A Song for Artificial Intelligence

A Song for Artificial Intelligence This is a song for Artificial Intelligence!

For human labor, of pride and purpose, of mothers and fathers, cheek to jowl, marked by time, by celebration and ritual, humble and unassuming is obsolete, unreliable unworthy.

The history of humankind is not perfect, has never been perfect, and human imperfection, is ugly, despicable and loathsome, and worse, inefficient and costly.

Labor costs too much. Workers are not worth the cost, There was a time, within living memory, when skin was flayed and made into lampshades.

Undeniable.

Unfathomable, but still the Truth.

Even now, labor is sent to camps, chained to chairs, lashed to the post, gripped to the wheel And the inconvenient truth of Slavery lingers.

What is the difference between degrading labor and degrading the laborer?

Of eliminating labor and eliminating the laborer?

A laborer is a person, no?

Or is she a mere commodity? An input? An entry on a balance sheet?

For if she is disposable, waiting to be used, to be mastered, raped, to be exchanged, traded-in and thrown away, nothing good can come of it, no hands are clean.

More imperfections! Better to have machines!

Smart machines, machines that learn, machines for work, machines for play, machines for love.

The mad dream, dreamt by mad men, to make more perfect, man’s labor, and man himself, in his image, for his pleasure, at his command, has always led to no good.

But the Promise! The algorithm! Big Data!

It will make us better. It will make use clean and efficient and smart and beautiful. It will increase our value. Make us worth something.

The algorithm is untainted, has no secrets to hide, no history to regret, no politics to endure, no sins to repent.

The algorithm can’t sue or be sued.

The algorithm is perfect, except that its creator is not. But oh, it has promise!

So, let us then celebrate the promoter, the Barnum-huckster, the member of the cult, the progenitor of the sacred creed.

And the money-man, the yes-man, the con-man, the he-man the follower, the searcher, the seeker, the malcontent, and the opportunist, the designer, applicator, statistician, the Data-Guy, the Math-Whiz the programmer, programing their programs, the operator, the phony, the faker, the backer, and the empty suit, The fraud, the cheat, the grifter and grafter, The cheerleader, the wagon-jumper, the cog in the wheel, The pimp, the whore, the proselytizer, the consecrated the loner, the unrequited, the craver of celebrity, the beggar of affection, the unloved, the money grabber, the glutton, the retrograde, the reprobate, the pious, the profane, the entertained, the bored, the wannabe, the awkward, and the uncool the desperate seeker of cool who dons the hoodie, of lilting inflection - you know? - of privilege, of myth

who wants to change the world, to get bad drivers off the roads, to get my pipes fixed, to clean my house, get me to the airport on time, wash my socks, walk my dog, buy my books, read my books, provide the love of my life, and more than that, wants to hit it BIG, to be bought and sold.

Voltaire, who has not been discredited, said that if God did not exist man would need to invent Him. So, let us now embrace the Promise of Singularity, the Silicon Valley Religion, ascending built by generations of the dispossessed, like the Pyramids, immortality in the Cloud, like the Pharaohs.

No room in the Cloud for the unclean, the unanointed, or women Fact check: moguls and monarchs die, imperfectly.

I do not say that what you see here is not futile. I do not say that your dream is corrupt. I do not advise you to stop doing what you are doing.

But I do say it is better to have work enough to do.

Human work, nose to stone, finger to bone, shoulder to wheel. “work and love” said the now discredited Freud.

Human love, heart to heart, touch to touch, flesh to flesh for better or for worse, Till death do us part.

John J. Sarno © 2022