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Christine Gelineau: Artificial Intelligence
Up to a point, the bot
had done okay . . . Kristallnacht
bears remembrance.
From there the bot descends
into farce, suggesting to
the KFC fans on its push
notification list that to mark
the anniversary German consumers
should treat themselves
with more tender cheese on your
crispy chicken. That broken night
of terror and violence co-opted
in the service of selling
cheesy fried chicken.
It was Kristallnacht that motivated
my mother-in-law’s parents
to put her and her younger sister
on the Kindertransport train
to England, not knowing if
they would ever see one another
again. Cousin Otto in Amsterdam
could not bear to put his girls on that
train and so it was a different train
that bore his girls from him. Tender
cheese tender please excuse this error
We will check our internal processes
immediately so this does not happen again.
~~
Author’s note: The AI blunder referred to occurred in 2022.
~~~~
Copyright 2025 Christine Gelineau
Christine Gelineau’s books include Almanac: A Murmuration (SUNY Press 2025). She and her husband live on a farm in the upper Susquehanna River valley.
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There needs to be an “appreciate” button rathe than a “like” button. I can’t say I like the lesson this teaches, but I appreciate the lesson.
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I agree, Kim. The poem is about children running for their lives. We need a button for “horrified.”
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Thank you.
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One cannot help but feel the horror and pain of that history. The poem communicates that day’s experience clearly
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I completely agree, Luz.
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A powerful poem, Christine Gelineau. A powerful warning.
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