June

I am in a garden. It’s early in the evening; almost midsummer. The dusk has begun its slow and peaceful gathering of the loose ends of the afternoon and birds are still gossiping in the trees and hedges: I have nothing to do but listen. As the shadows begin to blend and blur at the edges of the garden, my sight is softened and other senses take over more keenly: my hearing sharpens and I can feel the coolness of the coming night on my skin and smell the sharp scent of leaves and grass and the sweet odours of the night-haunting flowers.

I am poised between day and night; between yearning and satiety. Between sun and moon and stars. For this short time, I am entirely myself. I am being, not doing and this is something I usually push aside, thinking that this can wait; there’ll be plenty of time to do nothing tomorrow. But, of course, it is likely that tomorrow will never come and I shall get to the end of my life without having immersed myself enough in just this ephemeral vacuum of non-doing. Where there is nothing but NOW and where desire does not exist because anticipation does not have any meaning.

To me, there is something of this immediacy, this ‘now’ in the writing of a poem. In the initial spark of an idea. As this is transferred to the page it becomes something different: it moves from the ephemeral to the concrete; capable of being stored and re-told infinitely.  But a good poem is able to recreate that quick flame whenever it is read anew. Just for a moment it can be devoured by the senses before it is edited once more by the intellect.

And this, possibly, is where artificial intelligence, however brilliant, still has a gap. AI seems not to be doing this at the moment: for now it is still very cleverly (and incredibly quickly) repeating what it has been taught and re-working, augmenting and editing that information to make a new story. As writers, we are all capable of doing this – it is one of the tools which we take pains to craft.  But it is not the spark; that startling apprehension of the ephemeral. Surely this must be a uniquely human attribute, of which we should take good care? Because, if not, what exactly is the point of anything?

As we begin to rely more and more on AI, some Luddite tendency in me screams no; let’s not go there. Let’s not hand our capacity for creation away. Let’s hone this precious gift and encourage admiration and support of our arts and humanities. But I suspect that it is already far too late. The forbidden fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil has long ago been plucked and devoured.

We are poised again between the known and the unknown, not quite sure how to proceed with what must surely turn out to be as huge a quantum leap as the discovery of fire. But I’m not at all confident we are certain enough about our own consciousness to be able to control the creation of an artificial one. We don’t have a great track record of empathy and, like Mary Shelley’s Victor Frankenstein, we may be creating a Monster which will destroy not only us but ultimately itself.