunker of artificial brain

In which we will struggle for air, until despondency

Obliterates the outlines of our own existence.

There are not enough human beings who can make a difference

To overcome those who would replace the essential ‘us’.