wassup with poetry AI !
What makes a poem?
Big Debate.
What makes a poem a big debate,
Big debate.
But, here is a new debate, what makes a poet? And, if a machine writes a poem, is that machine a poet?
In poetry, personification is a popular technique. It is when you give a non-person a person-like quality. The sky cried, for example. And as my fingers cause a twitter on the keyboard, my computer has, in its copious progression, learned a few tricks of its own, thanks to AI.
As poets like you and I laze around, they have trained an AI to create poetry. The planned art installation will ‘explore whether a computer program can express the complex nature of humanity through verse.’ Here is a line,
we travel across an empty field in my heart.
there is nothing in the dark, I think, but he.
A couple of years ago, I had come to know about this fun thing called predictive text poetry. Even John mayor was into it, check his Twitter. Here is one I wrote today,
I am looking for a better today but I can’t possibly do it
Restraint is a popular ingredient in creativity. Predictive text poetry is for the joyous heart, the words are usually the ones you’ve used in text messages before, and at best- they are ludicrous. But, predictions have come a long way. I am sure you have found Gmail suggesting words before your type them. I am sure it won't be long before it suggests them before you even think of them. And soon enough, you’re replying to emails without typing anything.
In this Open AI blog about their machine learning system, they declare, “…due to our concerns about malicious applications of the technology, we are not releasing the trained model.” Whooo! But here is the fun part, they have observed some ‘failures’ in their models such as, “… repetitive text, world modeling failures (e.g. the model sometimes writes about fires happening underwater), and unnatural topic switching.”
It’s not a failure of Open AI, it’s a feature- call it Poetics.
But contemplating beyond humor, there are so many questions.
Will we see the rise of fake poets? AI posing as poets, poets plagiarising through an AI, or whatever sorcery can be performed in combination?
As we teach AI the rules of language, will we also be able to effectively teach it to break the rules with purpose, with intent, with a poetic license, in protest, or in solidarity? Will it inspire us to overthrow tyrants? or will it be able to propagandize?
And, if the data that is fed into training the machine is human, what do we call what comes out? Is sheep shit vegan?
The use of language to form abstract concepts, to form associations, and to evoke emotions is a human creative performance. When we admire poetry, do we admire the human, the poet? Does it matter who wrote it? Yes ! Maybe not ALL the time, but yes nevertheless. A particular poem is the shit, because of the ass it came out of. I believe who matters as much as what. It makes a hell of a difference whether Charles Bukowski said it or Harvey Weinstein.
So finally, here is a poem I wrote for AIs-
I hope you go through shit, get your semicolons dismembered, be left standing, and abandoned only to find yourself where your mathematics didn't predict. I hope someone breaks your heart, angers you, and does you wrong. I hope you have parent issues and sibling rivalry. I hope you get to play the hero, or villain, or god. I hope you age, and your rage, and you craze, and you graze on rap rhymes, page after page of a foreign language, brandishing symbols even before deciphering them. I hope you get lost in translation. I hope you have a country you can write dishonest poems to, I hope the desire to be famous paralyzes your fingers, I hope no one reads your blog for years, I hope you pet dogs, and eat pigs. I hope you’ll find the fodder, to write in disorder.
