Imaging an 'artistic' A.I. world of 2050

I've yet to think of all the dreadful misuses of AI. This is deliberate; I care not to think of the world post-me — in which my daughter will live. I'm fine contemplating a world where there is no P.M. Carpenter (as I'm sure many who've known me are). My mind has always held a fascination — no Woody Allen anguish in this grey matter — about the eternal void, the undiscovered country, as Shakespeare put it, which leads to the occasional, Well then let's get on with it. I am not a patient man, and my patience runs especially diaphanous when some looming question demands an answer. I love research, and post-me seems the ultimate research project.

Yet my ambiguous afterlife will depart from a world in which AI looms not as a question, but as a certainty. Its presence in human life will be as common as Wheaties©. Perhaps it already is and I'm just in the dark, which is also common. There will be many things of this planet I shall miss, if any consciousness survives with which to miss them, but artificial intelligence won't be one; not, that is, the sort of counterfeit brain that produces "artistic" waste material more suited for flowing from a sewer plant's sluice gate. I do anguish like Mr. Allen, yet my soulful pain emerges from imagining my daughter's world as one where dreck will dominate art.          

Reading a 2023 Atlantic piece on AI and poetry just now inspired me to ask CoPilot to write a sonnet about the year 1939 that my beloved W.H. Auden would write. I give AI credit for this much; it writes must faster than I would prose or Auden would poetry — as in, within five seconds. This is what CoPilot gave me, the still-here-me, to riff a bit on Walt Whitman:

In the year of '39, a world aflame,
As nations grapple with impending storm,
The echoes of despair, a mournful refrain,
As shadows lengthen, and hope is worn.

In Europe's heart, a continent divides,
With tensions rising, ominous and dire,
The drums of war resound, relentless tides,
As fear and dread engulf the hearts afire.

But 'neath the surface, whispers of resolve,
A steadfast spirit, undeterred, unbowed,
In the face of darkness, souls evolve,
To rise above, and lift a broken shroud.

Though darkness looms, a beacon still remains,
A glimmer of hope amidst the ceaseless rains.

Here we find the world grappling with impending storm, as one might grapple with a dark and stormy night. Tensions — ominous. And drums of war for heaven's sake? But thank God a beacon still remains. One could go on, if one is made of sturdier stuff than I. 

Not that anyone will be reading poetry in 2050 ... yet if I'm mistaken and some well-knit minds endure, this is what they'll discover from the century past:

I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night....

Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.

Here is Auden's September 1, 1939, or rather the first and last stanzas, and its human brilliance — a low dishonest decade; The unmentionable odour of death; wherever the Just / Exchange their messages — is incomparable. By a machine. Chaucer and Dante could match it, Keats could match it, Shakespeare matched it and commonly outmatched it whenever he took hold of pen.  

Which will my daughter read in 2050? Will Auden survive as my consciousness may not? Among others, will Shakespeare ever be read on coffee breaks and in high school English classes or will the latest Twilight be carried omnipresently to work and students asked to submit AI versions of Elizabethan genius? 

Damn it sure does worry me. But this too shall pass.

Comments

[VoiceOfReason]

Perhaps the best application of AI will be its use by Corporate Underlings and Assistant Professors to generate the reams of useless dreck endlessly demanded by Management and Administration, thus freeing them to accomplish the things they were actually hired to accomplish. For sure, Management and Administration will not know the difference, since, by then, their demands for more dreck will likewise be artificially generated. If they are not already...a perfect feedback loop, if you ask me.

[Anne J]

To be honest, my idea of "heaven" is eternal nothingness, the same nothing as before I was born, or even my parents and ancestors were born. I figure if that is what death is, then we've already had practice.

My idea of "hell" is eternal consciousness.