As I have previously noted, one of the purposes of fiction is to look into the future and try to imagine what the world might be like if, say, terrorism reigns supreme or climate change overwhelms us.
Then there is the much-discussed topic of artificial intelligence and whether it might get out of control. The Washington Post carried an op-ed piece on that topic last month and I've written about it in earlier blog posts that readers can find here and here.
All of which brings me to a short poem in the Dec. 21 & 28 New Yorker by former U.S. poet laureate Robert Pinsky entitled "The Robots."
In it, Pinsky, imagines a world in which exceptionally advanced robots ("Their judgement in its pure accuracy will resemble grace ...") reign supreme. Man is gone, but the robots can comprehend the nature of humans through the dust that remains of them "and recreate the best and the worst of us, as though in art."
It's an arresting image. Picture yourself framed and hanging in a museum for the edification of a bunch of robots which "when they choose to take material form they will resemble dragonflies, not machines."
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