Autoincorrect

Published in the 2023 Newcastle Poetry Prize anthology.

I

Let’s go, she said, on a date

where we won’t contribute

to a large language model of data.

Well, how could I refuse.

She pushed a graphite etched note

across the table and asked

that I wait to unfold it until I am within

the confines of the corrugated iron toolshed

in the back of my garden, she confirmed

via satellite photograph that it is a safe space

in terms of drones being unable to read

through the roofing panels.

We’ve known each other five months.

She’s a computer scientist and I’m not.

We met at a talk on robotic bees

newly built to not so much teach

but rather encourage real bees

to pollinate more efficiently.

II

Her work and the way she lives

is focused on keeping chat bots

in a state of perpetual hallucination.

Here is an example: you ask

the computer what year the

Sydney Harbour Bridge was last rotated

in accordance with industrial protocols

that require the span be turned twice

each decade, and the computer will say

March 2021. It can’t admit ignorance

so it hallucinates a logic wrought reality.  

III

No surveillance, that’s one of

the rules for our date. No cameras

on poles (black plums, skin rubbed

sheer where the eye peers through)

and speaking of fruit no groceries

either, those sensors that track your

gaze across the shelves – not good.

Phones will be left at home and we’ll

use cash only and we should wait

until its overcast so clouds blanket our

footfalls. She says we should cross

the road at random intervals, go from

one side of the street to the other

so our behaviours aren’t predictable.

IV

If the scraping of our personal data

whilst we are holding hands or similar

is unavoidable, as it so often is, she

encourages obfuscation.

She learned this from a research paper,

you actively volunteer meaningless

strings of junk information en masse so

the receiving software learns nothing.

She said I could just talk as I normally do

and that should be fine, but she might

chat like the wings of a moth, camouflage

her words with layers of banality, like

what happens to the family name Smith if

you try to locate them in a phone book. 

V

Ethically I don’t know if I should describe

what she is wearing lest a portrait emerges

of her aesthetic references and even brand

names that could build an image catalogue

that profiles her essence.

Perhaps I could describe all that she is not

wearing on our date (pleather, lemonade felt)

so enough negative space remains, a relief

of her presence (withdraw fish bowl earrings)

to see who is left behind.

VI

You might think this level of care

should apply to this poem – why go

to so much trouble to enjoy a date

completely off the record, a meeting

palimpsest scored blank, only to

then map out the architecture of the

whole endeavour.

To which I would respond that, while

I appreciate the compliment, to

think it is within my capacity to truly

know what is happening around

me at any given time, and to accurately

take note of this – it’s not the case.

This is really what we don’t want computers to learn:

how to not know, how to be eternally uncertain, how

to be full of ontological gaps. That’s the secret sauce.

VII

She likes it when I hum copyright free

melodies (I don’t tell her they borrow

substantially from Metallica and Bjork,

I’m just waiting for the right moment)

and she hates the idea that a computer would

ever be able to do the same, which they can,

she knows this, she attended a concert of bee

music orchestrated by algorithm, a thousand

mechanical wings fluttering in tuned resonance

(this night changed her, she didn’t even mean

to go, she was looking for a Beethoven playlist

and got so far as typing ‘Bee’ and autocorrect

predicted: well, if you like bees, you’ll love this).

VIII

I guide her head beneath a metal crossbeam

hanging between loose wires and an empty

elevator shaft. It is midday in the holoscene.  

This carpark was in a state of redevelopment

but then it stopped. A vegetable garden on

Level 6 used to be cared for by an education

centre on the ground floor, but they’re gone.

Nobody saw us enter. We are echo’s ghosts.

I don’t worry so much about chat bots writing

poems like this one, or that they’ll improve

the form, because we got here first. Like this

little golden patch of clean light we sit in to

share an orange, and smile, and kiss –

Whatever follows, remember we got here first.