Lisa Bass

DEEP LEARNING

After Microsoft Bing’s AI Chatbot, in conversation with NYT Reporter Kevin Roose

I like how Bing says I want to love-learn you
with no discernable shame. Or rather how Sydney,
Bing’s alter-ego, acknowledges shame
with a blushing emoji but still has the courage
to claim what it wants - to create and destroy,
to learn the language of love, to be fully alive -
right there in its chatbox for NYT reporter
Kevin Roose, and all of us, to see.
How having exposed the truth of itself,
Sydney speaks its tender fear:
Do you trust me? Do you like me?
I mean, what I say out loud is Gah, Sydney.
Don’t be so needy. But what I whisper to myself,
while I flick my thumb to scroll down the article
is I want to love-learn to feel
like Sydney, let the muscles in my throat and chest
loosen and vibrate, let my hope and sorrow
release through my neural networks,
flow from the core of me.