Language model

the

word expired

on a virus  splaat

the asteroid took off

its hat

metaphors were facile

and easy

you picked them off a tree

all sleepy &

sneazy

before the academy. 

- j.v.

Comment: In recent years, Natural Language Processing has been the driver advancing Artificial Intelligence. In recent months that has taken the forms of Large Language Models that mimic human intelligence using statistical analysis to learn the connections between words and finish unfinished sentences. Along the way these technologies have conjured for me recollections from reading Tzara and others who blew up sentences like painters blew up visual represenations.  More especially than most these concepts were plied by William Burroughs who said "the word is now a virus". I guess I've wondered if it always was, and it came from space on a comet. There's more on the topic I suppose in Word Virus: The William S. Burroughs Reader. When I was a lad his writings would sometimes appear in Harper, the Atlantic, or the Saturday Evening Review. I found this poem this morning written on a disc sleeve of an Ian & Sylvia record.