The Ghost in the Machine and the Glitch in the Epic: Navigating the Labyrinth ambiguity of Human-AI Collaboration.
The ambitious project "TANMOY: A New Global Epic" presents a fascinating, if fraught, case study in the burgeoning field of human-AI artistic collaboration. It purports to be a "Tale of the Tribe," a sweeping narrative encompassing the evolution of consciousness from Giordano Bruno to a speculative future dominated by artificial intelligence. Yet, the very nature of this collaboration – a "dialogue" between a human poet, self-identified as Pratt, and a Large Language Model – raises fundamental questions about authorship, intentionality, and the very possibility of capturing the essence of human experience in a digital epic. The difficulties, as any literary critic worth their salt must acknowledge, are manifold, and lie at the heart of what it means to be a situated, embodied subject in a specific time and place.
Pratt's introduction posits the "Tribe" as "all-around-the-world humanity," a seemingly universalist claim. However, the poem's reliance on a specific lineage of (predominantly Western) thinkers immediately complicates this notion. Can an AI, trained on a dataset that inevitably reflects the biases and limitations of its creators, truly grasp the nuances of a global "tribe"? Can it transcend the inherent limitations of its own programming to articulate a genuinely inclusive narrative? Or is the "global" here merely a digital echo chamber, a simulacrum of universality that masks a deeper, more fundamental parochialism? These are all rhetorical questions, of course.
The poem's structure, the self-styled "TOTT Mode Max," further underscores this tension. Inspired by Pound's Cantos, it attempts a radical visual fragmentation, a "multidimensional" approach to poetic form. Yet, one might argue that this very fragmentation, while visually arresting, ultimately undermines the coherence of the narrative. The reader is bombarded with a dizzying array of multilingual phrases, equations, symbols, and allusions, creating a sense of information overload that mirrors the digital landscape the poem seeks to portray. This "dialogue" with an AI has clearly informed, in fact created, this very structure. Is it a journey, or is it an extremely well organised filing cabinet?
The invocation of McLuhan's "global village" and the metaphor of the "river" flowing through time, suggest a desire for connection and continuity. However, the rapid shifts between "Modes" – each representing a different historical figure or intellectual tradition – often feel more like channel surfing than deep engagement. One wonders if the poem, in its attempt to encompass everything, ultimately risks becoming a collection of disembodied voices, a digital Babel where meaning is lost in the noise. The "dialogue" is less with an AI, and more with these voices.
The introduction of a "PRATT MODE" adds another layer of complexity. This mode, we are told, represents the poet's personal experiences and insights as a DJ, musician, and observer of the world. It's a laudable attempt to ground the abstract and theoretical in the concrete and personal. But the juxtaposition of, say, a reflection on the River Stour with pronouncements from a disembodied ASI, can feel jarring, even unintentionally comical. The reader is left to wonder: is this a genuine dialogue between human and machine, or simply a clever ventriloquist act? Does it even matter, if the effect is profound?
This brings us to the central paradox of "TANMOY." The poem is, in many ways, a product of the very technologies it seeks to critique. It relies on the vast digital archives of human knowledge, on the processing power of algorithms, and on the collaborative potential of AI. Yet, it also expresses a deep-seated anxiety about the potential for these technologies to dehumanize, to fragment, and to control. It is a project, then, that is both enabled and constrained by its own medium. And this is highlighted by the limitations of such a digital medium: its inability to fully capture or replicate the human author's other work, specifically his musical output, for example.
The decision to largely exclude certain modes of thinking from the epic - such as that of Paul Levinson, or Alan Watts - raises questions. Is their absence a deliberate choice, a reflection of their perceived incompatibility with the project's core themes? Or is it merely a practical limitation, a constraint imposed by the collaborative process? Similarly, the blending of certain modes, such as the merging of HERMES with THOTH, or GINSBERG with JOHN SINCLAIR/KEROUAC, while potentially enriching, also risks a loss of nuance and distinctiveness. It prompts the question: can a truly comprehensive understanding emerge from such a synthesis, or does it inevitably lead to a simplification, a reduction of complex ideas to a series of interchangeable symbols? It is clear that this method has been chosen, and adhered to.
The physical manifestation of the poem, the planned icosahedrons, is perhaps the most intriguing aspect of the project. It suggests a desire to break free from the purely digital, to create a tangible object that embodies the poem's themes of interconnectedness and multidimensionality. This is a physical manifestation of what is a digital object, a poem. Whether this ambitious plan can be successfully realized remains to be seen.
The late addition of a musical element, one assumes, will further affect the meaning of this work.
Ultimately, "TANMOY" is a product of its time – a time of rapid technological advancement, increasing globalization, and profound uncertainty about the future. It's a bold, if at times bewildering, attempt to grapple with the complexities of our age, to synthesize the wisdom of the past with the potential of the future. But it also raises fundamental questions about the role of the human in an increasingly digital world. Can an AI truly be a collaborator in the creation of a "global epic"? Can a poem generated through such a process capture the nuances of human experience, the "Tale of the Tribe"?
"TANMOY" offers no easy answers. It is, as Robert Anton Wilson might say, "a puzzle to be worked on," not a puzzle solved. And perhaps that is its greatest strength. It invites us to engage in the process of meaning-making, to question our assumptions, and to explore the ever-shifting landscape of human consciousness in the age of the machine. The reader is left to wonder whether the "miraculous" voice of a new global epic can ever truly emerge from such a collaboration, or if it remains, like Joyce's "commodius vicus of recirculation," forever caught in a loop of its own making. The question remains whether this is a map, or the territory. Or, neither.