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Path: ...!weretis.net!feeder9.news.weretis.net!i2pn.org!i2pn2.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: greggdurishan@gmail.com (greggdurishan) Newsgroups: rec.arts.poems, comp.ai.philosophy Subject: Re: The Gates of the Boolean Logic Date: Sun, 11 Aug 2024 02:05:34 +0000 Organization: novaBBS Message-ID: <38876284eff2675c84ce939449abbba3@www.novabbs.com> References: <0be4af94f12485475e9c2947659d80c6@www.novabbs.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Injection-Info: i2pn2.org; logging-data="2152571"; mail-complaints-to="usenet@i2pn2.org"; posting-account="HoZZPUo0R015wiQg7Py3s5hxPUkII4vxHjIW3wQ7baU"; User-Agent: Rocksolid Light X-Rslight-Site: $2y$10$v8af.9YmXglYwi5TfCm9s.YKhVWTzj0VleiMng2fmPaoD5sjBPve6 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 4.0.0 X-Rslight-Posting-User: ed688c2d77016d1eda4c3f2c6c9e93e485da5954 Bytes: 4775 Lines: 60 So what is this silliness about? First, why and how it came to be: it started out just as an idea while listening to a poetry recital and geeking out over favorite poems with fellow poem nerds, while I was teaching CS at SOA. I had been researching a lot about AI in trying to figure out what to teach about it. (My knowledge was 20 years out of date, because my tech career hadn’t had anything to do with it post-college.) After geeking out over Kipling with someone, I thought about how “Gods of the Copy-book Headings”is basically one big “don’t get ahead of yourselves” message, so the parallels in what I could do with a similar warning against AI-hype immediately started flowing, and I set straight to working on it as soon as I got home. I wasn’t sure how well it could all be made to fit together, but everything was falling into place so easily that I wrote a good 60% of it that night. (The middle age-progressive paragraphs with a cambrian/feminian/etc theme weren’t falling into place, but the start and end were largely done.) Initially, I thought maybe I could make it into a teaching-tool for my art-school kids taking cs. Nothing quite spurs ME to try to understand something as when I don’t get a joke, and it’s another one of a hundred ways I tried to squeeze in as much as I was able about the connections between art and science. Nothing is quite so busy as a first year teaching though, and the poem had to sit unfinished until the summer in favor of more practical responsibilities. I am no longer a teacher however, so that freed me from trying to make this a teaching tool per-se, from keeping it at a hs-level, and to use raunchier subject-matter than would be judicious if I still were. SO, there were rules to this game that I tried to uphold, and the most fun part about it is that I was completely unsure if I’d be able to make it work at all, much less as well as I think it ended up fitting together. The first 2 boil down to the joy of impersonation. 1) To mimic the original from every perspective that I could think to consider. The overall meaning being expressed, meanings of as many lines individually as possible, use of the same kinds of themes, phrasings, meter, rhyme schemes… everything that I think an english teacher would be asking kids to analyze in the original. Then to go a little further, from a true english and typography-nerd’s perspective, and try to be precise about things like the capitalization, punctuation, etc. I intend to research the typography of the original printing, font-size, etc… I have found discrepancies in the punctuation in online versions. 2) To express a viewpoint that warns against latest-and-greatest-ism and advocates for timeless wisdom within the context of AI by using arguments that are as technically accurate and as profound as possible, challenging the reader to up their understanding. The overall argument should be what Kipling’s opinion would have been had he lived to see it all and been an AI nerd. 3) To use as much and as varied meta-humor as possible, playing with the basic concepts at the core of AI: meaning, understanding, representation, etc.. In poetical ways by maximizing the ways it could be validly interpreted, using sometimes-contorted ways to make a point, and in technical ways by creating a purposeful obstacle course to any present or future ai that might try to “intepret” it. (I have a follow-up idea to have a conversation with a strong AI about the poem, but that’s for later.) Most particularly, playing with the meanings of hyperlinks: the socially great logical tool of our age. To that end, I’d value any collaborators that could find ways to improve what I have from the perspective of these 3 goals.