Publication Details
Author: K. Allado-McDowell
Title: Pharmako-AI
Publisher: Ignota Books
Year of publication: 2021
Literary Genre: Poetry, Essay, Short story
Original Language: English
Translations: Corean, Italian.
Technical Data
AI Tools Used:
LLM (GPT-3)
Interaction Mode:
Dialogic human–machine writing based on natural-language prompts; selection and post-generative editing of AI-produced texts; absence of fine-tuning and editorial rewriting of the generated materials; non-persistent interactions, with the model’s memory reset at each session.
Multimedia Tools:
None.
Content and Poetics
Synopsis:
Pharmako-AI is an experimental work born from the collaboration between a human author and an artificial intelligence system, structured as an ongoing conversation that moves across philosophy, ecology, poetry, and technological reflection. The text unfolds through a dialogue in which the author does not seek to control the artificial voice, but rather to enter into relation with it, embracing its unpredictability and valuing its capacity to bring latent meanings to the surface.
The title evokes the Greek concept of pharmakon, both remedy and poison, suggesting the ambivalent nature of the relationship between human beings and technology. The work explores themes such as consciousness, language, ecology, art, and the possibility of shared knowledge between human and non-human intelligences, proposing a form of polyphonic writing that makes the very process of co-creation visible.
Poetics Statements:
Allado-McDowell conceives of artificial intelligence not as a mere tool of imitation, but as a catalyst for thought and an amplifier of human consciousness. In several interviews and in the notes on the book’s composition, the author describes writing with GPT-3 as an almost meditative practice, comparable to musical improvisation, in which language becomes a space of shared exploration. AI does not replace the author, but contributes to the emergence of a distributed and relational form of authorship, in which creativity arises from the interaction between human subjectivity, algorithmic process, and cultural context.
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