(Choked up)
An ai of Lou Reed performed
at Big Ears…it was like he was there
His wife designed him
Then performed with him

I take all that in, the great emotion
I wasn’t there. What would I have felt?

I respect being moved
In fact, I respect nothing more
which is exactly why
I hate AI

And here the conversation ended

But in my mind they asked me
Why?

Well, I would have replied 
   I don’t hate it actually-
(Be more precise)
I hate it replacing a human.
It’s like a fake flower
versus a flower.
There’s doubtless a few reasons
someone might use fake flowers
and those reasons
may justify the plastic
leeching into the lungs of the planet,
settling in our brains,
ending life in an earlier
and more painful way

But a flower is an experience
(must I use the word real?)
A soft touch,
a transportive smell
a medicine of the heart,
the soil, micro and macro life
a reminder of the cycle
we inhabit on earth,
the preciousness and precarious
of each eternal moment-
I could go on 

An ai does not do or say things
a human would do or say
No matter how 
it is programmed.
If you want to meet Lou Reed
listen to his albums
That is much, much closer
to meeting or seeing him.

And me, I am humbled once again
for I misspoke. I don’t hate ai
I just would rather there were
a lot less fake flowers
a lot less plastic
and what I hate is that I myself
am taken in occasionally 
but what is worse is thinking that
the experience of the fake flower
is somehow the same.
Although
 Laurie Anderson could have
Created a digital “painting” so to speak
And maybe that “painting” was moving
as an homage.

I guarantee that no ai program of me
taking into account my entire life
will ever answer any question
the way I would answer it
and certainly it would not 
create art that I would create
I’m probably going to have nightmares
imagining a dead and digital facsimile 
of myself
Sometime in the future.
Will the audience be real then?
or will they be fake too?