As I open this blank page, AI recommends that I might want to write a bedtime story for an 8- year-old about dinosaurs; or I might want to create a low-budget three-day trip to Paris; or create a summer vacation shopping list. I hadn’t considered doing any of those things, but now that you mention it, the story about dinosaurs got me thinking. I make the dinosaur green, since I just read that green makes you feel better. The dinosaur isn’t fierce, but cleverly sits at the margin, disguised as a modest pencil, encouraging me to let it have a chance, to give it work to do! To allow it to take the weight off, to shoulder some of the creative burden!
[an aside] From an MIT research project: The energy resources required to power the AI revolution are staggering, and the world’s biggest tech companies have made it a top priority to harness ever more of that energy, aiming to reshape our energy grids in the process.
Wordsworth:
“The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—
Little we see in Nature that is ours:
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! . . . .
What would I be giving away to the dinosaur? What is me? I ungrammatically ask myself. (Not “Who am I?” I’m much more interested in the “me,” which suggests to me a more deeply internal sense of self.) What is this gritty, pained, driven, hunk of flesh, bone, and electrical impulses? I’m composed of all that I read, all that I see and hear, yet they aren’t me. The soul of me is more like music, always rising and passing away. What’s on paper are the musical notations of me. The memoirs of me.
I’ve been reading Patti Smith’s new memoir, Bread of Angels. Why, I don’t know, because when she was performing, I was changing diapers and going to school, only faintly connected to the revolutions of the 60s and 70s. But I have taken upon myself the task of filling in some of the gaps of those years (and others). Frankly, I was unaware of almost everything, as shell-shocked by my own life as I was.
Back to my question: what is me? Just like AI, I have been all these years collecting data, packing myself with more pixels of all sorts. I am pretty fat with them, now! And you’ve been doing the same. Should we be afraid of losing ourselves in the seductive robot-language? I don’t think so. The only way I could lose me is if I quit trusting my own voice.
Don’t you think this is why there are so many memoirs? People want to hold onto their own imperfect language, their own angle on the world. There can be no “angle” if the information about us comes from the mercilessly wide-open lens of AI.
We have a hugely popular National Writers Series here in Traverse City. Its value is that the famous authors who visit don’t read (much) from their work. They’re just talking, answering questions. They’re being people. You can see who/what they are.
The P.S. . . .
I’m finished with all the readings for Clockwork that I had planned until Spring, I think. In the meantime, I’ll have back surgery (whenever the gods arrange it) and recover from it.