The joys and the pains of AI … my work is very opposed to AI, and I’m old enough to not really have an opinion on it — my ways are set, and I know what I am doing and how to do it, and so I don’t ever even think — I wonder how AI would (write this post) for example. I just — do it. Anyway, but my husband and I had been looking for a poem we’d seen more than 16 years ago for a LONG time.

I had reached out to the Library of Congress. I had reached out through Reddit. We had both searched and searched and searched. But we only knew the topic — not the author or the first line — so it was impossible. I told my colleagues about it, after another day of looking, and I have a colleague who 1. hates AI and 2. loves poetry too. So he offered to search. I told him it was futile/impossible — but he insisted.

I sent him our summary of what we remembered, and within 5 minutes he both found it and was FURIOUS. When he told me about it he told me first that he found it, and I burst into tears, and then I asked why he was so angry and he said I FORGOT TO SAY DON’T USE AI SO AI FOUND THE POEM!!

But we knew it was in a New Yorker, and we knew we had seen it there, but we didn’t want to go back over 20 years of New Yorkers and hand look through each poem. And it seems like that’s a great use for AI — here are the New Yorker poems over the past 110 years!

Anyway — we’re super happy we found it, and I can’t make myself care about AI’s part in it …