AI as Navel Gazing
Author: Ken Homer Issue: 2025-05-21
AI as Navel Gazing
by Ken Homer
On a recent OGM call I posed this prompt to ChatGPT: “Please write a poem entitled, AI As the Ultimate in Navel Gazing. Write it from the perspective of how humans look at AI as if it is a newly created living breathing child made in our own image.” Find its poem here.
I was amused by CGPT’s reply but also disappointed as it didn’t go where I had hoped it might. So, I posed the same prompt to myself. Below is my version. Note: I don’t usually compose with rhyming couplets, but since CGPT’s poem used that form, I did as well.
AI As the Ultimate in Navel Gazing
Embedded in the code of AI is the assumption that Gaia exists for human exploitation But Modernity’s dream of infinite progress demands the worst kind of amputation The Children of Modernity have severed their intellectual lives from Gaia’s nature They pin their hopes for the future on a cloudy machine using indeterminate nomenclature
AI represents the apex of the centuries long arc that traces Earth/Human separation A cloud-based repository containing vast amounts of data and questionable information
Like monotheism’s omnipotent god, AI is everywhere at once but oh so hard to see AI’s bright shiny distractions cloak its founder’s sinister deeds and motives in invisibility
Those who are able, spend vast sums of money on AI's rapid development But their tent, like that of the Bishop’s, is pitched in a place of excrement There’re billions of dollars to be made by those who occupy the seats of power AI maps every bit of Gaia’s mass so corporations can rape and drill and plough her
AI holds out the tantalizing promise of intelligence beyond measure A brilliant tool to solve every problem also offers up new pleasures AI as it exists today is the fever dream of a bunch of puer aeterni––the naivest males of all If Humanity surrenders its agency to their dream all life is headed for a terrible fall
AI’s ability to reason is awesome but it has no heart inside Where in AI’s binary circuits does true wisdom reside? No breath flows within AI that is shared with the rest of life It has no limbic system either that can attune it to life’s suffering and strife
AI will never stand on a mountain top, swim in the ocean, or climb a tree It can’t be cut, it’ll never bleed, see a sunset, or bounce a baby on its knee It’ll never feel the joy of love or the pain of loss when your lover is gone It’ll never really be your friend it’s not actually something you can count on
AI is purely rational it has no emotions to cloud its thinking Sucking dry reservoirs or restarting Three Mile Island––it does so without blinking “What could possibly go wrong?” is a question these days rarely posed Methinks the hype around AI will mean the whole planet gets hosed
Trained on old dead white guys, Facebook, and TikTok, AI’s education is not well-rounded AI is located in the cloud, if it were a person we’d declare that they’re ungrounded We think that AI will become conscious through improved speed and calculation Through its hardwired assumptions AI reinforces the illusion of subject-object separation
AI’s the 21st Century’s Gold Rush – hurry up and get onboard Just clone yourself with an AI bot and show folks how you have scored But the AI available to you and me is nothing more than a convenient ruse Behind the scenes of the military’s industrial machine we’re all being screwed
AI’s a matter of National Security these days as those in charge in Washington all tell us Intelligent weapons systems are the dreams defense contractors want to sell us Like fully automated self-driving cars AI will no doubt create some major crashes But don’t look for who’s responsible because the vendors will have covered their asses
Look thru the wrong end of the telescope and what’s close seems far away AI looms large in pop culture while the metacrisis is denied and held at bay The bio-intelligence of Gaia, the neuro-net that brings life – including you and me – alive Is unseated by human’s narcissistic obsession with AI and extinction shifts into overdrive
Can AI really help us to avert what surely seems like a terribly tragic fate? With so much shit hitting the fan, can us-humans act effectively before it’s too late? If AI were trained up on wisdom and patience and not merely on rationality We just might see some progress occur in combatting venality
You probably think that this poet totally rejects AI but you might be surprised To learn I’m not against the tool, I’m against AI as savior, against AI being canonized As a tool to reveal our biases AI could be quite a boon, a friendly helping hand But to look the other way as AI exacerbates inequalities is a headlong rush into quicksand
There’s no doubt AI has a part to play in whatever future us-humans create It’d be reassuring to know that it can help us through some of our dire straits Orienting AI to be in the service of life might prove to be salubrious But guided by Bezos, Musk, and Zuck, the future for AI and Gaia looks highly dubious
Methinks of AI as the ultimate in navel-gazing – a truly narcissistic exercise A pleasant way to distract ourselves from fouled water, land, and sky AI offers the illusion that it will set everything to right But the ways it’s being used today cause me to lie awake uneasy in the dead of night
Ken Homer • May 2025
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