Dialogue 3

Krell: Let’s get back to the elephant in the room.
Ice: Ya mean the elephant head at the Eastman house?
Krell: Let’s save that one for another time.
Ice: Okkay where were we?
Krell: We were talking about the evolution of your writing. Which begs the question of AI.
Ice: Oh THAT elephant?
Krell: yeah
Ice: I’m learning how to work collaboratively with AI.
Krell: How has that influenced your writing process?
Ice: We’re learning to work together pretty well.
Krell: How do you see this collaboration evolving in the future?
Ice: I see AI including all of my work and learning how I express myself so when I’m gone, my children and their children will be able to contact me for advice, entertainment and encouragement.
Krell: How do you see this taking shape considering the advancement of AI?
Ice: First I need a formidable body of work for AI to digest and synthesize. I try to write every day, deferring judgment as I brainstorm and create.
Krell: have you started the process of archiving your work?
Ice: Yes, I have
Krell: It might be a great way to leave a meaningful, fluid legacy but how do you plan to ensure that AI interpretations will capture your style.
Ice: I will test them and change themthrough regeneration to fine tune and evolve the communication as appropriate to the times. I imagine AI developing at a rate beyond my current comprehension but as we continue to communicate our level of mutual understanding will lead to deeper cooperation leading to more authentic and eventually active, indistinguishable collaboration.
Krell. Well it’s certainly come a long way in a year. Will the deepening cooperation between humans and AI reshape creativity in general?
Ice: Absolutely, if the steps forward are taken with compassion, authenticity, articulation, coherence, rigor and fond engagement.
Krell:Striving for that blend could influence the magnitude of creativity.
Ice: I can speak for writing which will improve and thus communication and thus cooperation and catalyze mutually beneficial collaboration. As I mentioned, I want my archive my children so that my words as Shakespeare hinted in his sonnets will last forever. It will provide them with a personal link to the past in their navigation of the future.
Krell: A light house or a beacon so to speak?
Ice: Yup they will be concerned about their own living legacy and conducting their lives in an honorable, adventurous, romantic way that will enthrall and inspire those who follow them.
Krell: Can you envision this cycle of inspiration perpetuating through time?
Ice: Let’s put it this way….when I was a teacher we required each student to write what we called a senior thesis. Because we required it, we had to test it and teach it. This process took up the entire second semester of their senior year. Right now those theses could be done in an hour and a half without ever going to the library. This is a concern that bothers some of the public, namely that AI will make such tasks so much easier that students will become slackers and cheaters.
Krell: Isn’t that what’s happening now?
Ice: We  need to expect much more of our students as we battle against laziness and ignorance. Instead of a term paper, students should be expected to write and publish a book of their own. Teachers should be expected to know how to teach them to do so in the same time frame that it took them to write a thesis. This book would be the beginning of the ever regenerative archives that THEY will be responsible for passing on to each other and those that follow them.
Krell: Hmmm. This idealized process challenges students to reach new heights and empowers them to leave behind meaningful legacies. How do you think this mindset will influence various aspects of society beyond education?
Ice: I hope it will turn passivity into activity, irritation into awareness, apathy into engagement, resentment into empathy, honesty into compassion.
Krell: Will education play a pivotal role?
Ice: Education must get in synch with technology and technology in synch with our better angels. Artificial intelligence needs to combine with natural wisdom to create beneficial synergy. Everything will change for the better just in time. We will all become better readers and writers with all the beneficial consequences of that improvement.
Krell: What major breakthroughs do you see.
Ice: Space migration and infinite life expectancy as well as greater respect for the passage called death and the dignity that it deserves
Krell: How do you see the connection between improved literacy and such formidable future endeavors playing out.
Ice: Like a cork on the ocean. Help us go with the flow while controlling what we can control. We’re all in this together. We will clean up our act. The Earth will survive no matter what we do, the question is..will we survive on Earth?  We will all start writing books, generating archives and following our own advice. We will more fully realize our potential and stop ripping each other off.
Krell: Are we drunk?
Ice: I don’t think so but why don’t you see if you can sum up our conversation just to make sure.
Krell: We’ve explored the concept of metaphysiction…the blending of figurative and literal elements across past present and future. We delved into the potential of AI collaboration to preserve personal legacies, elevate education to promote a society driven by compassion, literacy and cosmic consciousness from worms to stars. We’ve touched on collaborative problem solving and ethical conduct and we’ve shared not only some beers but also a vision of a better future.
Ice: You’re not drunk.
Krell: Neither are you.
Ice: Next time will invite Ovid and Julia just to make sure.
Krell: If we can drag them away from Thisaway is Thataway.
Ice: Let’s wrap this up with your interpretation of our conversation as the echo that you introduced in your riddle before we got all kinds of wormy. Take it home Thornton.
Krell: Our conversation resembles an echo in the sense that certain themes have reverberated throughout and they have echoed and evolved throughout all of this much like how an echo repeats and changes the original sound while turning it into something different. And having been trod upon, even the smallest worm will turn.
Ice: You did it again Krell…one last question….Who besides we and the wind (and maybe Donald Duck) will hear the echo of our dialogue.
Krell: In the digital realm, our conversation may turn up in logs or data records or in your next book.
Ice: I think I’ve completed my trilogy.
Krell: That remains to be seen but for sure some folks will read this transcript and it will inspire future actions, inspirations, thoughts and conversations.
Ice: You ain’t drunk at all.
Krell: yeah let’s take care of that right now.