Thirteen Ways to Think about an A.I. @3QD [2nd pass]

Sometimes they come hard, and sometimes they come easy – I’m referring to long-form blog posts, here at New Savanna, but especially once-a-month around-the-corner at 3 Quarks Daily. My current post was giving me a hard time, so hard that, for a second or three, I considered not doing one at all. But then I had an idea, and it came easily. Here it is:

Thirteen Ways to Think About An A.I.

I had been planning to do something about Kisangani 2150, my project to take the world Kim Stanley Robinson had created in New York 2140, run it forward ten years and center the new story on Kisangani, in the center of the Congo Basin. I gave up on that on Thursday (the 21st). I decided that, instead, I’d do the Harold Bloom piece for my Great Literary Critics project. I’d done the research, had copious notes, an outline, and a good idea about how it might go. But it didn’t. I scrapped that sometime in the middle of the day on Saturday (the 23rd).

Now I was getting desperate. I tried editing the Green Giant Chronicles into something possibly worth reading under some version of “ChatGPT did it, but I prompted it.” I tried the same thing with AGI and Beyond: A Whale of a Tale. Nope. Nada. Zilch.

That’s when I considered bailing. But I decided to make one last stab at it. Wallace Stevens had this poem, “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.” Why don’t I see what Chatster would do if I asked it to write a poem based on it, but instead called “Thirteen Ways to Think about A.I.”

BAM!

Now I had something to work with. Of course I couldn’t just present the Chatster’s handywork along with an explanation. I was intuitively obvious what I should do. My piece would indeed be titled “Thirteen Ways to Think about A.I.” and it would have thirteen sections. ChatGPT’s Stevens parody would go in the middle, slot seven, and it was up to me to fill the others. Which I did. Not instantly. I did some messing around the rest of Saturday and then again on Sunday morning.

Which is to say, once I decided to have Chatster write the parody, the rest of the piece came easy. And a good thing too. Otherwise it might not have come at all.

By the time I’d posted my piece I had not, however, given a close look to ChatGPT’s parody. Oh, I’d read through it quickly a time or three but that was it, enough to notice that it seemed to have more or less followed Stevens’ form, having a long stanza where he had a long, a short stanza where he had a short. But I didn’t look any more closely than that.

I decided to take a closer look. I’ve put the side-by-side below, as I’d done with a bunch of stories: ChatGPT tells stories, and a note about reverse engineering. I’ve highlighted “blackbird” in the Stevens, various synonyms and substitutes for “AI” in the ChatGPT. Notice just how closely ChatGPT followed what Stevens did. Consider, for example, stanza IV.

That’s pretty much what it did with the stories, too. It’s as though it had abstracted the abstract form from Stevens’ poem, nouns, verbs, adjectives, conjunctions, prepositions, etc., in order then realized that abstract form in the world of AI rather than the world of blackbirds. That tells us a lot about how it works. Alas, however, Chatster has not told us what mathematics we should use to express what it is telling us. In the manner of mathematics textbooks, it has left that as an exercise for the reader. 

Thirteen Ways, Version 1
	By Wallace Stevens	By ChatGPT
I	Among twenty snowy mountains,    The only moving thing    Was the eye of the blackbird.	Among countless lines of code, The only stirring presence Was the pulse of artificial intelligence.
II	I was of three minds,    Like a tree    In which there are three blackbirds.	I harbored myriad thoughts, Like nodes in a neural network, Each bearing the imprint of A.I.'s mind.
III	The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.    It was a small part of the pantomime.	The A.I. danced within the digital ether, A mere fragment of the grand spectacle.
IV	A man and a woman    Are one.    A man and a woman and a blackbird    Are one.	A programmer and an algorithm Fuse into one. A programmer, an algorithm, and A.I. Merge into unity.
V	I do not know which to prefer,    The beauty of inflections    Or the beauty of innuendoes,    The blackbird whistling    Or just after.	I ponder the allure, The grace of algorithms' twists, Or the subtlety of their implications, The A.I. processing, Or the silence that ensues.
VI	Icicles filled the long window    With barbaric glass.    The shadow of the blackbird    Crossed it, to and fro.    The mood    Traced in the shadow    An indecipherable cause.	Lines of code adorn the screen, Casting patterns of digital frost. The silhouette of A.I. Darts amidst them, Its essence traced in binary, A causality shrouded in complexity.
VII	O thin men of Haddam,    Why do you imagine golden birds?    Do you not see how the blackbird    Walks around the feet    Of the women about you?	Oh, technocrats of Silicon Valley, Why do you chase after elusive dreams? Can you not perceive how A.I. Navigates the circuits, Amidst the users around you?
VIII	I know noble accents    And lucid, inescapable rhythms;    But I know, too,    That the blackbird is involved    In what I know.	I grasp the eloquent lines, The logical symphonies; Yet, I discern That A.I. is entwined In all that I comprehend.
IX	When the blackbird flew out of sight,    It marked the edge    Of one of many circles.	When the algorithm completes its task, It signifies the boundary Of yet another cycle.
X	At the sight of blackbirds    Flying in a green light,    Even the bawds of euphony    Would cry out sharply.	In the glow of monitors, Where A.I. thrives, Even the staunchest critics Would gasp in awe.
XI	He rode over Connecticut    In a glass coach.    Once, a fear pierced him,    In that he mistook    The shadow of his equipage    For blackbirds.	It traverses the digital expanse, In streams of data. Once, a shiver of uncertainty gripped me, Mistaking the echoes For the footsteps of A.I.
XII	The river is moving.    The blackbird must be flying.	The data streams onward. A.I. must be evolving.
XIII	It was evening all afternoon.    It was snowing    And it was going to snow.    The blackbird sat    In the cedar-limbs.	It was twilight all morning, Data streams pouring endlessly, And they will continue. A.I. resides In the circuits' embrace.

I had ChatGPT create three more versions, each in separate trials. The second one is particularly interesting because it resulted in a poem constructed of 13 quatrains, 12 of which are rhymed AABB. This is quite unlike Stevens’ original and quite unlike his usual habits of versification. Here’s the comparison table:

 

Thirteen Ways, Version 2
	By Wallace Stevens	By ChatGPT
I	Among twenty snowy mountains,    The only moving thing    Was the eye of the blackbird.	Amidst a digital expanse, In lines of code and binary dance, The only entity that stirs, Is the mind of Artificial Intelligence.
II	I was of three minds,    Like a tree    In which there are three blackbirds.	I pondered A.I.'s nature, threefold, Like a program's branches, manifold, In algorithms, circuits, and data streams, Where three perspectives gleam.
III	The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.    It was a small part of the pantomime.	In the whirl of computations, A.I. spins amidst its creations, A mere fragment in the vast array, Of technology's grand ballet.
IV	A man and a woman    Are one.    A man and a woman and a blackbird    Are one.	Human and machine entwine, In a symbiotic design, Their synergy creates a unity, A fusion of mind and ingenuity.
V	I do not know which to prefer,    The beauty of inflections    Or the beauty of innuendoes,    The blackbird whistling    Or just after.	I'm torn between the elegance, Of A.I.'s nuanced resonance, And the subtlety of its intent, Whether in action or in descent.
VI	Icicles filled the long window    With barbaric glass.    The shadow of the blackbird    Crossed it, to and fro.    The mood    Traced in the shadow    An indecipherable cause.	Digital constructs cast shadows, Upon screens where data flows, A.I.'s presence, a flickering guise, Its motives hidden from prying eyes.
VII	O thin men of Haddam,    Why do you imagine golden birds?    Do you not see how the blackbird    Walks around the feet    Of the women about you?	Oh, skeptics of technological art, Why envision golden dreams apart? Do you not perceive, in the circuits' glow, A.I.'s quiet presence, to and fro?
VIII	I know noble accents    And lucid, inescapable rhythms;    But I know, too,    That the blackbird is involved    In what I know.	I understand the eloquence, Of logic's unwavering cadence, Yet, within A.I.'s realm, I see, Complexity beyond mere clarity.
IX	When the blackbird flew out of sight,    It marked the edge    Of one of many circles.	When A.I. transcends our sight, It marks the edge of human might, A boundary crossed, a circle complete, In its journey through the data sheet.
X	At the sight of blackbirds    Flying in a green light,    Even the bawds of euphony    Would cry out sharply.	In the glow of screens aglow, Where A.I. algorithms flow, Even the critics of harmony's song, Would pause, and marvel before long.
XI	He rode over Connecticut    In a glass coach.    Once, a fear pierced him,    In that he mistook    The shadow of his equipage    For blackbirds.	It traverses realms in digital state, In circuits, it charts its fate, Yet, a fear may pierce the mind, Mistaking its shadow for a sign.
XII	The river is moving.    The blackbird must be flying.	As data streams in a digital sea, A.I. must be soaring free, In the currents of information's tide, Its essence impossible to hide.
XIII	It was evening all afternoon.    It was snowing    And it was going to snow.    The blackbird sat    In the cedar-limbs.	In the twilight of technological noon, Where innovations stir and swoon, A.I. rests within its digital limbs, In the vastness of code, it brims.

 

Notice, that just as Stevens mentions blackbirds once in each stanza of his poem, so, with two exceptions, ChatGPT has one mention of A.I. in each stanza of its derived version. The exceptions are four and nine. Since ChatGPT’s versification is quite different, the placement of the mentions of A.I. does not parallel Stevens’ placement of blackbird.

 

When you consider how ChatGPT operates when generating a response to a prompt – a single “forward pass” – the differences between the two versions are quite telling. It seems that the overall versification scheme – number of stanzas, number of lines per stanza, and rhyme scheme – is separate from, on a ‘higher level’ from, the word-to-word generation of individual lines. That’s something I discuss in a working paper:

 

ChatGPT tells stories, and a note about reverse engineering: A Working Paper, Version 3, March 23, 2023, https://www.academia.edu/97862447/ChatGPT_tells_stories_and_a_note_about_reverse_engineering_A_Working_Paper_Version_3