13 Ways of Looking at AI
A poetic musing today – it’s National Poetry Month after all, which I’ve foreshadowed aplenty in recent issues – though to hold the line a bit today’s writing does have overlap with business and technology.
I first encountered the poem Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird in college, and it’s stuck with me since for its strong visuals of blackbirds twinned with the themes of perspective and relationship.
I was an English and Econ guy in school, so it’s also memorable because its creator, Wallace Stevens, was known as the “businessman poet”; he wrote acclaimed poetry (winning a Pulitzer Prize) while earning his keep as a vice president for a large insurance company. Oh, and I also seem to remember he had an incident with Ernest Hemingway that involved some rowdy fisticuffs – tough to forget drunken writers brawling.
Written 108 years ago, I’ve been thinking about this poem's evergreen themes and it sparked me to consider our own connection to technology, specifically artificial intelligence (AI). I'm using this poem as a platform to creatively examine AI's role in our lives, with a twist; I’ve replaced each instance of where it should read “blackbird” with “AI.”
I hope you don’t mind, Wallace. 😉
Godspeed, friends.
Russ
Thirteen Ways of Looking at an AI
I
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the AI.
II
I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three AIs.
III
The AI whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.
IV
A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and an AI
Are one.
V
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The AI whistling
Or just after.
VI
Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the AI
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.
VII
O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the AI
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?
VIII
I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the AI is involved
In what I know.
IX
When the AI flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.
X
At the sight of AIs
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.
XI
He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For AIs.
XII
The river is moving.
The AI must be flying.
XIII
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The AI sat
In the cedar-limbs.
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💥 Quick Hits
• Dying to Serve Tour – When Doug Ruch found out he had terminal cancer, he decided to spend his remaining days volunteering in each of our country's 50 states. As luck would have it, he's volunteering today in my home state at the Idaho Food Bank in Meridian, Idaho.
• New standards for B Corps – B Lab, the nonprofit that operates B Corp certification, has just released its new standards for certification, which go into effect next year.
• Not a proud moment – Large companies – saying their names here – Comcast, Anheuser-Busch, Diageo, among others – are stepping back from their commitments to Pride Festivals and other DEI initiatives.
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