[Tony Barnstone]

From the comments, it seemed the poem needed expansion for the sake of clarity about key concepts, so I turned it into a double sonnet, hopefully for the better?

THE SINGULARITY

1. The Thousand Monkeys
“If an army of monkeys were strumming on typewriters
they might write all the books in the British Museum.”
--A. S. Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World (1927)

I saw William Shakespeare in my dream,
reflective shadow with a pixeled face
gazing out at me from the flat screen
where all his words are in the database.
And as the dream began to evanesce,
Shakespeare withdrew below what I could find,
under the motherboard. Can consciousness
really monitor the undermind?
The thousand monkeys theory can’t account
for what strange being stirs there, for what appalls
the darkness with its artificial fount
of light that lights this cave made of glass walls,
this O without a figure, being unbeing,
this I without an eye, seeing unseeing.

2. Ex Nihilo
“Man will construct the deux ex machina in his own image.”
--I.J. Good, Speculations Concerning the First Ultraintelligent Machine

We enter fearful, enter the labyrinth
of binaries where yes and no are doors
open and closed at once, where truth and synth
recede like ghosts down endless corridors.
Who made the labyrinth? Who made this womb
of microcircuitry, beast at the core?
What heartless heart? Whose furnace brain? What room
that is no room, what door that is no door?
No one unscrewed the deadbolts from the doors.
No one unscrewed the doors from the doorjambs.
No one released the beasts inside the cores.
No one, Nothing, bred tigers out of lambs.
And no rough beast will watch us with blank gaze
when Nothing comes alive and leaves the maze.

1) Per Glenn's suggestion, cut original title (What Mortal Hand or Eye) and used "Ex Nihilo")
2) Working from questions of clarity, expanded by adding a first sonnet to gloss the second
3) Per Susan's suggestion, revamped the lines
4) Per Glenn, put quotation author names in same format

Who constructed life from death, this room
that is no room, this door that is no door?
----------------------------
ORIGINAL POST BELOW
A little stuck on my Florida poem, so I guess I'll post the latest and move on for now. Here's my AI poem, the first draft of which I wrote in collaboration with CHATGPT2, though only a few words remain of that draft. Still, I thought it would be interesting to write about the dangers of AI by consulting AI about the issue.


Ex Nihilo

“Man will construct the deux ex machina in his own image.”
Good, I. J., Speculations Concerning the First Ultraintelligent Machine

We enter fearful, enter the labyrinth
of binaries where yes and no are doors
open and closed at once, where truth and synth
recede like ghosts down endless corridors.
Who made the labyrinth? Who made this womb
of microcircuitry, beast at the core?
Who constructed life from death, this room
that is no room, this door that is no door?
No one unscrewed the deadbolts from the doors.
No one unscrewed the doors from the doorjambs.
No one released the beasts inside the cores.
No one, Nothing, bred tigers out of lambs.
And no rough beast will watch us with blank gaze
when Nothing comes alive and leaves the maze.