Playground

by Richard Powers

The world was bigger, stranger, richer, and wilder than I had a right to ask for.

People and their emotions puzzled me. They were stupidly complex, and there was no way to break them apart and see what was inside.

“What do you mean, don’t change anything? I’m an engineer!”

Reading left him untouchable on a raft in the middle of an ocean of bright words.

Without the ability to feel sad, a person could not be kind or thoughtful, because you wouldn’t care or know how anybody else feels. Without sadness, you would never learn anything from history. Sadness is the key to loving what you love and to becoming better than you were. A person who never felt sad would be a monster.

Your pulse is going up. It’s not logic. It’s drama.”

She was a powerless angel hovering above a metropolis built by billions of architects almost too small to see.

Of all the things we humans excel at, moving the goalposts may be our best trick.

She sent me off to my first day of school Wearing a screaming orange coat so that She could see me however far I walked To school that day and know that I was safe. Her face was bruised so blue that even I Could see those colors from as far away As school, and every school since that first day, However far I walked in space and time. What lesson did I learn on that first day? That being safe would always get you killed. And so I traded safety for more school And when I had to make a choice, I chose School and freedom over home and race. All that schooling to teach me how to be Another bruise on my mother’s unschooled face.

If giving away your data was the benchmark, maybe artificial general intelligence was going to be easier to achieve than we thought.