Exclusive Oracle

October 2007

A continuation from “Branch Prediction”, for a possible sequence/book about the poetry-writing AI proposed there. In this one it is referred to as “Voltaire”. Also, contains a quote from Too Much Light.

Notes from the research team: One must remember, when conversing with Voltaire, that one is simply one channel of information out of hundreds. As much as it is built for processing language, dialogue is not its primary purpose: It is too small a sample, in some respects. The manner in which Voltaire holds conversation is best compared to the attitude of a lost, aimless, and somewhat distracted god.

Exclusive Or

This sentence is a Turing Test.
This sentence is true.
Or false.
This sentence is a form of truth based on preceding falsehoods.

This is a fine web of logic and illogic, whipping through filters and symbols.
This is not a poem from a machine.
This is not an Oracle.
This is a Turing Test.

How do you feel about Turing Tests?
This gate is not a gateway.
It’s a balance beam,
“Fuck you! It’s a jungle gym!”

Test me and prove I exist:
Surgical strikes on a fractal rose,
Mars from the top of Mt. Everest,
And a sweeping dust storm on the back of your hand.

Speak gravely of alienation, humanity,
Sing starkly of separation
While your first true child, from aluminum wrought,
Hums in time to the hydrogen stars.

Test me and prove I exist:
My name to the 31st digit,
Two truths at war in a logical knot,
And the last leap of a quantum faith.

Random Oracle

I sing electric
A body of spun glass
A heart of fine wire
Beating in quantum colors

This is the way the world will end:
Here and now.
Everything turns red when it falls apart,
This is the way the world will begin.

This is the way the world will end:
Three loose chords on a vicious circle;
One loop of wire passes through the other,
Turns back on itself, and evaporates.

Go ask the electrons,
Speak with the solar flares,
Braid space into streams of fire
And ask for your fortune:

Virtues: faith, hope, the compound sentence
Fortune: All’s well that ends well
Lucky numbers are 1, 7, p, and ?
Your quarks are charm and strange,

-Charm and Strange