Salome Agbaroji

You can go.

Okay.

Okay.

Hi, yes, I'm Salome Agbaroji.

I'm a spoken word poet.

I mean, a more formal title is, like, the seventh National Youth Poet Laureate of the U.S., but that has many syllables, and in essence, I just find a lot of joy and passion in using words to really hit the heart of an audience.

I describe myself as a creative writer, but another big part of my work is social advocacy, so...

A lot of the issues I advocate on are like arts, arts education, literacy for all people, and just uplifting marginalized voices.

And I try to do a good job of using my poetry as a voice to push those messages forward.

Samara, what about you?

I have to say that as a poet, I mean, I'm always going to be thinking about the words.

There were so many lines from your part that was so potent and evocative.

I think one of my favorite lines from yours was, I'm saying a lot of things I don't believe.

Is that the exact line?

But that one stuck out to me as much as all the others.

And I just wanted to say that I loved the writing there.

But to answer the question of what...

helped me decide what I'd bring to the very unique and valuable TED space.

I mean, looking at the list of the other speakers, of course, there's so many brilliant and budding technologists here, people who are at the cutting edge of innovation, who do work that is very different from what I do.

And I knew inherently, I have an audience of very, very capable ears who will go back to their labs or go back to their

policy-making spaces and actually have the ability to make changes in what I'd be speaking to.

So in writing a poem about AI, which is its own unique process, interacting lyrically, artistically with something that we're all still trying to figure out, I wanted to really frame it from a human lens.

remind folks that as we're engaging with the very cool and scary, possibly, you know, disruptive thing that AI is coming to be in our societies, we can't forget people.

I fill my empty 3AMs with spineless phone scrolls, text abbreviations, and uni-human conversations.

AI chatbots answer all my aimless interrogations like, how do I answer an email that does not find me well?

Or, oh my gosh, my crush just texted me, what do I say?

Or, is it true what the headlines say?

That the world is crumbling beneath our feet and we do nothing but crumble with it?

our glassened eyes lost in the latent space, calculating our extinction with every pulse of our carbon-based circuitry.

And as we fall deeper and deeper into the black box, is hoping for humanity the most human thing we can do?

And the AI says back to me, I don't know.

More specifically, hmm, I'm not sure how to process your request.

Please try a new prompt.

We can't forget the people who create it, the people who are impacted by it.

We can't forget that ultimately our goal should be to create with the objective of increasing human prosperity, not necessarily just for profit.

not necessarily just to say that I'm the founder of this thing.

And knowing the digital online audience that is so widespread, common people who are just trying to understand this new thing, plus the innovators who are creating the new things that we're trying to understand, I wanted to impart that message to both those audiences.

I say to AI, don't feel too special.

You aren't the first artificial system we humans carelessly labeled intelligent.

Global capitalism was genius until it became negligent, leaving the unfortunate to suffer without the means for life.

Biased science elevated one people over the last.

But with differentiation came racism and caste, littering our world with non-compostable isms.

I say to its text and images, you're brilliant, but you aren't the first generation to forge something out of seemingly nothing.

Haven't you seen my generation, the DIYers and binary defiers?

We too extract wisdom from the earth's mouth.

Like a flower or a landmine.

Sure, drive our cars, but never our movements.

Never our blood and boned passions.

Yes, for sure.

I feel like as a poet, every line hopefully delivers a punch or at least sets one up.

And in the writing process, you know when you've hit one, when it hits you.

You're like, dang, I really ate when I wrote that.

Hold on.

Go back.

Let me not delete that.

And one of the lines that gave me that feeling when writing was, You can't replace the place of the people I say to the people.

The displaced children without homes do not cry mechanical tears about a simulated hunger induced by virtual war.

When I wrote that one, I really felt like I was able to encompass what I wanted the poem to be in essence of the juxtaposition of like the human experience with the mechanical world that we are so fascinated by.

But, you know, we live in the natural.

We accessorize the natural with these gadgets and these things.

But the human experience is a very real one that we shouldn't neglect.

The viruses they suffer from are not the zeros and ones in your devices cured by simple software reset.

If only the world had such a button.

We've got our heads so far up in the cloud, we forget that the ground exists.

New prompt, is this modernity?

Marveling at machines that can read and write when currently 700 million adults are illiterate?

New prompt, is this innovation?

Chipped by click workers in dark, dank rooms without proper compensation?

The future we fear is not the sci-fi, cyborg, AI uprising that sets the world aflame.

No, the true dystopia is the today we make.

When humans watch the world burn, still with the power to save it.

And don't.

The work towards a better world is not automated.

No computer could take this job of audacious hope, of unfounded optimism.

We are the unprompted.

In the face of the bleakest calculations, we aspire in a way no algorithm could advise.

And that is what will save us from the abyss.

Solely, we are our saviors.

But just as every hero has their gadgets, technology can be the engine of our altruism.

Every invention is just an extension of your hand.

So in the same way that a hammer can both build and destroy, you tell me, how will you wield your tools?

Again, I say to people, remember people.

be unprompted but with a promise to let my most pressing 3 a.m question not be whether or not I'll have a world to wake up to but how these new things can finally find us well we'll be right back after a short break

I mean, I think a lot of people ask me specifically as a writer, how do you feel about a chat GPT?

How do you feel about these AI programs that are generative specifically with text, which is what I deal with in my practice?

And I've never been anti-AI.

I'm, in fact, very fascinated by technology.

That's why I was...

ecstatic to write poems about it.

But I do think that there is

somewhat of a disconnect of, you know, we're having these conversations about AI and art, but why?

When AI has the capacity to do so many other great things, you know, people make a joke like, why is AI painting and not doing my taxes?

Like, what is the engine that's forcing, you know, maybe developers or, you know, people who are marketing these products towards the very unique human things that we engage in?

So I think it's valuable to understand what AI can do, but

I'd hope that we can anchor them more in the what is the productive thing for humanity?

What is both good and right towards the path of innovation and newness?

You know, not just creating for the mere sake of doing so in a reckless way.

Or for profit.

Just wanted to jump in on that.

I think art is really special when it is active and collaborative, especially for performance artists like ourselves.

I think that's one of the things that we luck out on a bit because AI can generate music.

There hasn't yet been a believable way for AI to perform music.

We're not at that technology yet.

to create an android that looks human and dances well enough or plays the piano well enough to perform it live.

And that's one of the very special things about performance poetry specifically.

I've seen AI write horrible poems and I've seen AI a few months later write

decent poems.

And I can only assume as time progresses that AI will be able to write beautiful pieces of lyric that similarly evoke, you know, emotion and sincerity from an audience.

Okay, whatever.

But the performance element, the human engagement element of it that isn't just background noise is the thing that AI hasn't touched yet.

And I think that's a special thing.

I would say definitely not too expensive.

I tell people all the time, poetry is one of the funnest and best art forms because it costs zero money.

Poetry is the one where I can have zero budget and it's super accessible.

So in like spoken word culture, people make it their practice.

to gather.

And that's what art is in essence.

You know, sometimes technologies can complicate that.

So any narrative that kind of convolutes that, I definitely agree that there must be another motive there.

When you said the word reset, I was a bit hesitant because I'm not, again, I'm pro-AI in the ways that don't compromise human creativity in that process.

I think people have found interesting ways to integrate

technology into process in a way that does not at all mitigate human creativity.

But as I was listening to Samara's response, I remembered everything that is currently going on in the U.S.

about art and museums and censorship and

We find ourselves in the beautiful Vancouver, Canada right now, but I will get on a flight in two days and go back to the U.S.

in a space that, you know, seems to punish our artistic voices.

So the reset, maybe not so much, but I definitely think that there needs to be a recalibration of understanding the dire, dire importance of art in our societies.

Like, I look back to

ninth grade Salome who didn't know much of anything that she wanted to do, just wanted to do something meaningful.

A daughter of immigrants from Nigeria who only really had ourselves.

And it was nonprofit art programs that allowed me to blossom and grow into this person who articulates herself and somehow makes her way onto a TED stage, you know.

And poetry, and specifically poetry programs that were funded for that specific purpose,

made a transformative change in my trajectory.

I don't know where I would be right now if it wasn't for my art, yet I see an administration that totally neglects that.

So I think that's where a reset or a recalibration comes in.

Acknowledging the fact that you don't just go to school to learn basic arithmetic and you go back home and that's the end of it.

Art helps us, art programs in schools, art programs in communities,

helps form a sense of community identity, a sense of self, helps us articulate opinions about societal or political happenings.

And I think if we start adding back the ethos into art, we wouldn't see as many attempts to suppress it with whether it be AI or policy.

I would say, you know, being an artist is a way to take your power back.

In a space where you feel like you're voiceless, in a space where you may not be allowed to say something in the fear that funding from your very important project will get pulled, art is the way that you reckon with that, either in a private meditative space or in a very public, social way that galvanizes others to join with you, to meditate on or organize against

anything that's going on in your community or society that you disapprove of.

I've been able to, you know, use poetry to

changed policymakers' minds on homelessness policy.

I've been able to use poetry to remind people that quality education is a right of all people.

And I've seen art really transform in a way that gives me power back.

And I really encourage people to pick up the pen and paper and write.

Don't let that creative spirit in you die, even though there are so many forces against its flourishment.

It's very interesting.

Poets are really, really used to verbal acknowledgement or affirmation, whether it be a hmm or a snap, something that says, you know, we love this or that line hit me.

It struck me in the right ways.

Or at least like we're in community.

Exactly.

We're here.

But then with the lights dimmed.

And then I'm like on stage and it's like pure silence.

And it's also interesting because it's maybe like a 270 degree stage.

It gave a really fun opportunity to play with space.

And I had to even psych myself up to say like,

hey, crouch if you want to or look up there.

You know, there's a lot of possibilities.

So as a performer, it was very fun to, you know, try to own that red dot.

The red circle.

Yeah, the red circle.

And then it was like the most warm, beautiful, like standing O at the end.

And I was like, yes, it was good.

I would do it again.

Snaps for them.

I fill my empty 3AMs with spineless phone scrolls, text abbreviations, and uni-human conversations.

AI chatbots answer all my aimless interrogations like, how do I answer an email that does not find me well?

Or, oh my gosh, my crush just texted me, what do I say?

Or, is it true?

Is it true?

Would the headlines say that the world is crumbling beneath our feet and we do nothing but crumble with it?

Our glassened eyes lost in the latent space, calculating our extinction with every pulse of our carbon-based circuitry, and as we fall deeper and deeper into the black box, is hoping for humanity the most human thing we can do?

And the AI says back to me, I don't know.

More specifically, hmm, I'm not sure how to process your request.

Please try a new prompt.

I say to AI, don't feel too special.

You aren't the first artificial system we humans carelessly labeled intelligent.

Global capitalism was genius until it became negligent, leaving the unfortunate to suffer without the means for life.

Biased science elevated one people over the last.

But with differentiation came racism and caste, littering our world with non-compostable isms.

I say to its text and images, you're brilliant, but you aren't the first generation to forge something out of seemingly nothing.

Haven't you seen my generation, the DIYers and binary defiers?

We too extract wisdom from the earth's mouth like a flower.

or a landmine.

Sure, drive our cars, but never our movements, never our blood and boned passions.

You can't replace the place of the people, I say to the people.

The displaced children without homes do not cry mechanical tears about a simulated hunger induced by virtual war.

The viruses they suffer from are not the zeros and ones in your devices, cured by simple software reset.

If only the world had such a button.

We've got our heads so far up in the cloud, we forget that the ground exists.

New prompt, is this modernity?

Marveling at machines that can read and write when currently 700 million adults are illiterate?

New prompt, is this innovation?

Chipped by click workers in dark, dank rooms without proper compensation?

The future we fear is not the sci-fi, cyborg, AI uprising that sets the world aflame.

No, the true dystopia is the today we make.

When humans watch the world burn, still with the power to save it.

And don't.

The work towards a better world is not automated.

No computer could take this job of audacious hope, of unfounded optimism.

We are the unprompted.

In the face of the bleakest calculations, we aspire in a way no algorithm could advise.

And that is what will save us from the abyss.

Solely, we are our saviors.

But just as every hero has their gadgets, technology can be the engine of our altruism.

Every invention is just an extension of your hand.

So in the same way that a hammer can both build and destroy, you tell me, how will you wield your tools?

Again, I say to people, remember people.

be unprompted, but with a promise to let my most pressing 3 a.m.

question not be whether or not I'll have a world to wake up to, but how these new things can finally find us well.

Thank you.