AI Gives Me Time To Do My Laundry

by Aditi Chhillar

“They won't fear it until they understand it, and they won't understand it until they've used it. Theory will take you only so far.”

— J. Robert Oppenheimer

I walk in an art gallery of anonymous pieces
A child drags a sticky hand along a mural as he dawdles;
The security guard watches, the mother does not care,

A curator yells out, grabs his microfibre cloth and wipes the handprint.

A tourist group wanders in and spreads out from the doorway
Like water trickling into a room, they solemnly disperse to every corner
‘A curious blend of Hopper and Picasso, I wonder what the prompt was?’
In every room we stand in front of the art, ‘I could do that.’

At 5 p.m. the artworks transition to a message asking us to come back tomorrow.

Tomorrow I will go to the museum instead, the artworks I used to see will be relics there
A description of the human hands that made it: the human intention.

No one knows who to credit in the gallery: Turing? OpenAI?

The 3 artists responsible for 100,000 prompts?
Or the corrupt blend of original art that made them?
‘Better no one’
They decided.

Better no thing

Aditi Chhillar is a penultimate Computer Science student at UNSW. She decided to participate in this competition as a fun way to explore more creative outlets. Aditi’s poem ‘AI Gives Me Time To Do My Laundry’ is inspired by the growing use of AI, and fears of it replacing creativity rather than improving our lives.

It is a visualisation of a world where there is prioritisation of efficiency and profit. The artworks in the art galleries are AI-generated, people are generally apathetic to it but mildly interested, and there is no human connection. The title is inspired by Joanna Maciejewska, where she talks of technology development in the wrong direction; by the time they are in widespread use, the accustomed convenience means it is too late for us to return to a world where the human experience can be valued more.