"The Unprompted," a poem that AI will never understand | Salome Agbaroji

0:06You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas and conversations to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hu. As we fall deeper and deeper into the black box, is hoping for humanity the most human thing we can do? That's a question from poet Salome Agbaruji. In her moving and at times funny performance, she asks us to take a deep and honest look at why the rush towards celebrating artificial intelligence is dangerous and how looking to technological innovation to improve our lives often misses the point entirely.

0:48I fill my empty 3AMs with spineless phone scrolls, text abbreviations, and unihuman conversations. AI chatbots answer all my aimless interrogations, like, how do I answer an email that does not find me well? Or, oh my gosh, my crush just texted me, what do I say? Or is it true what the headlines say? That the world is crumbling beneath our feet and we do nothing but crumble with it? Our glassened eyes lost in the latent space, calculating our extinction with every pulse of our carbon-based circuitry. and as we fall deeper and deeper into the black box, is hoping for humanity the most human thing we can do?

1:42And the AI says back to me, I don't know. More specifically, hmm, I'm not sure how to process your request. Please try a new prompt. I say to AI, don't feel too special. You aren't the first artificial system we humans carelessly labeled intelligent. Global capitalism was genius until it became negligent, leaving the unfortunate to suffer without the means for life. Biased science elevated one people over the last, but with differentiation came racism and caste, littering our world with non-compostable isms. I say to its text and images, you're brilliant, but you aren't the first generation to forge something out of seemingly nothing.

2:36Haven't you seen my generation, the DIYers and binary defiers? We too extract wisdom from the earth's mouth like a flower or a landmine. Sure, drive our cars, but never our movements, never our blood and boned passions. You can't replace the place of the people, I say to the people. The displaced children without homes do not cry mechanical tears about a simulated hunger induced by virtual war. The viruses they suffer from are not the zeros and ones in your devices Cured by simple software reset If only the world had such a button We've got our heads so far up in the cloud We forget that the ground exists New prompt Is this modernity?

3:41Marveling at machines that can read and write when currently 700 million adults are illiterate? New prompt. Is this innovation chipped by click workers in dark, dank rooms without proper compensation? The future we fear is not the sci-fi, cyborg, AI uprising that sets the world aflame. No. The true dystopia is the today we make. When humans watch the world burn, still with the power to save it. And don't. The work towards a better world is not automated. No computer could take this job of audacious hope, of unfounded optimism. We are the unprompted. In the face of the bleakest calculations, we aspire in a way no algorithm could advise.

4:41and that is what will save us from the abyss. Solely, we are our saviors but just as every hero has their gadgets, technology can be the engine of our altruism. Every invention is just an extension of your hand. So in the same way that a hammer can both build and destroy, you tell me, how will you wield your tools? Again, I say to people Remember people Be unprompted but with a promise To let my most pressing 3am question Not be whether or not I'll have a world to wake up to But how these new things Can finally find us well Thank you

6:08Oliver Friedman, Brian Green, Lucy Little, and Tonsika Sungmarnivong. This episode was mixed by Christopher Fazey Bogan. Additional support from Emma Taubner and Daniela Balareso. I'm Elise Hu. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feed. Thanks for listening.