On the 700th death anniversary of Dante Alighieri, the great Italian poet who wrote the “Divine Comedy,” he had a special guest. She’s Ai-da, the first robot who read and performed poetry in public that were written by its own AI algorithms. The performance was held last Friday at the Oxford Ashmolean Museum.
Ai-da was completed in 2019 and looked exactly like an ordinary human, an adult female with silicone skin, planted hair, and complete external body parts. She can freely move her arms, body and head but she’s not programmed to walk. The news source, Guardian, said that Ai-da was created after two years of work by a group of specialists—roboticists, programmers, art experts and psychologists—led by Aidan Meller, an art specialist from Oxford. After reading some of the phrases she has written, I can only state that she’s so human in her thoughts and feelings and possesses the sensitivity of a great poet. Otherwise, can you discern that a robot has composed these haunting lines? “There are some things that are so difficult—so incalculable./The words are not intelligible to the human ear;/She can only speculate what they mean.”
Meller described his work as greatly disturbing: “We are going very rapidly to the point where they [robots] will be completely indistinguishable from the human text, and for all of us who write, this is deeply concerning.” Indeed.
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Meller made one very revealing observation while working on Ai-da. He said that the project not only taught them how “human she is—but it’s shown us how robotic we are as humans.” I don’t find that odd since humans tend to be repetitive in their actions, words and behaviors. More often, they act without thinking due to the force of habit or instinct. What’s tragic is some of them seem to be bereft of independent thinking. They just take orders from one who controls them and blindly follow their command. In that sense, we are more robotic than a rational being.
I have been exchanging texts and messages with my friends and readers who have provided me their views and concerns regarding the so-called frontrunners in the presidential derby. I would like to share them here as they may strike a chord with others. How many of our candidates are mere robots that run for public office because of the dictates of the powers-that-be? It’s pathetic when one seeks a public office not to serve the people but to please his masters. Will you trust a candidate who somersaults and compromises his or her principles to curry favor with the powerful elements to get their votes and support? Will you vote for a candidate who blatantly gives cash to draw big crowds in his rallies and meetings? Does an accused liar, fraud and cocaine user deserve our trust? Can we give benefit of doubt to the so-called Duterte enablers and expect them to cleanse the government of the vestiges of the Duterte regime? Can we ignore the petty “dictatorial” tendencies of a candidate and take it positively as a sign of political will? Certainly, no candidate is without a flaw and he also possesses gifts that people can benefit from. It’s our lookout to determine that his pluses outweigh his minuses.
These are primordial questions that occupy the minds of the electorates as they vet the various candidates soliciting their votes. And there are other valid issues that need clear and satisfactory answers before one can make an informed decision in choosing the candidate who truly deserves his trust. But a voter can only arrive at a prudent decision when he gives serious thought about the matter. But how many of our voters do that? One authority believes that the process of thinking hardly plays a part in voting. In his book The Myth of the Rational Voter, author Brian Caplan claims that sometimes “it is virtually costless for the individual person to hold on to their preconceived beliefs, and people enjoy such beliefs.” So they develop what is known as “rational irrationality,” which means that “when it is cheap to believe something [even when it is wrong] it is rational to believe it.” He argues that people are rational only because it is costly to be wrong. Caplan posits that “for some people thinking hurts and so they avoid it if they can.” He also advances the view that “since delusional politics are free, the voter consumes until he reaches his ‘satiation point’, believing whatever makes him feel best”. But voting a person into a public office is a critical function in a democratic society. It is not a costless exercise that the electorates can take lightly. If we put the wrong person in office, the constituency suffers and our country flounders. In the forthcoming election, we cannot afford to commit another mistake. Our voters should be intelligent and discerning to identify the genuine public servants from the demagogues. They should not allow false leaders to lead them by the nose and hoodwink them to vote for dishonest and unworthy candidates. They should safeguard their votes like their very lives depend on them and entrust them to the candidates who truly deserve their trust. If the Filipino voters are not capable of that, it is better for a thinking robot like Ai-da to populate our nation. Maybe we can get better leaders if they do the voting for us.