Puha

Deep Learning har blitt forklart som at maskiner nå kan gjøre oppgaver som tidligere var forbeholdt mennesker. Selv om vi enda er i startgropa av utviklingen, valgte jeg å utfordre kunstig intelligens til å spinne videre på åpningslinjene til noen norske klassikere. Verktøyet jeg brukte ga bare brukende svar på engelsk, så jeg tok utgangspunkt i oversettelser jeg fant på nett (en av dem gjorde jeg selv). Det i fet skrift er mata fra meg, resten står maskinen for.

La oss starte med Ibsens Peer Gynt (1867):

ÅSE: Peer, you’re lying!
PEER [without stopping]: No, I am not!
ÅSE: Well then, swear that it is true!
PEER: Swear? Why should I?
ÅSE: You must swear!
ÅSE: But you have done nothing but lie! You’ve told lies ever since you’ve met me, even to your friends, and you’ve lied again and again. Why?
PEER: [without stopping] I will not.
ÅSE: Well then, I’ll ask you a few more questions.
PEER: [without stopping] You don’t want to answer that one? You’re a liar!
ÅSE: You don’t want me to ask you questions?
PEER: I will answer you three questions! [pause] No.
ÅSE: Well you can say no one of those.
PEER: No.
ÅSE: I’ll keep asking if you keep lying. I will!
ÅSE: I’d rather not have to. [pause] Well that would just mean I have to do it myself.

Dette ble litt mer Samuel Beckett enn Henrik Ibsen, men en viss sammenheng må en jo si at det er. La oss fortsette med Knausgårds Min kamp (2009):

For the heart, life is simple: it beats for as long as it can. Then it stops.  As it does that it stops the beating of every other beat in your heart.  So as the heart stops beating, so does the brain.  When the brain stops beating you can feel the cold wet thud of heart stopping.  As your brain stops beating the heart stops beating, the brain is broken.  And so begins the healing process.  
So, let’s stop and focus on just a part of this process and how that can make us better human beings (or at least better able to handle things that are inescapable to us).  This is how we have a heart, as a result of our brains being damaged by alcohol.  So, when we go to a bar and we experience the pain of heart stopping, it doesn’t matter if, at that moment, we had a few drinks, we were sober for the occasion or were simply being human – what does matter is that we were in that state.  What is that heart stopping about?  It is a natural part of human experience.

Selv om det i midtpartiet går noe langt i retning svada, henter maskin-Knausgård seg fint inn mot slutten. La oss se hvordan det går med Skrams Sjur Gabriel (1887) og hans familie i Hellemyren:

In Hellen, half a mile north of Bergen by the old ways of measure, lived a farmer named Sjur Gabriel sixty years ago. For a long time Sjur Gabriel looked after and cared for the young sons of his wife. Then one day one of his sons, a young man, was wounded in battle. «He was sick for three days,» explained Gabriel’s son. To avoid him being sent away again Sjur Gabriel took him to a well in Bergen-on-the-Hadd, about fifty yards from his house. He asked what to do with his son. As usual he had the solution for him: «You should eat the meat that you kill, and drink the milk which comes from it.» To his amazement the young man ate both and drank the milk. In the evening he had both his sons well again. Now Gabriel’s wife began to ask where the young man was, but Gabriel said, «He is the one I sent, and I will not go out again till I have satisfied my hunger by eating his flesh.»

Det lå an til å få en lykkeligere slutt enn i originalverket, men den plutselige makabre vendingen mot slutten må vel sies å være hakket verre enn naturalismen fordra. Hva med Hamuns Sult (1890)?:

It was during the time I wandered about and starved in Christiania; Christiania, singular city, from which no man departs without carrying away the traces of his sojourn there.  My memory fails me.  The house, which I remember from this time vividly, and which I still often see in my dreams, was the residence of a Mr. C. A. B.  He was a man of learning with a taste and sense of humour and a generous heart, and in this house I have often visited both of them.  I remember that their room was rather small, but that the bed was large; that it lay on three sides, and that upon their side was a couch of the same materials, with a cushion at its foot, which when lying on the floor I always placed a bottle upon.  It was on one of the sides that I occasionally laid eggs, and in the other were laid a great variety of things, such as fish, fruit and vegetables, such as lettuce and tomato, eggs, cake, bread, nuts and butter.

Tja, med sin kubistiske sofa dekka av mat går jeg-personen i alle fall ikke sulten. La oss avslutte med poesi. Jeg mata maskinen med Hagerups «Jeg er det dikt» (1939), og resultatet må vel sies å være skremmende troverdig som dikt:

I am the poem
I am the poem never turned
I am the letter always burned.

The poem I am the poem is here,
and so the poem I am the poem
was.
(We do not know the name of the artist or poet, however the poem remains, not in the letter, but in the poem.)
We do not know the true poet but the poem is here.
There are not many poems that remain with us, just many poems
that remain with this one.
The poem I am the poem is here,
and so, the poem I am the poem that was.
The poem I am the poem is here.

When it was written and left,
there was no one called Emily.
In the poem that stayed behind,
there were several poems, many poems,
but no one named Emily.

There was not one of us that could name them.
And so, the poetry I am the poem is here.
The poem has many pages, many thousands
of words

Oppdatert 13.11.2019: Virker som om Lithub har tenkt (nøyaktig) samme tanke. (Men jeg var først.)