Today: Emily Flake, cartoonist, writer, performer, illustrator, and proprietress of St. Nell’s Humor Writing Residency for Ladies in Williamsport, PA.; and Kọ́lá Túbọ̀sún, Nigerian linguist, writer, translator, founder of Olongo Africa, and writer and producer of the documentary, Ebrohimie Road.

Issue No. 175

Pie Vanity
Emily Flake

New Frontiers in Language Technology
Kọ́lá Túbọ̀sún

Pie Vanity

by Emily Flake

She stands in a green hoodie before an award-winning pie, there is a blue ribbon on a card that reads "Panch Phoran Custard": "I have opinions on the best fats (a butter-Crisco combo) and methods (mix of ice water and vodka) for crust-making. I have twice won awards at pie-making contests. And I like to think that being friends with the judges only helped a little! (The secret to custard is to pull it when it jiggles like a baby's thigh meat.)'
Two sisters at the red gingham-clad table having Cheerios or equiv.: (This is a skill I acquired in adulthood. I wasn't raised in a cooking household.) Arrows point to: "Cereal for dinner with my sister" and "My glorious hair ruined by terrible haircut"
"I don't have much in the way of beloved family recipes or long-standing food traditions." The author pictured with her dad, each holding a plastic shopping bag. He's speaking to her: "What, you're not gonna count our secret junk runs to Wawa? Ingrate."
The beautiful pie on the red gingham cloth. "With the exception of this pie. My mother made something called Deep South Lemon Pie every year for Thanksgiving."
"I would, at this point, dismiss it as a cheater's pie - a crumb crust, a no-bake filling." Tasty looking pie, cut open, and ingredients listed around it: Graham crackers, egg whites, lemon juice, and sweetened condensed milk
"It's a pie much better suited to summer - light in texture, blindingly sweet." Author in glasses, eating leftover pie from a dish and saying "Why am I like this?" (The filling tends to melt into the crust, rendering leftovers a sticky mess that's both disgusting and perversely irresistible.)
The author putting an envelope in an old fashioned metal mailbox on a post near the street. Her mom sits in the car beside her, and there are trees in the background. "Despite not having a knack for making real pies, my mother tried to start a pie business. We stuck xeroxed flyers in all the neighbors' mailboxes."
The author, her mom and her sister wait glumly beside a pale green rotary telephone with a cord handset in the kitchen. "There were no takers."
"You wouldn't like me if you saw me around my mother." The author, hair in a bun now, arms tight and angry against her body, with red anger lines coming out all around her. "Don't TOUCH me!!" she is yelling.
"In the course of building myself as an adult, I had to clear a lot of land in my mind and heart.... I was not gentle." The author, still wide-eyed and furious, holding a machete and getting ready to hack at some thick vines in front of her.
My facility with a pie is just one small part of my adult identity, but I guard that identity with a zeal that is arguably doing more harm than good." Lot of red anger splashes on our author, now holding the machete between her teeth.
"As I write this I remember that my mother used to call me Pie Plate as a term of endearment." The author, a little calmer now, though still holding the machete, catches sight of a stray vine that is wandering up to her. "Oh, SHIT."
"This gives me pause." The relatively calm author, in a ponytail, talking with her younger self. There's a slice of the lemon pie before each of them. Grown-up author: "She called us a lot of other things too, you know." Younger author: "Yeah, but we COULD just stop being a dick about it."
"Is this ruthlessness necessary?" The vine is reaching toward the author's heart!! She is so annoyed. "GODDAMMIT-" "What happens if I left this one live?"
Enraged author, now touched by the vine, teeth clenched and ready to whack! but on the other side is the author's better nature, she is holding her mom up, and from the mom's heart the vine is reaching between them. The gentler side says: "Please. PLEASE stop."
"Maybe this all-wrong, kind-of-gross cheater's pie is redeemable." The author apologizes to the pie. "(I'm sorry.)"
"I bet I can tweak the recipe. I bet I can make it better?" The author stands thoughtfully before a table on which there's a carton of eggs, a bowl, and a pie dish. "Maybe if I make a BISCOFF crust. Maybe a layer of curd?"

FLAMING HYDRA KEEPS THE RECEIPTS

A Bluesky post from the Internet Archive: Public records are essential for accountability and transparency. 🗄️ In the latest post for our #VanishingCulture series, Maria Bustillos (@mariabustillos.bsky.social) explores the critical role of preserving these 'receipts' for future generations.

Don't miss Hydra Maria Bustillos in the Internet Archive’s Vanishing Culture series today on the value of preserving digital culture—whether it’s MTV News, or the bit of microfilm proving that Obama was born in Hawaii.

New Frontiers in Language Technology

by Kọ́lá Túbọ̀sún

Replica of the 1944 Colossus Mark 2 Computer, a massive steel and bakelite beast with red tubes and banks of dials like in an old Bond film, at The National Museum of Computing, Bletchley Park, UK, with a gray-haired man at the controls clearly having a ball
Steve Nimmons [CC BY 2.0] via Wikimedia Commons

Not a day goes by without the announcement of some new artificial intelligence project based in speech and communication, from ChatGPT to Gemini to Grok. Each one purports to push the boundaries of what we mean when we think of speech surrogacy, language technology, artificial intelligence, and their capacity to augment and facilitate communication. 

Meta, for instance, recently announced the development of a new AI translation tool for Instagram and Facebook Reels that can translate posts automatically into another language, complete with audio and one-to-one mapping of the mouth of the speaker to the target language. I speak to the camera in English, post on my page, and anyone watching me in Brazil will see me speaking the same words in Portuguese, instantaneously, anyone in France in French, etc.

Despite Meta’s long history of overpromising on coming innovations, natural language processing and automated translation have advanced at blinding speed over the last ten years. A tool like this would change everything we have known about global communication and the barriers that have existed until now. But questions arise: when that day comes, and it looks like it could be any day now, what then will be left of miscommunication? What of the limits of global cooperation? What about the jobs of millions of translators? And what about the inevitable glitches that will eventually sneak in when no one is looking, and cause unexpected catastrophes?

These possibilities open a new chapter in the history of language, and in human history.

Coming from a minority language community as I do, I’m more circumspect about the end of human translation. A video made in Yorùbá will not automatically translate into Berom or Edo or Kiswahili—there’s been insufficient investment in those languages, so far, and companies like Meta, Google, Apple, Twitter, etc will always prioritize the larger languages, which will give them quick returns. This means that no matter what new technological leaps may be coming in language processing, they will not and cannot address longstanding problems in the world of translation. Individuals and groups are working to fill in the gaps to empower local languages to catch up with the advances that other, better-resourced languages can make more readily, but the gaps remain.

ChatGPT can “converse” in Nigerian Pidgin, in Jamaican Patois, in African-American Vernacular. It can be tricked into moaning like someone in the throes of sexual ecstasy, and “sing” a duet with a human. No doubt we’re in a new world.

Two days ago I discovered Google’s NotebookLM, a fascinating podcast-generating AI whose two artificial hosts can take on any material fed into it and “converse” for minutes like normal humans would. I got it to discuss my new collection of poetry, an old poem, and an old essay, and it performed incredibly well. 

This experience got me thinking about what the future holds for reading, for literary criticism, for education, and for creativity. The voices for this project currently exist in American English. Knowing Google, it will likely be duplicated in all the languages that the company supports, inluding Nigerian English. But how cool and interesting would it be if NotebookLM would converse in Yorùbá, in Twi, in Shona, with conversations that are not just interesting and accurate, but also respectful of context, nuance, and human emotions? It’s likely that we’re not close to that utopia by any stretch. And the false confidence of speakers of dominant languages, who may assume that technology has already done all that it needs to do, will ensure that attention will not likely be paid to the other languages, especially if it is at great cost and little reward. 

Perhaps there’s some unintended relief in that, if we assume, as well we might, that all technological innovations will eventually be repurposed into military weapons. Perhaps, if the artificial intelligence system can’t read or speak my language, it won’t be able to spy on me as it would speakers of more dominant languages. 

The nature of reality, the value of human connection, and what the future will look like for communication—as well as the inevitable dangers to privacy—all are thrown into question by the inexorable march forward of this technology. It’s not clear yet whether governments are adequately equipped to develop relevant individual protections, though their history to date in protecting the public’s right to privacy inspires little confidence.

**

Author’s note: I’ll be reading from my new collection of poetry and discussing AI and translation in Oxford on November 5, 2024. I will also be speaking at the British Library in late October on Oratures, Technology, and the Intangible Heritage of Memory. Please drop by if you’re in the area.

Why not stop by the Flaming Hydra Swag and Archive Project Fundraiser and pick up some fine merch, such as a baseball card commemorating a wonderful moment: @david_j_roth’s immortal shot across the bow of the literary world on June 13, 2012. Signed by the author.