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What’s been happening on Wednesday nights?

Whirrr, fizzzzz, whooosh. Hear that? That’s the sound of the brains belonging to the people who have been enjoying the October Speaker Series on Wednesday evenings. It’s been fascinating and challenging stuff. It’s also the sound of the robots looming over us, about to seize our jobs, our relationships, even our very souls. At least, that can easily be the fear of regular humans as we contemplate the seismic disruption of Artificial Intelligence.

As you know, we’ve been in the expert hands of Dr Jim Locke, an IT professor at Troy University, Montgomery. What Jim has been showing us is important. So much so, that I’m using my article this week to tell you some of what we’ve been learning.

First up, here’s a video of a piece of music composed by AI. Yes, that’s right. A piece of music composed by AI. I know – this is challenging. You knew that AI was really good at scanning all the data on the Internet and giving excellent, comprehensive and immediate answers to any question you dare to ask. But creating stuff? Surely not. Well...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Emidxpkyk6o  

Noteworthy is that while AI composed the original music, it is played by human musicians—an important distinction that signals the evolving relationship between human and computing machine.

But, if AI has no soul, how can it create art? See here...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPh0bKcXgLo

Jim showed us how creative AI can be, by asking it to write a poem about St John’s Episcopal Church, Montgomery and its English rector (!) Here’s what it wrote... 

At St. John’s in Montgomery
Beneath the Southern sky so wide,
Where oaks and steeple stand with pride,
A voice from England’s distant shore
Now calls the faithful to restore.

Rev. Johnston speaks with gentle grace,
Uniting hearts in sacred space;
The echoes of his homeland blend
With hymns where Southern voices bend.
In pews where history’s shadows stay,
He guides with light along the way;
Across the ocean, across the years,
One church, one faith, through hopes and tears.
So St. John’s rises, firm and true,
A house of God for old and new;
And in its heart, both strong and kind,
A shepherd’s voice, a soul aligned.
 
This is incredible! It even put the poem in the style of a Shakespeare sonnet...

A Sonnet for St. John’s
Upon fair Montgomery’s gentle ground doth rise,
St. John’s, whose steeple points to heav’nly skies;
Within her walls a shepherd, new yet known,
From Albion’s isle hath cross’d the sea alone.
Rev. Johnston, graced with tongue of Britain’s land,
Now guideth souls with firm yet tender hand;
Where Southern breezes through the live oaks play,
His voice doth blend with hymns at break of day.
O time! that joineth distant shore to shore,
And knits one flock though oceans lie before;
Here faith unites where once proud echoes dwelt,
And holy peace within the heart is felt.
So let this church, both ancient, strong, and free,
Proclaim God’s love through all eternity.

I must admit I don’t understand this. It’s weird. Mysterious. But there’s one thing I am sure of. God is still God. Jesus is still Lord, and our hearts are still restless until we find our rest in him.