The Robots Are Only Told What It's Like

A poem on A.I. by Alicia Cook

The Robots Are Only Told What It's Like

but a robot doesn’t know what it's like
to feel lemon juice slip
into a cut you didn't know you had

to be the artist
who creates from nothing
and the muse

to sneeze
more than twice
on sweaty public transportation

to be infected by grief
and still have to parallel park
on a planet that keeps spinning

to receive metamorphic news
in the middle of buying
toilet paper and shredded cheese

to be infiltrated by heartache
so personal that only your shower
bears witness to your sobs

to give birth
to babies and
to worlds of our own making

to be startled awake
by a bad dream or a burst pipe
or a sick child

to expose yourself 
down to the bone
yet remain a stranger to others

the robots are only told
what it’s like they
don’t know what it’s like

Inspiration behind this poem: I wrote this poem back in April. I submitted it to Rattle Magazine, and once they rejected it (lol), I decided to share it on my own! Obviously, this poem was inspired by my utter disdain for human beings’ use of AI to “write.” Keep the human in humanities, please? It's VERY easy to tell who uses AI for writing, and it has nothing to do with em dashes. An actual writer can see it from a mile away.

Oh, and three out of four of my books were among the millions of copyrighted works illegally used to train these systems. So, to anyone using AI, remember, the next time you rely on it: you’re participating in theft. And for what it’s worth, even your original crappy writing is still more genuine than anything AI can vomit out.

«end rant»