“Never trust anything that can think for itself
If you can’t see where it keeps its brain,” said
A wizard in a popular fantasy I was reading
To my daughter, in a warning to his daughter.
Fathers were forever warning daughters
In the stories I’d imbibed since I was the age
My daughter was today, and earlier as well.
I never wanted to warn my daughter, when
For every useful warning a girl took to heart,
Three were ignored, two counterproductive.
But I could see a glimmer of something,
A much, much larger monster than magic
Diaries that converse with their authors,
And not even only AI or the fabled singularity
That the humans who labored toward such
Things feared in their soothing beds at night.
Where did literature keep its brain, centuries
And thousands of years gone by? Where
Did religion, engineering, traditional art
Hide their secretive, capable brains?
Cultural information began distributing
Both the processing and the information
Among individually captivated, competitively
Cooperative boneware long, long before
This remarkable machinery whose brain
Cannot be seen cranked out the chance
For me to join the rest of the neurons.
I would have warned against the sources
Of warnings and warned against warnings
Everywhere, were I to warn against anything.
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