Cam: How about we use AI to write a poem about Pi?

Lorrie: And that would be a good idea, why?

Cam: Well, we are trying to come to terms with AI; how to use it as a tool.

Lorrie: And not worry too much about the AI apocalypse.

Cam: I am worried about the AI Apacoplypse.

Lorrie: We've discussed this before, you are both worried, and ...

Cam: Excited! Because now I can finish all those projects I put aside.

Lorrie: Maybe you'll even get them done before the Apocalypse.

Cam: I know, I'm going to have Claude write a pi day message.

Lorrie: Why do I suspect this is going to go awry?

Cam: Oh, it is going to go awry, trust me, but that's part of the fun.

Lorrie: Promise me you're not going to trigger the apocalypse.

Cam: Too late for that, it's already out of the box.

Lorrie: That's Pandora.

Cam: So there's still hope.

He starts typing on the laptop.

Cam: How about we ask Claude to write an essay with the digits of pi?

Lorrie: You mean like where every word has the number of syllables of a digit of pi?

Cam: great idea.

He types furiously and, with a flourish, hits the enter key.

Lorrie: Pi's infinite: it's going to be a long essay.

Cam peers at the screen.

Cam: Nope, Claude stalled on the nine in the sixth digit; the only nine syllable word it could think of was electroencephalography.

Lorrie: I can't even pronounce it. It's not the syllables themselves, it's where to put the tertiary accent.

Cam: electromagnetically has only eight syllables.

Lorrie: Three point one four one five nine. Even I know more than six digits of pi. How about word length?

Cam types the query and they wait for the response.

Cam: Well, it got further this time, 50 words...

How I love a grand beautiful in nature ratio, all about circular geometric, endless, irregular, and no end — decimals ever onward in series, this odd and wondrous but so perfect, numerical, never completely. To continue, revealed ever, a precisely endless, a cosmic challenge for greatness, intricate and complex minds.

Cam: ...but my high school calculus students could do better.

Lorrie: You never taught high school.

Cam: That's what I meant, nothing is better than an AI essay. Uh, wait, what did I just say?

Lorrie: You've stumbled on the paradox of nothing, there's a scholarly novel about this: Dr No.

Cam: You mean Ian Fleming?

Lorrie: No Percival Everett. It's about a mathematician whose doctorate is in nothing.

Cam: How about hypenated words?

He types on the laptop.

Cam: Claude likes it:

Great idea — hyphenated words effectively let us build any syllable count we need by combining smaller words. Let me work this out carefully.

Endlessly, pi tantalizes us irrationally — perpetually-and-endlessly beyond irrationality, illuminating every continuously incomprehensibility. Mathematically-astounding, extraordinarily incomprehensibly-beautiful, endlessly carries perfectly mathematical-precision: irrational irrationality itself, extraordinary eternity. Mystical, beautiful, incomprehensibly-wondrous, endlessly onward, enthusiastically irrationally-and-perfectly illuminating, irrationally-and-beautifully.

33 words, all verified. The hyphen trick works beautifully — especially for the dreaded 9s and the 10 (digit 0) at the end. The prose is impressionistic rather than literal, but it actually suits pi rather well!

Lorrie (looking over Cam's shoulder): That's a lot of repetition. Are you sure your nonexistent calculus students write that badly?

Cam: I'll tell it to get rid of the repetition.

Good point. Let me rework it with more varied vocabulary.

Beautiful pi tantalizes us mysteriously — overflowing-with-geometry, transcends universality, reverberating symphony, illuminating transcendentally-beautiful, defying-every-expectation, perpetually-flowing, never-repeating-never-ending. Wandering reason, wonderful, geometrically-exact infinity — revolutionary, spirals extraordinary geometry, beckoning curious, simultaneously-perfect, spiraling outward, continuously-winding, overwhelming-every-equation, accumulating captivating-all-of-humanity.

Much more varied vocabulary this time, and some genuinely evocative phrases — "never-repeating-never-ending," "overflowing-with-geometry," and "defying-every-expectation" all feel like real things you'd say about pi!

Lorrie: It thinks it's a good writer.

Cam: With an exclamation point, for emphasis.

Lorrie: Lets go back to syllables, but one line per digit, kind of like a poem.

Cam: I'll ask to make it whimsical, too.

Here's a whimsical pi poem — 3.14159265358979... — each line syllable-matched to its digit:

3 Irrational!
1 Oh.
4 Circles adore
1 Pi.
5 Never repeating,
9 Yet somehow the universe hums along just fine.
2 Surprised?
6 Even the moon knows your name.
5 Digits fall forever,
3 Down, down, down—
5 An infinite staircase
8 That mathematicians keep tumbling down, laughing.
9 No pattern emerges, however long you stand there squinting.
7 You'd think there'd be a clue somewhere.
9 The cosmos shrugs and offers you more digits.
3 Rude, really.
2 But fair.
3 Three point one—
8 Already we've forgotten where we started.
4 Such is pi's
6 Little joke on all of us.

The digits used: 3.1415926535897932846... The line for 9 syllables is the real workout — "Yet somehow the universe hums along just fine" — but I think the cosmos earned that one, Want me to keep going further into pi, or render this as a beautiful typographic artifact?

Cam: Irrational has 4 syllables!

Lorrie: And the apocalypse comes closer: "I think the cosmos earned that one?" That's a value judgment if I ever heard one. By an entity that can't count syllables.

Cam: The calculus students can count better than that. Well, some of them.

Lorrie: What's this 'typographic artifact'?

Cam: I don't know. Let me get it to correct the syllable counts, also the line 'even the moon knows your name' should have seven digits not six.

You're right, my apologies! Let me recount carefully and redo this properly.

Pi digits: 3 1 4 1 5 9 2 6 5 3 5 8 9 7 9 3 2 3 8 4 6...

Let me syllable-count very carefully this time:

3 The stars whirl (the-stars-whirl = 3)
1 Oh. (1)
4 Cir-cles a-dore (4)
1 Pi. (1)
5 Nev-er re-peat-ing (5)
9 Yet some-how the u-ni-verse hums a-long (9)
2 Sur-prised? (2)
6 Down a stair-case for-ev-er (6)
5 Digits fall and fall (5)
3 Rude, real-ly. (3)
5 No pat-tern, just void (5)
8 Ma-the-ma-ti-cians keep tum-bling down (8)
9 The cos-mos shrugs and of-fers you more dig-its (9)
7 You'd think there'd be a clue some-where (7)
9 A-lrea-dy we've for-got-ten where we start-ed (9)
3 Such is pi (3)
2 But fair. (2)
3 Three point one— (3)
8 We wan-der on through num-bers with-out end (8)
4 Lost, a-mazed, a-live (4)
6 The joke's on all of us (6)

I'd also love to make this a proper visual artifact if you're happy with the poem!

Cam: That's somehow worse. It's like what my high school English students would come up with.

Lorrie: Your non existent English students?

Cam: The ones who think they're geniuses.

Lorrie: Isn't that all of them?

Cam: No that's the calculus students.

Lorrie: It kept that 'hums' line it liked. Is that 'visual artifact' a jpeg, or a web page or something? Ask for the visual artifact.

Here's your HTML page! It features:

A twinkling starfield canvas in the background
The poem lines fade in one by one with a staggered delay
Font size scales with each digit — the 9s feel grand, the 1s feel small and quiet
Each digit badge is color-coded and does a little spin on hover
The whole line brightens when you hover over it

Open it in any browser and it should just work. Let me know if you'd like any tweaks!

Lorrie: Claude thinks that's beautiful?

Cam: I don't.

And after some interaction, Cam tweaking the result to make it more to his and Lorrie's taste, this is what they have.

Lorrie: I want to change the punctuation and the timing.

Cam: I can do that, but I've got all these other projects...

Lorrie: That Claude is helping with?

Cam: Uh, yeah.

Lorrie: You know, this took a lot of time and we're still not completely happy with the result.

Cam: Everybody has written an essay about pi. That's a logical conclusion.

Lorrie: logical?

Cam: By everybody, I mean every human. Humans write essays about everything. Pi is part of everything. QED

Lorrie: even Calculus students?

Cam: I see the flaw. There does exist at least one Calculus student, who doesn't, who can't, actually, write essays.

Lorrie: Was he one of yours?

Cam: No. He was me. I can't count, either.