The Poetry of Family | Duncan Keegan | TED

The American poet Robert Frost

once observed that although both scholars and poets work from knowledge,

they differ in the way they come by it.

Scholars get theirs along projected lines of logic.

And poets theirs, you know, cavalierly,

and as it happens, in and out of books,

they stick to nothing deliberately, but let what will stick to them,

like burrs where they walk in the fields.

Now I know I'm in a hall filled with scholars,

and I'm no poet.

But I am from Ireland.

(Laughter)

(Applause)

A place where even now a poet, a maker of a poem,

is seen as someone who has come by an uncommon kind of knowledge.

I mean, truly, there's so little left of that older Ireland,

but in the little that remains,

and in those little truths that only loss can teach,

we find small felicities.

Like how the word for art and that for science

were once one and the same, ealaín.

Or a word like dawn,

which in our older tongue can mean a poem,

a gift or fate.

Or an ear for silence,

the high relief that lets a word perfect its progress into intimacy.

My wife Sarah has that.

A feel for how ambiance, presence,

the quality of a moment

can all shape the meaning and weight of a word.

I've heard it when she's with her friends,

and I've even seen it with our children.

Every week, Sarah used to drive our son Ruairí

to a song and dance class in north Dublin.

And one evening, as I was watching them arrive back home,

I realized that I could see Ruairí in the front seat,

his face pale in the glow of the headlights.

And I could see his hands clasped to the seat belt,

the motion of his head just tilting and turning to look,

and his bare arm raised just to point at something.

And then he pulled back, and he was reaching for his mom

just to tell her, tell her just something,

I don't even know what it was because I couldn't hear anything.

But in that moment,

I knew everything about that conversation.

Everything about Ruairí and his mom that truly mattered.

You know, we're told that the advent of AI

marks a new era

when science becomes art,

when technology no longer merely invents,

but creates.

Machine intelligences that will soon form an intimate part of family life.

AI companions who will never abandon a child,

never belittle them,

never maltreat them, who will never sicken,

never ache, never long to sleep.

Who will comfort our children at night,

counsel them in the day.

Care for them when we cannot.

Be there for them when we no longer are.

For they will never die.

Now but they're here to help you, not replace you.

That's what they say.

But if you ...

If you speak of someone counseling my child, caring for my child,

you're speaking of a rival for my child's affections.

A rival no parent, no mother,

however capable, however strong,

can ever hope to match.

But here’s the thing, I actually believe them.

We have nothing to fear.

Just not for the reasons they think.

For

behind their promises and beneath our unease

I feel lies a misapprehension

that artificial intelligence might become,

or perhaps already is,

artificial consciousness.

And in turn, this rests on an assumption

that consciousness is a mere product of matter,

an emerging secondary effect

of just a particular arrangement of atoms in the brain.

And even though we found no way, even in principle,

to divine from matter how it is we love,

we grieve,

we entertain this notion

that processing cores and algorithms

will somehow serve as proxy for a living soul.

Well, they won't.

I mean, they will be useful,

but not as the empathetic synthetics

or the paper-folding replicants of sci-fi lore, which I love.

But more as the board game from “Jumanji”

or Wilson from "Castaway."

Or Bianca from "Lars and the Real Girl."

These devices of distraction for the living heart in all its --

in all its loneliness and loss.

But what of us?

What are we for?

That's not a question that I can easily answer.

So, instead, shall I tell you a story?

On a Wednesday in February 2023,

our Ruairí, our Ruairí died.

He was five.

And we brought his body home,

and we held his wake and we said goodbye.

And yet that's not the story.

The story I wish to tell

is actually about our then-11-year-old daughter, Niamh,

and how she came to say goodbye to her brother.

To her Ruairí.

When they came,

the men wore black,

but they were kind

and spoke quietly and asked where it would go.

The casket.

The living room, we said.

We helped them clear a path and make a place for it beside the couch.

They touched the lid to lift it, and then they left.

And as we looked at him,

at how still he was,

how pale,

we cried.

“Niamh,” I said, “Come in.

Come in, it's OK."

And from the doorway she turned, and she looked right through me.

And then she left.

She went round the corner and just someway up the stairs.

I had the sense to stay.

But Sarah went.

And I could hear a little.

But I heard no argument,

no promises,

no words.

Just the settle of a child's weight against her mother.

A catch of air and tears.

And then she was there.

We watched her foot the threshold

to a living room where her dead brother lay.

We saw her eyes trace every line.

She saw the gift of him.

The curving verse of all he was and ever would be.

She saw his fate.

We saw her read the poem of his short life.

And you know our story is yours.

Yeah?

You know that one day you will stand before a door

you do not wish to open.

A room you do not wish to enter.

And when that day comes, when every word,

every line of logic fails,

what then?

Will you turn towards your devices of distraction?

I hope not.

I hope instead you feel the press of a kind hand taking yours.

The steady press that says, “I will take this step with you.”

I hope you hear the silence that holds a friend's words in place

that says they hear it too.

You and the poem of your own life.

I hope you have a Sarah.

For then, then you'll see what a mother is for.

And you'll learn what a friend is for,

and then you'll know,

you'll know,

you'll know at last what we are for.

Thank you.

(Applause)