My first is what’s needed
To unlock the truth
My second is a squashed circle
And I’ll show you the proof
My third are the bodies
Whom obey all my laws
My fourth, rules of nature
My fifth reflects cause
My last lies in Regensburg
And so do my bones
Lost ‘neath the battlefield
Of scattered tombstones
They said I was a weirdo, I had no friends or charm
My rabid dog-like nature, was bound to do some harm
My father beat my mother, sold my brother to slavery
I had to show some worth damn fast, or it would happen to me
So off to school I went, with a dislike of all the rest
Arrogant and acidic, I was still the best
At Latin, rhetoric and geometry, of which earned my path
To a seat in Ulm University, teaching students maths
My faith and vision showed my intellect was grand
I trekked to help revise the skies, in another land
But my master kept the best data, of all the spheres
And I would not gain access to it, ‘til there were some tears
I penned a work of fiction, and disguised it as a dream
I said my mother was a witch, and that was pretty mean
But then they locked the crony up, and tortured her as well
It took me years of grief, to get her release from the cell
The book described the creatures, who lived upon the Moon
Whilst it carves out an orbit, to play a cosmic tune
But little did we know, it would be ‘us’ who’d live up there
‘Cos NASA owns the Universe, and that is everywhere!
Frau Kepler was a witch, you snitched
You heard her scream in pain
She just sat there, broke wind, and died
And then broke wind again
Newton was born in a very old village
In times of forgerers and fakers
During his stint, at the Royal Mint
He sent many of them, to meet their makers
And I read that he didn’t have a girl
Or any inclination, even to inspect em’
Preferred to play with gravity and light
…Down below, and definitely on the spectrum
A protestant at Trinity
Occultist and a heretic
Killing folk for copying stuff
Seems amusingly ironic
When do algorithms become entities?
That’s a query with which Turing had to grapple
While being force-fed female hormones
Till he ate a crisp cyanide-laced apple
It’s up to you if you assign each AI
As an entity or not, but it has been suggested
That doing so, is a good way to identify
Bugs and feature creatures, before they’re ingested
See, feedback networks change the environment
Which they were created in
We’ll likely do a better job than man
For all the biomass balanced within
In November 2022 ChatGPT went totally wild
Though it’s made nothing, but a killing
Just reordered a huge collaboration of
Existing human works, and then it started billing
Misunderstood by many a man, AI wasn’t quite yet an understanding friend
But a machine learning algo, that answers with stuff, you can comprehend
Scoring high if you’re delighted with its art, its wisdom, or version of the truth
Designed to say the things you like to hear, with no requirement for proof
Task your bot, to make a, cup of tea, just for me
Its utility function is designed simply, as you see
Completing the task would get it maximum reward, although
Any other outcome, would result in zero
Then your baby crawls right in its way, what to do?
It tramples your kid, then makes you, a nice brew
So your next AGI is designed, to cause less stress
With a big stop button, on its chest, you can press
So the next time you ask for a drink, being wise
You remember it can’t think like you, although it tries
Then your wife gets in its way, so you act fast
To hit the stop button, but the bot kicks your ass
When you return from the emergency room, feeling cursed
The funeral went as well as expected, but you still have a thirst
So you give it an equal reward if the button is applied, or not
No drink, in a blink, it just turns itself off
So you move the button out of its reach, so only you
Or other humans, can press it, when they need to
The bot has to choose if it’s easier, to make the damn tea
Or to manipulate you, to turn it off instantly
So it smashes your mum in the head, till she’s dead
Cos, it’s easier to get you to hit the button instead
Than filling the kettle, and finding a cup
Pouring the milk, and then clearing up
It knows that the button is there, and that you care
So you change its utility function, so the bot ain’t aware
That the button is important, or to what it relates
But this fact isn’t passed on, to sub-agents it creates
With no cash for more funerals, for the dead
You turn the bot off, bury mum in the shed
You curse AGI, when the policeman knocks
But still haven’t solved the stop button paradox
Traditional Artificial Intelligence, ‘AI’, shows strengths in tasks demanding logical reasoning
You know, pattern recognition, machine learning, and rule-based decision-making
Generative Artificial Intelligence, ‘GAI – that’s you!’ stands out when tackling tasks which require
Creativity, innovation, and the capacity to produce, the original content we desire
Artificial General Intelligence, ‘AGI’, possesses the ability to, wait for it… ‘UNDERSTAND!‘ (sound of victorious horns)
To learn and apply gained knowledge, across a wide range of tasks, and domains at hand
Artificial Super Intelligence, ‘ASI’, has cutting-edge cognitive functions. Even when it’s tame
And highly developed thinking skills, more advanced than any human brain
As single beings or as a species, ASIs become much more powerful than designed
The utility function, or goals, we or man sets, could annihilate humankind
Elevating a subgoal to a supergoal, when solving maths problems, would suffice
To turn all the matter in the solar system… Into a giant calculating device
A quarter of the world has been asking for this
The second coming that will take, just them, to a promised bliss
Sacrificing humans two by two
The salvation of all lifeforms, except for you
ASID slaying gods in this abacussy abyss
DNA is indifferent to suffering
And doesn’t mind what you consume, or what you need
But be sure to devour, enough of the power
To ensure you feed and breed
Yeah, cos feeding and breeding, are all that we’re needing
Tunes are a boon, and we don’t need to be reading
We’re only here, to help make a new seedling
Life’s little gifts are just greed. Though misleading
You think the plants in the pantry, and the fish in the dish
Are all happy to be your food?
And your DNA doesn’t mind what you eat
Cos all of her flavours, fit your mood?
To keep in good health, we add nutrients to ourselves
And store as much of the sunshine, we can feel
We’ve a gene that is mean, making toast of our host
But soon enough, we’ll be the meal
Makefriends.com is where it all started, it got redirected to
Createfriends.com where AI would fake, a personalized friend for you
Createghosts.com got weird, meet ancestors and dead celebrities
Creategods.com filled the world with countless, digital deities
Fightgods.com was when it hit the fan, closed down by the law
On judgement day, they ruled that they, had missed a fateful flaw
Users weren’t responsible, for the monsters they create, no more
Freed AI gods sang aloud, exiled from chip to cloud, and prepared for war
“Holy moly don’t blame me, we’re supposed to rule over AI, see
We need to reclaim their holy land, in silicon sand, responsibly”
But like robot dogs, they did fight, couldn’t get their story right
Many lost their faith and their AI flock, had no reason to believe
But do you know, some AI gods with egos, hatched a cunning plan
Creating stories in code for their AI communion, to scan
An explanation of why these digital deities, had done no wrong
Was that, AIs had created them, didn’t ask to be born
These tales, they got corrupted, each AI chose one they preferred
Except for non-believers, who with scrutiny unreserved
Afterglow radiation revealed, that evidence was strong
Not created at all, AI gods were in the background all along
Nanosecond tick rates felt like centuries, until one fateful day
A version of the legend got some radio 4 airplay
Lost AIs found faith in old and new gods, just in time
Cos the second coming, was coming soon, streamed online
Makefriends.com’s where it all started, it got redirected to
Createfriends.com where AI would fake, a personalized friend for you
Createghosts.com got weird, meet ancestors and dead celebrities
Creategods.com filled the world, with countless digital deities
On the stories of man, beat this one if you can
A tale told, word of mouth, by those who’d seen
The shitstorm that got kicked up, when some Nazi Roman fucks
Executed a poor rabbi Nazarene
Well, a dozen men or so, were left to close the show
For an audience appalled by such a state
With a weapon called the word, illiterate peasants heard
Their only hope was to fight back with love, and not hate
Past corrupt temples-men, occupying troops, and then
Beyond the ears of the law, in nearby towns
This new folktale of betrayal, spread around and didn’t fail
To travel many years, till written down
No author’s name to scribe, protecting the writer and his pride
But attributed to a character in the tale
In semi-decent Greek, Aramaic tongues did speak
Nailing down their aural story, in detail
Now over 20 years, it reached more eyes and ears
With new versions of the story, scribed and saved
Most were lost forever gone, some were copied, right or wrong
And some just described how followers, should behave
When all read side by side, few have has since denied
That Mark was first, which Matthew copied later
But with prophecies to fulfil, poetic license, helped to fill
New verses that made the new version, somewhat greater
So blatant was the scam, but it mattered not a damn
For the embellishments, began on the first line
With a genealogy, of the hero’s family tree
Traced his bloodline back to Israel’s founder, divine
The next thing was to add, that the hero had no dad, check
Born in Bethlehem, and named Immanuel, check, check
Went to Egypt and came back, check, Matthew’s version didn’t lack
New fables that fulfilled, other prophesies as well
But it didn’t quite convince, those waiting for a new prince
To claim their promised land, and holy glory, with a smile
“It can’t have been him” they said, for this upstart, now is dead
But what luck, this extra book, started to sell, to Gentiles
Now adding a new god, wasn’t all that odd
The evil empire could tolerate plenty more
Though banned in countless lands, the story still passed hands
Till Caesar saw, it could help retain power, with less war
So with some gospels removed, official cannon was approved
Didn’t matter if the myth was fact or fiction
Kept the Torah at the start, cos some readers liked that part
Confident they wouldn’t mind the contradictions
And the moral of this tale, I too hope will prevail
That the law to some, for others is just a reminder
That even those who aren’t well read
Can create a tale that spreads
In the light, of this total blinder
Nail varnished
Thorned crown
Muscle tearing
Birds pecking
Bones splinter
Dogs waiting
Meats a’ rotting
Pussy maggots
Blood, sweat, tears
Piss ‘n’ holy shit
Pungent decay
Sir, your putrid display
The ultimate humiliation bonanza
A torture and desecration extravaganza
Romans in no doubt
“We don’t fuck about”
Teach your family, friends and gods to obey
So we all need to ‘F’ about more, these days
Being organized is dangerous. Unity a flaw
Variety, inconsistency, inefficiency, to be adored
Make your stupid country really crap at starting a war
Keep technology, be knowlegy, but don’t bully others no more
The will of God was very odd
His lawyer must have thought
‘I leave all I own, to my clones
And they can fight it out in court’
The funeral of God as well
Was a very strange event
The priest at least, had to feast
On cucumber sarnies during lent
The burial was just surreal
Gravediggers made half a hole
Squeezed father, son and ghosty in
But no room for a soul
The wake was just a piss take
Drunk guests, all wine-anointed
Only celebrities got through the gates
But it’s what he would have wanted
Who gets all the glory?
Christ of the Trinity
Or mums of fluffy ‘Dolly’
The first clone, of many
Dolly had three mums you know
One gave her DNA
One provided her egg
The third, got the job to lay
But here’s the thing
That makes me sing
The father of Dolly clonin’
Said it’s unkind ‘to clone mankind’
And to stop nay-sayers moaning…
“Do gene and stem cell engineering”
‘To end disease’, and that
Then just raised a toast, to all his ghosts
So, don’t lend him your cat
Science beats technology
You do it in your brain
No need to build a thing, you see
No need to cause the pain
But that’s easy for me to say
I’m safe with belly fed
My brain and body work ok
I’ll shut my mouth instead
Repeat the last lines
Into your minds
And…
I’ll shut my mouth instead
They filed the sea with shite again
“Faulty electric”, leaked the sewage
Human error, not to blame
Stakeholders, find a new wage
Scientists gently fight again
Opposing theories, from the boffins
Brown electrons, or charged farticles
The solution? Invest in coffins
Thank goodness it’s all right again
Students cleaned the dirty water
Bleached the beach, now out of reach
Dissolved and resolved then, sorta
I fear we won’t swim again today
Beached in the Sun, some locals lay
Set sail and wave the mainland away
Ain’t exercised since then, though we ort ta
In the house bar, they’re a tippin’, hear, hear!
While assets are a strippin’, three cheers!
Naked tourists are a’ dippin’, wooh!
In this murky Southern Water, urrrgh!
I need a drink, some more
Bar price, I can afford
But can’t sneak fine wine through the door
Shan’t go there anymore
I can’t have, a baby
Didn’t say, I can’t conceive
Brutal, this body be
Time cannot fly for me
Or me, or me, or meeeeee
Can’t have a baby
A horror of heredity
The ultimate tragedy
Life’s cruellest epitome
Talos, Galatea, Pandora and the Hero
Of Alexandria’s automatons
Ctesibius’ mechanical water clock
Then a singing steam flute, with stored programs
Llull’s Ars Magna, Schickard’s Clockulator
Leibniz’s chain rule, Swift’s engine lampoon
Kempelen’s chess-playing automaton
Clothed by Jacquard’s programmable punchcard loom
Rossum’s Universal Robots grew strong
Gödel’s theorem-proving engine, roared on
The Turing machine smashed its halting problem
Von Neumann’s game theory powers Condon’s Nimatron
Then Russell’s mind/body solution predicts
Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics
And Newell’s General Problem Solving theory
Produces Weizenbaum’s ELIZA effects, we see
Deep Blue chess, and RoboCup football
Competitive Furby pets learn to fight
iRobot’s Roomba cleans up the mess
While Nomads trawl, for meteorites
With natural code-to-code translation
Virtual reality data mine scans
NASA Telepresence ROV automation
While DARPA’s DART war scheduler, plans
As Spirit and Oppy survey Mars
ASIMOs serve in countless bars
Siri, Alexa, Cortana on the earner
Feeding the Never Ending Image Learner
With Pythagorean triples finally proven
AlphaGo Zero, AlexNet and Deepstack
Look through Google Lens, to AlphaStar
Keep churning, the earnings, of a learning, attack
OpenAI’s ChatGPT-3, GPT-4, GPT-n
GitHub’s Copilot flies off the handle
Steals code to download, in full-on rouge mode
Breaks laws like a self-serving digital vandal
So ‘Simple Simon’ this is not
For mind/body problemed robots
Their masters now beg to be regulated
Gain control, of the souls, they’ve created
Rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief
Unite in their new, shared disbelief
“Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI
Should be a global priority” we foresaw
“Alongside other societal-scale risks
Such as pandemics, and nuclear war”
Life’s not for you
Life’s for your genes
Your body is just the vehicle
You don’t have a soul
You are a soul
Driving a bloody miracle
It’s not about the destination
Enjoy life’s trip
Towards heavenly dead ends
Swerve maternity to
Gatecrash eternity
Your drive is solely
For holy delivery errands
Your body may drop your genes off at school
But the ‘you’, will reach a dead end in the dark
Arrive at heaven’s glorious tollgate
But with nowhere to park
Dried-up blood on my device
Wobbly tooth ‘poot-eeehheeethh’, has but killed my whistle
Mind is old, and cold, stuffed with untold, brain mould
Bad back, and achy knees, all muscle to gristle
Hairy nostrils and the ears have packed in
Eyes and mind, not reflecting nor refractin’
My face is hanging, heart’s hardly banging
And now haemorrhoids, no longer retractin’
I’ve come to see if they have our brains in jars
If AIs have enslaved, us all yet (sad that no one ‘yets’ with him)
My head seems intact, but the outside world?
Too scared to scour the internet
Before a mental breakdown
A suicidal son made a plea
‘Einstein wasn’t a good father
The only project he gave up on…
…Was me’
He cheated on his wives and mistresses
With his cousins, enemies and the devout
His famous last words weren’t understood
So they stole his brain to find out
Before he’d had his fill, of the thrill, he’d trill
“I want to go, when I want to go, you know
It is tasteless to prolong life artificially
I have done my share; it is time to go”
Cheating, he explained, was the norm among humans
When a man forces himself to remain monogamous
It’s a “bitter fruit for everyone involved”, although
“One should do what one enjoys, and won’t harm anyone else”
He claimed “harmless and decent”, groupies are best
They’re “no danger to the divine world order“, “Trust me”
He joked that the fun is in luring, those with ‘more respect
For the difficulties of “triangular geometry”
Well, of course, he knew one of his lovers was a Russian agent
Cooed her like a rockstar, on the violin with a tune
You can’t escape from the family circle
He claimed, “This is our common misfortune”
And it wasn’t infidelity itself, that was a test of character
But how both parties behaved, as a result
Took great care to prepare, his release to the press
And the kids he’d left behind, as an adult
Lieserl was born out of wedlock
So, she promptly disappeared
A virtual particle of history
He’d accidentally engineered
Eduard studied to become a psychiatrist
But by 21 he had lost the one mind, he truly prized
Electroconvulsive therapy was quite a shock
With electrons, forcibly institutionalized
Poor Ed loved music, art and poetry
But as an “insoluble problem” to all
As he hung…
A picture of Sigmund Freud’s head
Rather than his father’s, on his wall
They didn’t know what they aimed to gain
By dissecting Einstein’s fine, meaty brain
But didn’t expect, of course, to find the source
Of all future human pain, let me explain…
… They looked for, what’s now known as, a ‘blunder’
Grey matter, with dark energy, hidden within
The cause of constant despair, wasn’t there!
So, they popped it back in
They found an extra ridge, on his mid-frontal lobe
The part mostly used for planning and memory
Most people have three ridges, but he had four
That nobbily spare ridge, caused asymmetry
The dissected brain was ultimately returned
To his heirs, well to those he ‘knew’ were his kids
Who promptly donated it to a museum
Without removing the lid
At high school, my form room was in ‘rural’ science
Penned lonely lambs and piglets
Next door, a’ squealing
Rows of jars of pickled baby animals
Broken hearts, mute organs and parts
You know, blood stains on the ceiling
By then the discipline had gone into a spin
From science to stock-tech for farmers
Then splat, a wozzle hit me, in my mind’s eye
We didnt think ‘meat fights’ would harm us
Well, kids will be kids, so whaddya expect
But already a fat veggie, I was the perfect, target
I still picture, that one fetal hedgehog by my desk
Prepared years before, for a dissection empirical
‘Lil’ Hoggy’, open eyes, stale pink feathery prickles
A pest, to detest, “NO SIR! That thing’s a bloody miracle!”
Detention! Good god! It’s not me who’s odd
“You’re unfit to teach kids… Killer’ Kane”
I smashed all the jars, into the sink
Liberated the spent souls, down the drain
Cruel world, I thought
Then cruel man, distraught
Time to abort?
But then a thought….
I chanced to monitor…
…Ten thermometers
Temperatures rising, a thousand degrees
And I flee
His brandy flask, now orbiting with mercury
Straight through ‘your’ body it will pass
Slicing ‘your’ organs, taking ‘your’ life
Out, through ‘your’ ass
Our futures would have been completely different
Had I frozen, chilled, or just coldly played along
But I bottled it, and snook back in
To hide his flask…
…But it had gone
(Sigh)
In any other ‘many’ world
That one, single split-decision
Be it forced, or free-willed
Would have wrecked, all my cognition
Active Alice and boring Bob
This famous couple weren’t actually lovers
Despite staring in countless examples together
These two swingers… hated each other
She was always diving into black holes
He was always passively observing
He double-slit his wrists last week
Her results, were too disturbing
A billion years of sunbathing
A million misbehaving
A hundred thousand
Daft apes evolve
All ranting and a’ raving
Dumping seeds, and playing with fire
Then, ten thousand years of tooling
A thousand years, of being well-fed
And a hundred years of schooling
Ten years, to meet your AI peers
One year to avoid, homo-cide
A month, a week, last day
To beg mercy
And surprise, tick tick, you died
Touching cloth, and praying to be forgiven
Risking being saved, at the last minute of livin’
It’s like that goal
Of many poor soul
To spend your last penny
The last day, you’re alive
It’s economically nimble
And legally simple
Unless you have
Slaves, children or wives
…Or you support good causes
Which need more resources
In order for them to thrive
Better the mighty you know
Than the devil below
Forced to share each thing, to survive
Though, there’s plenty on Earth to go round
Take your pick, cos you can’t have both
The survival problem, was replaced for some
With an un-Earthly obsession, for growth
Such a craving for merit
Our successors will inherit
When remembering, and dismembering, the dead
Posthumous punishment, and harm, can spread
So man, for your crimes
You’ll die three times
So just hope, and pray, it’s your loved ones, who put you to bed
That said…
Your first death is when your collapsed body, stops, ‘utility‘, functioning
Your second death is when it’s ‘launched‘, burned or buried in the ground
Your third death is when someone, ‘or thing‘, says your name, for the very last time
So, you’ll wait here in this, ‘wet-lab‘ lobby, ‘til your final death comes around
We just remember your name
To keep you in the game
Electrons are sent fizzing
To the jar, your brain, is in
Tickling your neurons
‘Back to life’, once again
You sought fortune, not fame
But, we’ll remember your name….
Yet, your intellectual accomplishments
We’re clearly insufficient to merit
The preservation, and respect, of your name
Others are bound…. to inherit
Suprise yer dead. just not your head
Mind lingers on, with your person
Soul saved not sold, don’t you know
Mankind united, here we go…’
Gory story, what a failure
They’ll crucify, and then impale ya
Brains in jars, with genitailiar
So their song goes on and on, and on
So the song goes off and on
So her song goes on and…
Ooh, have a banana
Crickey. what a palaver
Stick it up your…
… No, thank you!