• The novelty of an alien mind

    I have been looking around for any access to smart AI like GPT-3 – a text predictor mentioned in an earlier post. I got quite hooked generating fiction and poetry with it last year. Unfortunately GPT-3 is restricted to a waitlist and probably requires a business so you use it enough to warrant access (and more money). Also AI Dungeon (which uses/used GPT-3) has got kind of worse somehow since I last logged in (the subreddit is up in arms to say the least).

    Then I started to question why I even got this AI fever to write with one. It has a certain novelty that doesn’t wear off too fast. It’s like an amazing illusion that I almost fall for that it is actually thinking like me.

    I sort of compared it to if you heard the music of some alien civilisation. How amazing that would be, not so much because ‘we are not alone’ but more like ‘a completely different kind of being’ sort of thing. That’s maybe in the same area of my fascination with the predictor.

    I listened to a similar predictive AI made by the same organisation, Open AI, here. This time it makes music. Again it was that very eerie feeling of novelty spawning from a black box. A box where no one knows exactly how it got to that output. I loved it.

    Maybe I need to have more confidence in my own writing. Try to find the polish and value of it. No AI crutch needed! I should be more grateful for my own text predictive generator noggin.

  • Now

    Hum of dimmer,
    Heaviness of eyelids,
    Coolness of aluminium,
    Breath at nostril,
    Tension in face,
    Tingle behind ears.

    Fogginess in head,
    Impatience of thoughts,
    Thinking from mind,
    Annoyance of thoughts,
    Sneezing from nose,
    Laugh from mouth.


  • That thing you have to do

    Oh that think you have to do.
    You know the one…

    That book you have to read,
    the piano you have to learn,
    the meditation you have to sit,
    the meal you have to cook,
    the language you have to learn.

    To self improve is a struggle,
    in which you have
    that thing you have to do.

    You may have your ideal self,
    there within reach,
    if only you had that skill,
    were more learned,
    had that something.

    An ache
    to be something more.

    However it’s a shudder,
    a piercing impatience held,
    rattling in your mind.
    Carving out that time for
    that thing you have to do.

    “Oh it’s worth it,”
    you say to yourself.
    “I will be better,
    it will get better,
    it has to!
    I’ll learn to love it,
    get that skill.
    I just have to keep at it.”

    But for now, it’s
    that thing you have to do.

Hello! I’m Tom (he/him), based in London, UK. I write prose & poetry, also some small reflections I want to share. Enjoy 🙂

I have a Youtube channel where I post creative things sometimes.