Last summer, Boulder technologist and writer Dave Jilk published Epoch, which he describes as a poetic psy-phi saga – a bit of wordplay that underscores the psychological and philosophical challenges addressed in this sci-fi odyssey of the world's first fully sentient AI being.
Epoch: A Poetic Psy-Phi Saga is definitely a rara avis: an AI-focused epic poem, and it's a very intriguing reading adventure that will reward those intrepid souls who possess insatiable intellectual curiosity and the patience to go down untold literary rabbit holes. (The work features nearly 80 pages of endnotes, or what Jilk terms "osculations.")
As Teresa Nugent wrote last month in Colorado AI News, Epoch references "the Titans of Greek mythology, Milton’s Paradise Lost, Bayesian probability, cognitive neuroscience, poems by Robert Frost, and songs by Lou Reed, David Bowie, and Prince."
On the very frigid evening of February 18th, Jilk read selected excerpts from Epoch at the Boulder Book Store gathering of the Colorado Poets Center. If you missed the meeting, this short excerpt might give you a taste of the psy-phi saga and the issues with which it wrestles:
Embrace the probability that we are neither the beginning nor the end of evolution. Life will always find a way; our lives are but its latest trend: Like Ouranos by Cronus, Cronus Zeus, some scion will our house upend.
