The Big Idea: David Ebenbach

Sometimes it feels like the world is being rapidly overtaken by AI, but author David Ebenbach is here to remind us that this a world of humans, not robots. In the Big Idea for his newest poetry collection, The AI Suspects It Might Be a Hungry Ghost, he encourages us to rage against the machine, and remember that it is not inevitable as long as we continue to fight the good fight. DAVID EBENBACH: The big idea is, probably, more or less, that we’re fucked. Wait—let me back up. Because maybe it’s not that simple. Let’s start with the medium-sized idea: My new book, which is called The AI Suspects It Might Be a Hungry Ghost, is a collection of speculative poetry from the point of view of a generative AI chatbot, sketching out possibilities of what it might be like if a chatbot did have a point of view. What would it think and feel about itself, the world, and its creators (i.e., us)? That’s what the book’s about. And that medium-sized idea does provoke bigger ones, like ideas about what…