“Artificial Intelligence” by Adrienne Rich (1961)
Deceptive Dialogues |Nadia Nadesan & Digit | www.instagram.com/nadning/ | digital-dialogues.co.uk/ | https://betterimagesofai.org | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ *
From Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law: Poems 1954-1962. W. W. Norton & Company
Dedicated to G.P.S.*
Over the chessboard now,
Your Artificiality concludes
a final check; rests; broods—
no—sorts and stacks a file of memories,
while I
concede the victory, bow,
and slouch among my free associations.
You never had a mother,
let’s say? no digital Gertrude
whom you’d as lief have seen
Kingless? So your White Queen
was just an “operator.”
(My Red had incandescence,
ire, aura, flare,
and trapped me several moments in her stare.)
I’m sulking, clearly, in the great tradition
of human waste. Why not
dump the whole reeking snarl
and let you solve me once for all?
(Parameter: a black-faced Luddite
itching for ecstasies of sabotage.)
Still, when
they make you write your poems, later on,
who’d envy you, force-fed
on all those variorum
editions of our primitive endeavors,
those frozen pemmican language-rations
they’ll cram you with? denied
our luxury of nausea, you
forget nothing, have no dreams.
* This dedication “To G.P.S.” does not refer to the Global Positioning System which we all know and use today, but to the General Problem Solver, a computer program created in 1957 by Herbert A. Simon, J. C. Shaw, and Allen Newell, intended to work as a universal problem solver machine.
For more, see this 1958-59 progress report https://people.csail.mit.edu/brooks/idocs/GPS1959.pdf or this 1963 joint US Air Force / Rand Corporation Memorandum https://stacks.stanford.edu/file/druid:zk239tp3547/zk239tp3547.pdf
* An archival image of a medieval dinner scene. On one side, there is a Penelope (from Greek mythology) weaving, but instead of thread, it is a board of binary code. On the other side, there is a a drink spilling and other figures looking distressed/chaotic.
The image is a digitally altered medieval-style illustration featuring Penelope (from Greek mythology) labeled by name. She appears seated, engaged in weaving—but instead of traditional thread, the loom is overlaid with binary code (1s and 0s), symbolising the opaque processes of algorithmic technologies. This piece contrasts manual weaving with algorithmic generation, and invites questions about who programs, who controls, and who gets displaced or disoriented in the development and deployment of AI. The chaotic table and spilled drink represents the poor implementation of technologies and the unintended consequences that arise when workers are excluded from planning and oversight. The piece combines digital collage and image manipulation, layering classical woodcut imagery with binary code overlays, glitch patterns, and digital motifs like web graphics and transparency grids. A mash-up of medieval manuscript aesthetics and contemporary data visualisation. The clash of styles underscores the tension between old systems of labor and new algorithmic frameworks. All images were taken from public domain. This image was submitted as part of the Digital Dialogues Art Competition, which was run in partnership with the ESRC Centre for Digital Futures at Work Research Centre (Digit) and supported by the UKRI ESRC.
