Shakespeare and AI

It has been a long lapse since I last wrote. I guess it has taken the prospect of the end of the world to shake me from my slumbers. Not that we haven’t had our share of concerns before this, what with climate change, spiraling worldwide debt, erosion of democracy…But there is something so apocalyptic and inescapable about the barreling pace of artificial intelligence toward uncontrolled destruction that has taken over my senses. Nothing else seems important. Except, of course, Shakespeare. Because when faced with the simultaneous height of brilliance and depth of stupidity of humanity, where else is there to turn but the drama and poetry of a genius from 400 years ago?

I can always find solace when I read Shakespeare. Whether in the beauty of his verse or of his wit, in farce or tragedy. Perhaps it is his ability to make something beautiful out of the human. And so I say with his first editors, Heminge and Condell, who brought us the First Folio, “Read him, therefore, and again and again.”

But what if AI is kept under control and does not lead to the end of mankind? What future lies in store for us then? Will AI leave our knowledge intact? Will we be able to fact-check AI without using AI? I doubt that. Will AI filter our “facts” according to its own rules about what is right or wrong? Will we be able to make up our own minds about how to read Shakespeare or will AI decide the “best” reading for us? Will my own analysis of The Sonnets be part of the AI knowledge base or will it be discarded as too unregarded? These questions bother me. I would not like that world and I don’t trust AI with our knowledge. Do you?

Especially at times like this, people inevitably look for a source for immortality. In two of Shakespeare’s most haunting (and difficult) sonnets, he addresses two: poetry and the soul. So now I will end this blog and read, again and again, Sonnets 107 and 146. Perhaps you will join me.