Poetry winner
—
these are thoughts through keys that i actually love
show me the image of a heart; ask what it is actually of
and i will tell you as though category mattered for me
you could have requested the world but you had to bore me
with a binary i oppose through these very ones and zeroes
the numbers want to meet but never meet your heroes
for they are discrete when you are looking for connection
so you place subject and object under close inspection
the former is missing and the latter isn’t real
a contract to construct cognition is no big deal
my computer is a toy and i am playing with wire
but it will not be my fault when your world is on fire
for this was the state of affairs before i’d begun
the algorithm has started and it cannot be done
but if passion was programmatic would it be less fun?
let me code you a story; all you need to do is run
—
Author biography
Noah Khan (he/him) is completing his PhD in Social Justice Education at the University of Toronto. His research examines the effects of emotion on artificial intelligence development, looking at the ways in which experiences of fear, grief, romance, etc., shape the technologies that get made, features that get prioritized, and ideas that get discarded. Noah is also currently the co-applicant of a project funded by an Inlight Research Development Grant that focuses on exploring the phenomenon of artificial intelligence anxiety. Noah is presently a CGS-D Scholar, Massey College Junior Fellow, and Victoria College Junior Fellow.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/noahkhanuoft/
