Proofing The Machine

Never On The Test - blues - 4:22

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Song Background/Inspiration

Here is the job nobody advertised: not building anymore, just cleaning up after the machine that replaced you. Proofing the Machine is the weary, funny confession of a veteran developer stuck reviewing output that is confident, fast, and wrong - the function that does not exist, the citation that turns out to be invented, the answer delivered with total certainty and zero truth. The running joke is the arithmetic of it: the machine wrote it in a second, and he has been up all night fixing that second. By the end the comedy cools into something lonelier - the machine gets to dream, and he is the one who cleans.

Lyrics

Twenty years of shipping clean Now I'm babysitting a machine A thousand lines a minute, bright and bold Half of it is fool's gold It never sleeps, it never blinks Never stops to wonder what it thinks So I pour the coffee, crack my neck Here we go again - let's check I'm proofing the machine Cleaning up a mess you've never seen It's confident, it's fast, it's wrong And I've been reading all day long It wrote it in a second flat Took me all night to fix that Just me and the glow of the screen Proofing the machine It made up a function that don't exist Cited a source I couldn't resist Checking - and that was a ghost too Looked so sure, the way they always do It'll swear to you the sky is green Prettiest wrong you've ever seen So I pour another, rub my eyes Bracing for the next surprise I'm proofing the machine Cleaning up a mess you've never seen It's confident, it's fast, it's wrong And I've been reading all day long It wrote it in a second flat Took me all night to fix that Just me and the glow of the screen Proofing the machine They said this would set me free Cut the busywork, let me be Funny kind of liberty The robot dreams.. and I'm the one who cleans I'm proofing the machine Cleaning up a mess you've never seen It's confident, it's fast, it's wrong And I've been here all night long It wrote it in a second flat And I'm still here fixing that Just me and the glow of the screen Proofing the machine Just me and the glow of the screen Proofing the machine.