This week I, I took a trip to Dublin and viewed the Book of Kells and the Old Library at Trinity. In the exhibit, before visitors were funneled into the dark room that held the Book of Kells, I encountered a poem that made me think about current debates over artificial intelligence and also about Sanskrit poetics. First, the poem:

I and Pangur Bán my cat
’Tis a like task we are at:
Hunting mice is his delight,
Hunting words I sit all night.

Better far than praise of men
’Tis to sit with book and pen;
Pangur bears me no ill will
He too plies his simple skill.

Oftentimes a mouse will stray
In the hero Pangur’s way;
Oftentimes my keen thought set
Takes a meaning in its net.

’Gainst the wall he sets his eye
Full and fierce and sharp and sly;
’Gainst the wall of knowledge I
All my little wisdom try.

Practice every day has made
Pangur perfect in his trade;
I get wisdom day and night
Turning darkness into light.

Attributed to a ninth-century Irish monk, English translation by Robin Flower, The Poem-Book of the Gael, 1912.

First, the thought about AI. Maybe large language models are like a mouse trap. “Building a better mouse trap” is now a conventionalized way of talking about innovation. And who wouldn’t want a better mouse trap? Pangur. Pangur loves hunting mice, and it’s part of how he flourishes. But maybe we should build better mouse traps and just have more laser pointers and plastic toys? Pangur wouldn’t have to worry about contracting diseases or getting bitten by his prey.

Analogies can’t flex too far, or they break, but let’s run with this. Pangur would have a less fulfilling life if he didn’t have anything to chase, if he didn’t have anywhere to practice his simple skill. Human beings would have less fulfilling lives if we don’t have meanings to make, if we didn’t have anywhere to try our wisdom. So, maybe it isn’t hunting mice that’s Panguar’s delight but just hunting? And maybe it isn’t hunting words that is our delight, but just hunting meanings?

The poet, though, thinks words and meanings are so closely related as to be, for the human, the same target. Pangur can be happy with chasing birds, shadows, laser light—but human beings chasing after meanings, especially in the hunt for knowledge, do so through words.

When it comes to AI, insofar as it removes humans from the hunt, we are at risk of losing both wisdom and joy. Wisdom because, like Pangur, we need practice in writing (and reading and thinking). Joy because, like Panguar, it’s part of our nature to chase after meaning (in the little “m” linguistic sense and the big “M” existential sense). Let LLMs be laser pointers but not a bigger and better mouse trap that removes us from the chase.

Second, the thought about Sanskrit poetics. I’m giving my last lecture at the University of Glasgow this week on the work of Mukula Bhaṭṭa, who, like other philosophers in the Indian subcontinent, tries to explain poetic meaning, including figures of speech that are suggested by whole units of text. Nowhere in this poem does the poet say “Writing is hunting a mouse.” He does say that he and the cat are at a “like task.” And then juxtapositions follow. Yet we hearers can understand some overarching similarity, without it being explicitly stated. Reading this poem was a lovely experience of appreciating that juxtaposition of this kind spans cultures. Whether Old Irish or Sanskrit, humans love meaning-making and meaning-chasing.

For a more extensive translation of this poem and the original Old Irish, see this website (which reproduces a translation from Gerard Murphy, Early Irish Lyrics). The version above is what I encountered at Trinity College, which is why I include it. But the other version includes some lovely verses about enjoying the difficulties of language, which is apt, given that the “Improve with AI” option on this post flags “long sentences” and “complex words” as areas of improvement.