Podcast Summary: "The Unprompted," a poem that AI will never understand | Salome Agbaroji
TED Talks Daily | August 29, 2025
Episode Overview
This episode features poet Salome Agbaroji's stirring performance of her poem “The Unprompted” at TED 2025. The poem reflects on the human relationship with technology and artificial intelligence, questioning whether our reliance on innovation and algorithms distances us from our essential humanity. Through poignant imagery, humor, and sharp cultural critique, Agbaroji challenges the celebration of AI as a panacea and urges listeners to remember their unique capacity for hope, action, and compassion. The episode invites listeners to consider what technology can and cannot replace in our lives.
Key Discussion Points & Insights
1. Technology as Companion and Crutch
- 3am Reliance: Agbaroji describes late-night solitude filled with “spineless phone scrolls” and unfulfilling, AI-powered interactions.
- “I fill my empty 3ams with spineless phone scrolls, text abbreviations and uni human conversations.” (02:16)
- AI’s Limits: AI chatbots provide quick, transactional answers to personal and existential questions, exposing the emptiness in digital interactions.
- “AI chatbots answer all my aimless interrogations like how do I answer an email that does not find me well? ... Or is it true what the headlines say, that the world is crumbling beneath our feet and we do nothing but crumble with it?” (02:23)
2. Critique of Over-Reliance and Mislabeling Intelligence
- Human-Labeled “Intelligence”: Agbaroji warns against the careless labeling of systems as “intelligent,” referencing the flaws of both capitalism and science in history.
- “Don’t feel too special. You aren’t the first artificial system we humans carelessly labeled intelligent. Global capitalism was genius until it became negligent… Biased science elevated one people over the last, but with differentiation came racism and caste...” (03:02)
- Generational Creativity: She draws parallels between AI’s touted creativity and the ingenuity of her generation—“DIYers and binary defiers.”
- “You’re brilliant. But you aren’t the first generation to forge something out of seemingly nothing. Haven’t you seen my generation, the DIYers and binary defiers?” (03:37)
3. The Irreplaceability of Human Experience
- On Artificial vs. Real World Suffering: Agbaroji contrasts digital simulations with the lived realities of displaced children and genuine hardship.
- “The displaced children without homes do not cry mechanical tears about a simulated hunger induced by virtual war. The viruses they suffer from are not the zeros and ones in your devices cured by simple software reset.” (04:02)
- Forgetfulness of Reality: A metaphor about “our heads in the cloud” serves as a reminder not to lose sight of real-world problems.
- “We’ve got our heads so far up in the cloud we forget that the ground exists.” (04:25)
4. Questioning Progress and Prompting Action
- False Utopias vs. Real Dystopias: The poem underscores the real tragedy—not an AI uprising, but ongoing human inaction despite our capacity to help.
- “The future we fear is not the sci-fi cyborg AI uprising that sets the world aflame. No, the true dystopia is the today we make when humans watch the world burn, still with the power to save it. And don’t.” (04:56)
- Work That Cannot Be Automated: Agbaroji defines “audacious hope” as fundamentally human—a job no AI can do.
- “No computer could take this job of audacious hope, of unfounded optimism. We are the unprompted.” (05:12)
- Reclaiming Agency: The poem closes with a call for bold, unprompted human action, seeing technology as tools, not replacements.
- “Every invention is just an extension of your hand. So in the same way that a hammer can both build and destroy, you tell me, how will you wield your tools?... Be unprompted.” (06:00)
Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments
- On AI’s Inability to Relate:
- “And as we fall deeper and deeper into the black box, is hoping for humanity the most human thing we can do? And the AI says back to me: I don't know. More specifically: Hmm. I’m not sure how to process your request. Please try a new prompt.” (02:45)
- On Generational Wisdom:
- “We too extract wisdom from the earth’s mouth like a flower or a landmine. Sure, drive our cars, but never our movements, never our blood and boned passions.” (03:46)
- On Human Responsibility:
- “The work towards a better world is not automated.” (05:09)
- “We are the unprompted. In the face of the bleakest calculations, we aspire in a way no algorithm could advise. And that is what will save us from the abyss solely. We are our saviors.” (05:16)
- On Tools and Agency:
- “Every invention is just an extension of your hand. So in the same way that a hammer can both build and destroy, you tell me: how will you wield your tools?” (05:52)
- Final Challenge:
- “Remember people, be unprompted, but with a promise to let my most pressing 3am question not be whether or not I'll have a world to wake up to, but how these new things can finally find us? Well.” (06:25)
Important Timestamps
- 01:35 — Host introduction and episode framing
- 02:16 — Start of Salome Agbaroji’s poem “The Unprompted”
- 04:25 — “Up in the cloud” metaphor and transition to social critique
- 04:56 — Discussion of real dystopia and human agency
- 05:12 — “We are the unprompted” / Human hope versus automation
- 06:25 — Concluding call for “unprompted” action and hope
- 07:14 — End of performance
Episode Tone & Style
Agbaroji blends humor and gravity, fusing lyrical language with social commentary. The poem is earnest yet bitingly satirical at moments, always returning to themes of hope, human uniqueness, and responsibility. Her delivery is passionate, with rhetorical questions and direct audience appeals that stir both introspection and inspiration.
For listeners, this episode offers a powerful perspective on the limitations of AI, the irreplaceable value of human connection, and a rousing challenge: to remain “unprompted,” compassionate, and agents of change in an increasingly automated world.