Greetings. So and AI generated work one the Commonwealth Prize for Literature. Very prestigious prize. Um and people are in an approach about it. Um so I thought I would just say a little bit about AI generally, because I think we need to look at this thing carefully and be very honest with ourselves about it. But I just want to say some things very quickly about it. AI is not just some new technological invention. Any technological invention comes out of a way of being a culture, something much bigger and more diffuse than its manifestation in a physical or in a particular thing. For me, AI, when you look at how it works and the fact that it is employing persons who are educated within our education system to train it, AI is being trained by us. AI is us in many ways. And whether we're satisfied with this us or not is the is the real question. But if you look at the kind of education we have received in the Western world specifically, the kind of uh education both within the classroom and outside of it, in the culture that has come with Western civilization, that is artificial intelligence. It is the idea that uh an accumulation of a certain amount of information um is the hallmark of intelligence and the ability to reproduce that, you know, even though when and where it pays lip service to a certain creativity, at the heart of it is the ability to reproduce a position, reproduce uh a set of information given, and we were educated along those lines. Um we can I mean I for as someone who's been in school forever, um, you could be educated in that way of thinking, and you spend a lot of your time in school, you could be educated in that way of thinking for up to 20 years, really and truly. That's within the system of education, you also have the discourse which has increasingly, even in artistic circles, become dominated by the ethos of the academy, of the western academy, right? And you find that even within discursive spaces, it is that same kind of artificial intelligence uh way of doing things that that takes precedent. For example, one of the things that is the alternate to artificial intelligence is the is the encouragement of creative thought, really creative thought. And really creative thought requires a very high tolerance for making mistakes, a very high high ability to dare and do something. And if you think of the discursive space we've been in for a long time, before any particular political persuasion or ideology, it has been one that has been governed in a certain way by the the the the culture that that undergirds it. It's the same culture that decides certain things that could be spoken about, what's important, what's not. The very fact that there's been such a dominance of that culture rather than a negotiation means that there's a certain one thing or one culture that's dominating how thought goes. And therefore the answers are easy to reproduce. The correct answers, the idea of a right answer, rather than interest in individual perspectives. So even when we talk about the West as being individualistic and Africa as being communal, it's it's nonsense because the West, the individualism in the West is one that is like pre-programmed, it's not real individualism, it's not one that's interested in the perspectives of different people, the the unique perspective that each person comes with. It is not interested in that, simply put, you know. So when we talk about AI and artificial intelligence, and we believe that this is something so outside of us, artificial intelligence is what has undergooded the education that we have had in the West and we've benefited from and and benefited from being able to reproduce and been rewarded for. So the Commonwealth Prize going to an AI story. If you really look at at I'm not saying it's not bad or or something, but if we start to take an honest, sober look at it, it's that's what it is. AI is being trained right now by writers, academics, by different people. It's the the jobs are online. So at the end of the day, we really kind of have to look at that. And I think people willing to be honest with ourselves about it, even though it means that we have to take a serious look at what we've benefited from rather than pretending that it's outside of the AI circle and defending it, then we might come to some answers. I'm not saying I have the answer, but maybe if we look at it a little honestly, we may be able to find um an answer to that. The other thing I I kept thinking about is this in Caribbean literature, in African diasporic literature, there is the figure constantly of uh a boy or someone going to school, going into the Western world, becoming integrated into it. You have, I think, Old Story Time is about that by um the Jamaican writer, don't remember his name right now. You have a scene like that in Growing Up Stupid under the West under the Union Jack. You have a scene like that in the movie Imitation of Life, you have scenes upon scenes of the idea of a mother who is of the other culture, who dresses like it, looks like it, smells like it, and all of that. The culture that is is is kept on the margins coming and enter the space of education, which is a space that produces a lot of what we call our intellectual output, and there is a kind of clash really there, and oftentimes what you find is the person who is attending the school has a certain shame that that that comes from both sides of themselves being seen. That is in a way the story of AI, because what you have is that that choice, that idea of what we've been letting in, um, and how we have perceived intelligence generally is what the clash is about, because the mother coming in is something that disturbs this idea of intelligence, something that disturbs this idea of what we're we're actually receiving in schooling, the things that we've been fed and we reproduce, and we're rewarded to the degree that we're able to reproduce it. If we think that that is not part of all of these things we're being judged within, all of these things that we're being rewarded within, if we if we think that that is not part of how it operates, how the thinking goes, then we have a problem because it permeates all our arts, the symbols are there. So I just think that on a whole the AI discussion needs to be one way. We understand that we we don't wait to see the kind of concretization of something to understand that it exists. Artificial intelligence is not a new technology, it's the concretization, the becoming obvious, palpable maybe even, of something that has existed and been around us for a long time and been within us and which we've been within. So an AI story winning the Commonwealth Prize is not something that surprises me at all. It's not something that surprises me really at all. And we could take a small look at it where we create a particular enemy and we pretend that we are outside of that enemy completely on another side of things, or we take an honest look at ourselves, what we've been doing, and how long this has been going on, and how we've been complicit in it. You could be defensive about it, or one could be honest about it, and that or artificial intelligence is the type of intelligence that has been promoted and that has promoted us within the Western world because that's what's legible to them for ages. This is simply now the manifestation of it, and you could see it, you don't have to see it as an enemy. The correct thing, just like these images from these works of art I've mentioned, is to put things in their proper place. Because the very problem that there was in old story time, in imitation of life, in growing up stupid under the Union Jack, is that the mother who was coming with the culture of African people, the culture of let's say Indian people as well, the cult the non-Western cultures coming in. The problem of that symbol is that it is seen as misplaced. That culture does not belong in schools, it does not belong in the institutions that reward literary prizes, it does not belong in there. It has to remain at home, and that the student who's coming to school, coming to the Western institution, being rewarded by it, should never let the two worlds meet in the school, in the space of the official, in the space of the dominant. That's how I see it. So it's a good opportunity for reflection, not for defensiveness, not for outcry. It's a good opportunity to really reflect and be honest. And the the the hallmark of honesty is that one is willing to have that which empowers one, that which has benefited one, become obsolete or be done away with if that is what the truth requires. My thoughts, my two cents. Thanks. Oh, watch out for pigtails and pigtail and breadfruit podcasts coming. Subscribe to VR Freak on substack. Uh generally keep safe, do well. All is well, all is well. Don't panic.