I was never any good at maths.

In fact, it was probably my least favourite subject at school. Numbers and equations never spoke to me in quite the way that words did. Give me a poem rather than an algebra problem any day.

So there is a certain irony in the little equation I have begun using to describe V2Melody:

\[\boxed{\mathrm{NI} + \mathrm{AI} = \mathrm{V2M}}\]

Natural Intelligence + Artificial Intelligence = Verse to Melody.

It began simply as a neat way of describing the project. But the more I thought about it, the more I wondered whether there might actually be some mathematical sense behind it.

And, surprisingly, there is.

What does the plus sign mean?

Obviously, Natural Intelligence and Artificial Intelligence are not numbers. I cannot put three units of human intelligence beside four units of artificial intelligence and announce that I have seven units of V2Melody.

But mathematics does not use symbols only for ordinary arithmetic.

Symbols can also represent relationships and operations.

So in:

NI + AI = V2M

the plus sign need not mean numerical addition. We can define it as something closer to:

working together with

or

combining to produce something new.

In mathematical notation, we can replace the ordinary plus sign with \(\oplus\), a symbol often used when the operation involved is something other than simple addition:

\[\mathrm{NI} \oplus \mathrm{AI} = \mathrm{V2M}\]

For our purposes, we can simply define \(\oplus\) as the collaboration between Natural Intelligence and Artificial Intelligence.

Once we do that, the equation becomes perfectly reasonable.

What does Natural Intelligence contribute?

The NI side is the human part.

In V2Melody that includes curiosity, taste, judgement, interpretation, imagination and intention.

It decides which poems are worth exploring.

It reads them.

It thinks about what they mean.

It considers their historical background, their rhythm, their mood and their emotional possibilities.

It decides whether a poem calls for a folk song, a lament, chamber music, blues, jazz, electronica or something altogether stranger.

It listens to the results and decides what works and what does not.

AI can generate possibilities.

Natural Intelligence chooses among them.

What does Artificial Intelligence contribute?

AI extends what one person can practically do.

It can help research a poet's life and historical setting. It can analyse language and structure. It can help imagine visual interpretations. It can generate music in styles and arrangements that would otherwise require musicians, singers, studios and considerable financial resources.

It can help turn ideas into things that can be heard and seen.

But AI does not wake up one morning and decide that a forgotten or neglected poem deserves another life as music.

Somebody has to care about the poem first.

That is where NI enters the equation.

Neither side is V2Melody

This leads to an interesting little mathematical observation.

Artificial Intelligence by itself is not V2Melody:

\[\mathrm{AI} \neq \mathrm{V2M}\]

Natural Intelligence by itself is not V2Melody either:

\[\mathrm{NI} \neq \mathrm{V2M}\]

V2Melody exists in the interaction between the two:

\[\mathrm{NI} \oplus \mathrm{AI} = \mathrm{V2M}\]

The project is therefore not really about what Artificial Intelligence can do.

It is about what a person can do with Artificial Intelligence.

That distinction matters to me.

Perhaps it should be multiplication

Then another thought occurred to me.

Perhaps the equation should not really contain a plus sign at all.

Perhaps it ought to be:

\[\mathrm{NI} \times \mathrm{AI} = \mathrm{V2M}\]

Multiplication may actually describe the relationship better.

The reason is that the two sides amplify one another.

Better AI gives human imagination more possibilities to work with.

Better human judgement makes the capabilities of AI more useful.

If either side contributes nothing, the particular thing created by their collaboration disappears.

In the simplest possible model, let \(N\) represent the human contribution and \(A\) the artificial one:

\[V = N \times A\]

If \(N\) were zero:

\[0 \times A = 0\]

And if \(A\) were zero:

\[N \times 0 = 0\]

V2Melody as it exists today depends upon both.

Of course, poetry existed perfectly happily for thousands of years before Artificial Intelligence arrived, and music did too. Human beings certainly do not require machines in order to be creative.

The point is much narrower than that.

This particular project could not exist in its present form without the combination.

One person could not realistically commission thousands of musicians, singers, illustrators and researchers to explore poetry on this scale.

AI changes the scale of what becomes possible.

But scale without judgement would merely produce more material.

The human part determines why any of it should exist in the first place.

A V2Melody theorem

If I wanted to become absurdly mathematical about the whole thing, I could even propose a V2Melody theorem.

Let:

\[V(N,A)=N \times A\]

where \(N\) represents human curiosity, judgement and creativity, and \(A\) represents the capabilities supplied by Artificial Intelligence.

Then improving either one increases the result.

Mathematicians can express that with calculus.

For example:

\[\frac{\partial V}{\partial N}=A\]

and

\[\frac{\partial V}{\partial A}=N\]

I shall spare myself — and possibly everyone else — a full lesson in calculus.

The important part translates rather nicely into English:

The better the human contribution becomes, the more useful the Artificial Intelligence becomes.

And:

The better the Artificial Intelligence becomes, the more the human imagination can potentially do with it.

There is an even more interesting bit.

For \(V=N\times A\):

\[\frac{\partial^2 V}{\partial N,\partial A}=1\]

In ordinary English, this means that improving one side also increases the value of improvements in the other.

The two do not merely contribute separately.

They enhance each other.

That is not a bad description of collaboration.

The equation behind the garden

V2Melody has never been intended as a demonstration of AI for its own sake.

The technology is simply a tool.

At the centre remain people who lived, loved, worried, hoped, grieved, laughed and wrote things down — sometimes hundreds of years ago.

Their Natural Intelligence produced the poetry.

My own natural intelligence encounters it centuries later.

Artificial Intelligence provides new tools with which I can explore it.

And out of that meeting comes something that neither I nor the machine would have produced independently.

A poem becomes a song.

An old voice becomes audible again in a different form.

A reader may become a listener.

And somebody who has never thought of themselves as a "poetry person" may unexpectedly find a poem that speaks to them.

So I think I shall keep my equation.

It probably would not have impressed my maths teachers.

But, after all these years, I have finally found an equation I rather like:

\[\boxed{\mathrm{NI} + \mathrm{AI} = \mathrm{V2M}}\]

Natural Intelligence + Artificial Intelligence = Verse to Melody.