..

1.
Generative artificial intelligence
As for-profit tech makes some obverse sense:
It markets to itself, its own monopoly
Secured on genuine stupidity.

.

2.
The chattering class, of which society is knit:
Such empty suits, chock-full of so much shit.

.

3.
Though I am all for proper dress, and so lament
Our degraded sense of same, you’re a glutton,
Strutting as if the suits on which you’ve overspent
Were spun from the lint in God’s belly button.

.

.

Stephen M. Dickey is a Slavic linguist at the University of Kansas. He has published widely on Slavic verbal categories, and has published translations of Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian fiction and poetry including Meša Selimović’s Death and the Dervish, Borislav Pekić’s How to Quiet a Vampire, and Miljenko Jergović’s Ruta Tannenbaum. He has published poetry in various journals including Shot Glass Journal, Trinacria, The Lyric, Rat’s Ass Review, Lighten Up Online, Better Than Starbucks, Asses of Parnassus, and Blue Unicorn

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5 Responses

    • Stephen M. Dickey

      Thanks Cheryl, maybe more than most would like.
      I actually had another version, which might be a little more substantive:
      The chattering class, of which society is knit:
      Such empty suits, full of tendentious shit.

      Reply
  2. Daniel Kemper

    I like the sharp little snaps, the clap-backs, in these three pieces. AI is here. It’s also currently dumb and looks like it will be for a while. Well, sort of. Basically, it’s crowd-sourced information means it has rushed to the sixth-grade reading level of sit-coms etc. But, being capital-driven, there will be a product mix you can be sure, based on a subscription price. For example, searches on the internet, I swear have gotten worse, not better in the last 18-24 months. (6th grade). The issue is that the right answer isn’t the best answer (for them). It costs cpu/gpu cycles and memory to do deep searches, and that expenditure of resources must get paid for. Otherwise, it seems clear searches are pre-limited to a certain resource commitment, but then cloud the answer with generalities and conversations and always the invitation to “…and more.”

    The point is, that AI will run into limits. I’m reminded of an old Star Trek Episode. Where some perfect beings took on human form for something or other. Then found a lot of complications were entailed. “You took on human form and now you’re stuck with it!”

    I digressed upon digression–sorry.

    Three bitingly wonderful and thought-provoking pieces. Keep ’em coming!

    Reply
    • Stephen M. Dickey

      Thank you Daniel.
      I had no idea about the cost of searches, that’s my level of economic knowledge here. I wonder whether something that I have just started experiencing is tied in with what you are describing about the last six months: I was chagrined to recognize that searches for interpretations/analyses of literary works now produce generative AI content, and since they apparently include commentary drawn from other works, are useless. For example, I recently decided to see what Internet lit critics have to say about “I See the Boys of Summer” by D. Thomas. I got “analyses” that had plot elements that were very confusing until I realized they had drawn from something else too. Worthless.

      Reply
  3. C.B. Anderson

    Sorry to chime in so late, but these are pure Dickey, and probably somewhat dicey for the average reader. I am slightly above average.

    Reply

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