Out July 11 2023.

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In Dan Power's Memory Foam, a mild-mannered AI offers its view on mortal topics like loneliness and dreams, written using only phrases generated in conversation with ChatGPT. The poems are playful and quietly profound, at turns dispensing almost childlike wisdom alongside an uncanny valley-inducing imitation of human sincerity. In his questioning, Power sees his own beliefs and insecurities shown back to him. The problem with holding a mirror up to a computer, he writes, is that a computer is also a mirror. 

 

Machine learning that helps us structure our lives must next tell us how to live. Memory Foam marks the dawn of a long line of experimentation at the border of poetry and artificial intelligence.