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Blake Mackenzie, a 12-year-old from Newcastle, has won the top youth prize at the Australian Poetry Slam with a poem reflecting on AI. He performed it at the Sydney Opera House on Sunday night, The Guardian reports.
Why it mattersThe piece also touches on doomscrolling, loneliness and intellectual atrophy. Mackenzie shares a prize package worth $20,000 with adult-category winner Bivor, a poet from Alice Springs. A young poet has put AI alongside some rather less theoretical questions about how we live with technology.
Discuss: Should poetry about AI focus on the technology itself, or on what it is doing to everyday life?
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Watch Desk Update What changedThe Guardian reports that Blake Mackenzie wrote his winning poem, “Dear ChatGPT”, the day before the Australian Poetry Slam final. Mackenzie, 12, said he came up with lines as he progressed through the competition.
Mackenzie told the Guardian the poem was inspired by friends using chatbots, including to summarise books they are studying in class. He argued that reading a summary can take as long as reading the chapter, and called the practice an unnecessary use of AI.
He also linked chatbot use to water and energy consumption, saying that greater use means more resources consumed. The Guardian reports that Mackenzie did not use AI to write the poem and generally avoids chatbots.
The new account adds the specific classroom behaviour behind the poem’s criticism, and Mackenzie’s own explanation of its environmental argument.
Sources and evidence
- Twelve-year-old wins Australian slam competition prize with poem about ChatGPT: ‘It’s totally unnecessary’ - The Guardian: The Guardian reports that Australian Poetry Slam youth winner Blake Mackenzie wrote his AI-themed poem the day before the final, said it was inspired by friends using chatbots to summarise class books, and said he did not use AI to write it.
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