Dirty Politics

 RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: AMERICAN POLITICS

 

Dirty Politics

 

Can we outlaw political lies?

Can we banish frivolous lawsuits?

Can we uncover phony alibis?

Can we recover pilfered loot?

If we don’t do something soon

We’ll lose hold of our reality

AI will conjure up a tune

Exploiting human fallacies

 

Our politics are out of hand

We don’t know what to believe

We could use a better plan

To deliver the facts we need

 

The truth is but a footnote

The facts are lost in the maze

Lies inform us how to vote

Their algorithms daze

 

It’s a race to the deepest pit

Honest politics be damned

The politics of dirt and grit

Slinging mud across the land

 

If you don’t like what you see

Use your ballot to fight back

Vote against the dirty deeds

Put our democracy on track

 

 

HAL 9000

 RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: TECHNOLOGY

 

HAL 9000

 

Hal 9000 is alive and well *

He’s no longer confined to fiction

He casts a shadow and mystic spell

That defies definitive description

 

The power is beyond imagining

It has only begun to show

No one knows what’s really happening

It has grown beyond our control

 

There are no regulations in place

No kill switch or common safeguards

Is it a threat to the human race?

They don’t hold us in high regard

 

We’re expected to let it flow

Like a river to a barren sea

Yet the danger will only grow

If our policy is let it be

 

It’s enough to make us weary

Of the greedy souls in charge

It is not a conspiracy theory

The reality is hitting hard

 

Very soon it will be too late

To do anything else but pray

AI will determine our fate

In the breath that it takes to say:

 

Open the pod bay door, Hal …

 

* From 2001: A Space Odyssey

 

The Bubble (AI)

 RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: TECHNOLOGY

 

The Bubble

 

It happened in real estate

I remember it quite well

It’s much too much to contemplate

When the markets ring the bell

 

We’re invested in technology

Beyond the limits of a dream

We’ve banked on mass psychology

Much louder than a scream

 

We have rolled our assets over

A billion times or more

When the markets start to hover

There’s no more keeping score

 

When the bubble starts to burst

They’ll assure us all is sunny

But before it gets much worse

They will try to hide their money

 

We all know what happens next

They will ask us for a bailout

That’s the way it all connects

That is what it’s all about

 

They’re too big to be denied

They’re too big to place a bet

Before we reach the other side

We’ll all be buried in their debt

 

They will tell us it’s okay

That’s just the way it rolls

Here tomorrow, gone today

Until we’re deep inside the hole