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Laurie Anderson on making an AI chatbot of Lou Reed: ‘I’m totally, 100%, sadly addicted’
Anderson’s experiments with language-based AI predated ChatGPT – with one machine modelled on her dead husband that her friends ‘just can’t stand’
Laurie Anderson, the American avant garde artist, musician and thinker, hasn’t seen the episode, but in the last few years has lived a version of it: growing hopelessly hooked on an AI text generator that emulates the vocabulary and style of her own longtime partner and collaborator, Velvet Underground co-founder Lou Reed, who died in 2013. The street and the skyWhen you dieI’ll be sitting in an idling busOn my way to workAnd no moreThan ten minutes beforeThe last train of the dayPulls into the city, the lightDim, insubstantial at firstThen less than a sliver of thatIn half a second it’s allYou’ve got to live it, as they used to saySo much can go wrongBut why did you think thisWas a good ideaDon’t you get paid enoughTo pay taxes? Why not playSome tennis or take up quiltingOr improve the sanitationOf this vast and sordidizedIsland from which you sailIs it such a wonder you’re aliveAfter all this sugar-fied wasteOne cigarette, a glass of wineTell me, do you like itHow does it make you feelDo you like the bitter taste
Or read this on The Guardian
