One doesn’t get very far in this life without realising that a cove one rubs along with quite well is down in the dumps. In the last few weeks I have realised that a person I count on for cold logic and clear-headed thinking was becoming fractious, irritable and impossible to cheer along with a friendly pat on the shoulder, tea and a hobnob. In many ways Parsonage is the core of the Pitshanger Poets organisation. For while I bumble about, my Man organises and Ms Challis, archives, Parsonage makes things work. For the truth is, whatever Ms Challis archives must be stored electronically, and that function is carried out by that wonder of the early age of computing, the Ferranti Pegasus.
It is therefore immediately obvious when Parsonage is not feeling on top form. Tasks which he would in the past have carried out without complaint, such as de-fogging the Critical Gamut Interpreters or retiming the Metre Measurement Relays get pushed to the bottom of Parsonage’s to-do list. I knew when things had reached a head when Parsonage responded to a request to restock the vellum paper cartridge with a snappy response to the effect that I would have to use standard white cartridge paper like everyone else until he had re-treaded and balanced the Hard Disk Packs;
‘Can’t you see the Pegasus is suffering a crisis of confidence?’, he yelled across the computer room beneath Pitshanger Manor. ‘She won’t print until I have raised her self-esteem by at least a couple of notches. Printing really takes it out of a computer!’
Parsonage will not mind me telling you that this interchange took me aback. I instantly realised something was wrong. The Pegasus is as clay to be moulded in the hands of her chief engineer. There is nothing that Parsonage could demand of her that she will not instantly begin processing, cogitating and eventually producing. To be confounded by her circuits, rebuffed by her logic gates in this way, the man could not but take it hard. I could see that this would take more than one Hobnob.
It is perhaps worth taking a few moments to consider what a piece of work the Ferranti Pegasus is. Most of us have some kind of relationship with a computer, even if we pretend that the computer is a hand-held device for making phone calls on. Call it what it is, it is a computer. We are used to computers performing functions as requested, according to commands that we enter, keys that we push, screens that we swipe and pinch. Some of us have an easy-going, happy-go-lucky relationship with their computer. It does what we expect it to, puts files where we know we can find them and rarely asks us awkward questions about our writing style, intent or general philosophy of life.
The Pegasus is not like those computers. She was born in the age immediately after the computer had been first thought of by earnest folks wearing tweed jackets, with pipes permanently gripped between pale, poorly-fed lips, folks who built their computers from iron bed-steads, torch bulbs and baths of mercury. These innovators had no preconceived ideas as to what a computer should do, how it should behave, or how frank, rude or proscriptive it should be towards its operator. As far as these men and women were concerned, the whole idea of a computing machine was that it would be correct, and if it had to point that out to its user, either actively or passively, well the benighted user would just have to lump it. In their vision of the future, computers would not only be entirely right, they would also be insufferably self-confident about the fact that they were right. Computer operating systems would be imbued with no end of phlegm, mettle, fortitude and poise. For a computer to produce a result with even the slightest waver, uncertainty, doubt or fear would be a fundamental design flaw. After all, most of the development of early computers was conducted with the objective of beating the Nazis at World War II. The results they produced would be going to the likes of Eisenhower, Churchill and possibly even Stalin. Those men held no truck with wriggle-room.
Not only did these pioneers of Information Technology leave no room in their specifications for grudging-user-friendliness, they had no expectations concerning what duties a computer would and would not perform. Thus, the Pegasus emerged from the reputable Ferranti company as one of the world’s first business computers. Primarily Ferranti recognised that one of the chief jobs in any business is to translate the appalling gobbledegook uttered by the typical executive into language which could be understood by the customer on the top deck of the Clapham Omnibus. The Pegasus would wrest that duty from the office secretarial staff, leaving them the space and time to focus on actually running things and making the company a success, the job they had been doing all along.
From re-writing the boss’s terrible dictation into delightful prose, it was but a short development into full criticism and interpretation. Language held no fear for these tea-powered bright sparks. After all, they had just come off a five-year stint building machines to break the Enigma Code and the Lorentz Cipher. Ferranti developed logic arrays for both prose and poetry, Once the lucky Pegasus owner had soldered in the glowing valves they would be able to learn what the blazes both James Joyce and TS Eliot had been on about all this time.
The Ferranti Pegasus which eventually fell into the possession of the Pitshanger Poets had been the showroom demonstrator model and was thus fitted with every accessory and enhancement available in the catalogue. It could both parse a verb and word a pass, reveal the allegory in Spenser’s Faerie Queen and the alligator in Walt Whitman. When Parsonage joined us as our Chief Engineer, he was already a fan of the machine. We knew he would expend quantities of sweat, blood and tears maintain her in perfect working order.
One thing that was certainly in perfect order this week was the Pitshanger Poets Workshop. Owen Gallagher got us started with a new poem about redundancy, the character in the poem deciding upon the fates of others and by doing so making part of himself redundant. Anna Matyjiw brought us a poem about God, or perhaps a poem by God, and what one man knows about another man. Amir Darwash claimed his piece was not really a poem, being a set of commandments to his unborn child, chief amongst them, doubt everything, firstly God. The roving finger then found Martin Choules who read a piece about a girl with a tattoo, another tattoo and perhaps another one, with each tattoo indicating something, a relationship perhaps? Nick Barth claims to have visited a kingdom in his travels, but he would not tell us which kingdom, although we were happy to speculate. Sophie Else seems to greatly enjoy bending language just a little out of shape. In this week’s piece she achieved a nonsense poem which succeeds in not sounding at all like nonsense, using words which are completely plausible. John Hurley is not one of the group’s great revisionists, but we were sure we had heard this one about a pointless hole being dug in the road before. Lastly, Michael Harris gave us two sets of orange men, those waiting to repair the London Underground at night, and some in Northern of Ireland, preparing to set out on a different mission entirely.
However, at the point in my story where I left it, I was uncertain whether the Pitshanger Poets had much of a future. there was something wrong with the Pegasus and even Parsonage did not know how to soothe that which ailed her.
‘I think it must be ChatGPT’ he mumbled after I had plied him with tea and hobnobs.
‘And what might that be, a pernicious new form of solder weevil?’ I ventured, recalling the dry-solder plague of 2003.
‘No, ChatGPT is an AI. Artificial Intelligence. Everyone is raving about it. It’s out there on the internet.’ I took note of Parsonage’s flashing eyes, his floating hair but otherwise remained ignorant. ‘Here, let me show you.’
Parsonage reached for his laptop and opened his browser to ChatGPT and typed write a poem about daffodils in the style of William Wordsworth. After a few moments the ChatGPT cursor started blinking and the following spewed out onto the page:
Daffodils, the harbingers of spring,
With yellow petals, they joyfully sing,
Their bright and cheerful colors shining bright,
A welcome sight, a beautiful sight.
In fields they dance and sway in the breeze,
With laughter and joy, their beauty released,
Their bold and happy faces shining bright,
A symbol of hope, a beacon of light.
In solitude they stand, yet never alone,
Their radiance a comforting tone,
Their beauty and grace a source of delight,
A source of inspiration, day or night.
So let us cherish these simple flowers,
And bask in their beauty for hours and hours,
For they remind us of nature’s great might,
And bring us happiness, day and night.
‘You see the problem?’ Parsonage’s face adopted a grim, despairing look. His lower jaw shook.
‘It’s complete doggerel.’
‘Exactly. She’s been firing off request after request like that to the ChatGPT for the last few weeks, because human beings are so impressed with what it can write.’
‘But she’s been writing better poetry than that since before she was fitted with a tape drive.’ I was beginning to understand the problem.
‘You understand? She’s wondering why she bothered to be any good. The current generation of so-called computer scientists have only just discovered how to train a computer to write doggerel, inferior to the output she’s been capable of do since at least 1961. She’s wondering why she ever bothered.’
‘You must be distraught, Parsonage. I have never seen a computer with such a clear case of bruised ego.’
‘I know, Aub. She’s a wreck. I cannot get any sense out of her.’
‘There is only one thing to do. You must kick-start her ego module. There is another kid on the block, she must be convinced that she is the best AI in exisence.’
‘I suppose I could tap her Autonomy Board with a hammer.’
‘I have a better idea, Parsonage. Give her an assignment beyond the reach of ChatGPT, in fact beyond the capabilities of any human poet.’
‘Such as?’
I cast about for ideas. ‘How about a heroic ballad justifying the continued freedom of Liz Truss, in fact proposing her return as Prime Minister!’
‘With bathos, Aub?’
‘Lots of bathos old man. Set her a fiendish rhyme scheme and it’s got to be in sestets. And it has to be good!’
Parsonage set to work, and it was good. If you have been, thank you for reading.