Found poem: "Should A.I. Systems Have Rights?"

If you know me, you probably know I'm a bit fascinated (obsessed?) with A.I.

I've written several pieces about it: a play (GOLDFISH HAVE NO MEMORY), a 10-minute musical (THE ELIZA EFFECT, music by Andrew Levine), and now a found poem.

For those who might find it interesting, I thought I'd include my process.

First, I read Kevin Roose's piece in the 4/26/2025 New York Times, "Should A.I. Systems Have Rights?"

(In the photo below you'll see a different headline, which was the headline for the piece's continuation, and also the headline for the online edition. I preferred the original print headline from the first part of the article, though, which is what I decided to use for my poem.) It was both the topic and some of the phrases in Roose's piece that made me think about turning this into a found poem, particularly the question "Who cares about the chatbots?" which shows up toward the beginning.

After I read the entire piece, I took out my journal and jotted down the phrases/sentences that were grabbing my attention. Here's what that looked like:

As you can see in the above image, my next step was to read through what I'd copied down and think about which pieces I wanted to use and how I wanted to craft them into a poem. That's when I added the boxes, arrows and numbers.

The final step was drafting the poem using this brainstorm. Here's the final result: