Turing’s Jest
Alan’s Nightmare (Probably)
Background
As someone who has always compulsively created, felt the utter need to create, from poetry to source code to song lyrics to music, I have found myself appalled by the creation of generative AI and the idea that we could devote neural nets to creative acts.
I’ve never had an issue with the idea of using artificial intelligence to perform analytics of which humans are incapable (or far less capable). For instance, the medical field provided some excellent use cases for AI (development of new antibiotics or cancer treatments or as a diagnostics assistant…especially when so much of the medical field is divided into specialty providers who can’t very easily diagnose conditions that affect many different systems). However, the thought that artists and software developers are having to contend with people who “prompted” software built upon an LLM to “write a song”, to “write a poem”, or to “write some code or an application” drives me insane. I’m reminded of Kurt Vonnegut’s novel “Player Piano” where society automates away all the jobs. That novel is dystopian, in case you weren’t aware. We use AI-generated images on our site, because the images are absurd, and we wish to illustrate how absurd this technology is.
As such, this song is my commentary on the issue of generative AI. The song is a jug band tune just because I thought that would be funny. I also really enjoy jug band tunes. The vocals are very tinny, because we processed them to sound like that in light of the theme of the song (the Generative AI “takeover”).
The title is a play on Turing Test.
Lyrics
Write me a song, Siri, in the key of E.
Infuse it with a sweet little melody.
While you're at it why not talk a bit about it
With ChatGPT.
I can't wait to show everyone how talented
Your boy can be.
Paint me a picture, Dali,
Give it some flair.
Make it a nude, showing off some derrier.
While you're at it, troll the archives for
Some cool creations we can steal.
We'll create a masterpiece, and I won't
Have to do a thing.
Man, that's quite a deal.
Chorus (Bridge):
I can whip up a story and make it prompt.
At least that's what I'll provide.
And I wont worry myself about the human creations
My monstrosity's alongside.
Dr. Frankenstein, he had his lab.
Me, I have my keyboard.
I type some text into a box
And the thing spits out ideas
You should read a book, AI,
By Kurt Vonnegut.
It's called Player Piano and
Y'know what
When you finish your should run a newfs
Against all your partitions.
I know this will not happen, but you cannot blame a guy for wishin'.