Thoughts about AI: A Poet by Any Other Name (Late edition!)
November 26, 2023
Hello Gentle Readers - I missed my “better late than never” promise for Saturday 11/25, but here I am now!
Truth be told, I am so wrapped up in getting my cookbook finished that I need to take a break from committing to an “every Thursday” newsletter for a few weeks.
However, if something catches my eye that I think may also be of interest to you all, I will send out a quick note here and there.
For now, in the spirit of the exponential growth of artificial intelligence (AI) pervading all aspects of our world, I am sharing, via a link I provide after giving you some background, an essay that I wrote in the late 1990s having to do with art and AI.
Here is the context:
I was the Senior Researcher at Kurzweil Technologies, an umbrella company Ray Kurzweil created to nurture a number of Kurzweil companies that used AI in a variety of areas, from creating art to playing the stock market.
I also held the title of Research Analyst and Poet Personality Designer for Ray Kurzweil’s Cybernetic Poet, a project of Kurzweil Cyberart Technologies (KCAT).
Fun Fact: As Ray once pointed out to me, I am perhaps the only person in the world to have had the title Poet Personality Designer.
Click HERE for a clip about Harold Cohen’s AARON program.
It was a lot of fun working with Ray and all the amazingly intelligent people working on the projects, either directly or in support positions.
Some of us working there blithely welcomed such ideas as humans merging with computers once AI reached (reaches?) that exponential level of growth/development.
Some thought Ray and his ideas were a bit or more than a bit kooky. Others - and perhaps this is where I stood, were just along for the ride and enjoying, along with an interesting and challenging job, the excitement of things like Ray’s winning the National Medal of Technology in 1999 and the creation of a female avatar. Her name was Ramona (is? Not sure what’s going on with all that now.) Ray considered her his female alter-ego.
A highlight for me was meeting William Shatner when he came to visit Ray at Kurzweil Technologies and learn more about all the projects.
True story: We were all sitting around the conference table and Mr. Shatner pulled out an item that, not owning a cell phone at the time, I didn’t recognize. “What’s that?” I asked. His assistant glibly answered, “his communicator,” to which Mr. Shatner curtly replied, “Don’t go there.” 😊
Anyway, I also worked with Ray at Kurzweil Music Systems and Kurzweil Applied Intelligence in the 1980s, but stories of those years are for another time.
For now, I will leave you with my essay. It is linked via the title:
Thank you for reading! And you get a picture too. Of course. And it’s a meme! 😉
Wendy
