Yeah, I read about Hans as a kid but didn't know he had a whole effect named after him.

I hope you're right, quite seriously.

I do doubt that ChatGPT or its siblings are currently sentient as we understand it, but so far as I can tell we have no way of knowing if something is self-aware or just a convincing simulacrum. If a system changes from one state to the other, it may be too late as we can't predict what a machine with an IQ of 20,000 would want to do.

I have little patience with the argument that we should disregard the whole "existential threat" element of AI because it will cause us to ignore more mundane issues like all of us forgetting how to write or draw. It's not a binary proposition where we can only consider one problem or another - let's look at all the potential issues that this technology could cause.

In any case, it's not just me, some Medium rando, doing the handwringing. A lot of people on the inside have expressed these concerns quite publicly.

As far as the poems go, the ones I quoted weren't necessarily the best, just the ones that demonstrated my point. There's some talented work there - if you look at the Daily Beast article I linked, they talked to a well-known poet who said those poems would get the author wait-listed at her MFA program. Which is likely better than I could do.