Black Box - July 21 2025

 

Black Box

July 21 2025



In some large windowless building

in the outskirts, where no one goes,

row upon row

of blinking machines

whirrr with electricity,

computing zeros and ones

or making up their own

quantum reality.

This is the cloud

we so blithely speak of;

not a cirrus wisp

against a bright blue sky,

but hardware and chips

and the loud hum of power.

A forbidding place

where all our virtual selves

unwittingly reside.

When I was a child

clouds were the bailiwick of gods;

where the Almighty sat

gazing down

keeping track of our transgressions.

An ineffable God

made of insubstantial stuff;

the ethereal presence

you’d expect of a deity

whose name we were commanded

to never say out loud.

Now here is a cloud

that serves a higher purpose,

a seat

worthy of its occupant.

Or at least would be

if I were still a believer,

or frankly

ever truly was.

Still, there are clouds overhead

shape-shifting as ever.

How water

as vapour

takes every size and shape,

just as frozen

is never the same;

snowflakes

with more permutations

than atoms in the universe.

How even water in its liquid state

is mutable,

taking the shape of its container

no matter what.

And now, earthbound clouds

that do all look the same.

Windowless fortresses

with reinforced floors

where imposing machines

lining spotless corridors

run themselves.

Where, except for some guards

and a bored technician

humans are barred from entry.

Autonomous machines,

whose inner workings

are a black box

no one can see into.

Not a heavenly cloud

floating on air,

but glass and steel

on a concrete foundation.

Our god of ego, and instant gratification,

housed in a soulless building

you’d never notice

in the unlikely chance

you happened by.

A cloud we take for granted

as we scroll and tap away.

Believe in, sight unseen,

perhaps will soon obey.

I wanted to harp more on the vast electrical demand and greenhouse gas burden of the so-called cloud, but only got at that by implication in a couple of lines: the whirrr of electricity and loud hum of power. Instead, I somehow got diverted into a cautionary tale about the potential dangers of Artificial Intelligence. Hence the title.

Ironically, though (hypocritically?!!), I used my own A.I. (a handy app called “Perplexity”) to come up with this, which you’ll recognize from the poem:

The number of possible permutations of snowflakes is astronomical, far exceeding the number of atoms in the universe. For complex, six-fold radial snowflakes, estimates use combinatorial arguments: if a snowflake has 100 distinguishable features, the number of ways to arrange these is at least 100! (factorial) possibilities, which is greater than 10 to the 158th . For comparison, the estimated number of atoms in the observable universe is about 10 to the 80th.