@fdrake as promised

Some of this is a bit over my head, (or at least, it's just specialized enough that, given what I'm bringing to it, the opportunity cost of parsing it is too high for me.) If and when you get around to it, let me know what you think.

True, and if an adult were to have written it, it would not have been published.

Sure, but are are we not moving away from the classic definition of being able to capture the transcendental, the fixed and unchangeable, as in a mimesis, and more towards continentalist theories of art. — Forgottenticket

Sure, and that's the cultural context, at least per your view of current poetry.

I think ‘genuine’ poetry is often something like the smoke generated from an intense spiritual encounter - say smoke rising from an altar, where the sacrifice is the poet’s encounter ( with something) — csalisbury

:fire:

Yeah, I found a bit of beauty here and there. I guess, to be fair, I've read some contemporary poetry that made me angrier than this AI stuff did...so in that sense, I guess I prefer the highlights of fake AI poetry over chic contemporary word salad diarrhea.

Between mouthfuls of apple pie,
they discuss the panda's defection,
the new twelfth-man problem, the low
cardinality of Jesus, and whether
Saint John broke the bread at the Lord's Supper
instead of the guest Aava.
Their talk is either philosophical
on the one hand, or distressing personal
on the other.
Eve, it is whispered, died of exposure. — csalisbury

Yeah, that's an interesting poem, AI or not. Again...psychologically, I wonder what I would have thought of it if I hadn't known.

Overall though, I'm interested in why we find this interesting. Poetry feels like the most fragile art form because language is so fleeting and changes so much, and it's emotional content is so personal. So, as a lay poet and songwriter, and as a lover of words, I do feel some sense of being attacked here. If AI can write better poetry than us, and if our poetry is so fragile in the first place, then what does this even achieve for AI, and what is achieved via AI for us? Our words are already faulty and failing. Why should we use Ai to pantomime ourselves and taunt our failures with caricatures of what we've tried to say in the past?

This would be something like collective smoke filtered through another medium to produce uncanny almost-poem plumes. — csalisbury

I just re-read this and got all sorts of mis-firing, conflicting thoughts. If poetry is the smoke that you refer to, how does this AI poetry actually fit in to that metaphor? By way of your smoke metaphor (which I Love) I can't honestly place the AI poetry. If we follow the metaphor, I would categorize the AI poetry as steam, not smoke.

John Ashberry (one of my favorite poets) might be an AI. :scream:

Seriously, though, for me poetry is an attempt to invoke and evoke sensation, feeling, experience, vision and care by means of language. I don't see any of that in the AI generated "poems" you posted here. So I think Ashberry's poetry, any poetry, is in no danger of being superseded, or even supplemented, by AI.

Does any of it rhyme, or is it all free verse?

If all poetry is meaningful to the creator/writer, then there's something quite important missing in AI 'renderings'... isn't there?

Overall though, I'm interested in why we find this interesting. Poetry feels like the most fragile art form because language is so fleeting and changes so much, and it's emotional content is so personal. So, as a lay poet and songwriter, and as a lover of words, I do feel some sense of being attacked here. If AI can write better poetry than us, and if our poetry is so fragile in the first place, then what does this even achieve for AI, and what is achieved via AI for us? Our words are already faulty and failing. Why should we use Ai to pantomime ourselves and taunt our failures with caricatures of what we've tried to say in the past? — Noble Dust

I think those are really good questions. I’ve felt some similar discomfort. One potential, positive, way of framing that comes to mind is : it helps us, by negation, to focus on what is important to us in poetry. If an AI can do this and this, then maybe it can help us recognize when we, too, are in autopilot, just doing this and this, deluding ourselves. not to shut us down, but refocus.

The second thought is that the AI becomes just another part of the natural world, and its words are just one swirl of things among others - they’re an accretion of language. I’ve been reading Moby Dick and Starbuck gets at Ahab about seeing an offense in something incapable of giving offense. It’s just another part of what is now.

[redacted]

Sure, and that's the cultural context, at least per your view of current poetry. — Noble Dust

It goes without saying in that these are forum posts. Or not, perhaps all our comments will be used as contextless snippets to philosophical google search inquiries.
However the formalism charge still exists. Does AI undo its legitimacy as art?

The poetry reminds me of Jaron Lanier's statements on the Alpha Go player. He states the player isn't competing against AI but is competing against millions of professional players who have contributed to the software. It's actually fairly creepy if you think about it. You can reduce someone to the best moves, throw them into an app and you don't have to deal with any of the yucky human stuff. It's like the incarnation of a far-leftist's caricature of capitalism.

Doesn’t this beg the question, what is poetry for? Someone said that poetry today is only read by other poets. I don’t know if that’s true or not. But the work of AI is not that of a poet, only because a poet is human. You might say they are almost one and the same thing. The AI produces work for reading that imitates the poet. Which makes it entertainment. There’s nothing wrong with that, to look at work which juxtaposes words and ideas that stimulates us. But in the end, if this is where it’s going, then all artwork can go the same way. Maybe it’s important that it’s only poets who read poetry so that it won’t die to be replaced by smoke and mirrors.

What’s the point of AI producing poetry, no matter how good it might appear to be? Is the success of AI going to be that it’s capable of imitating human capabilities? In that case why have them? The only point I can see in it then is it’s cheaper and easier than, as you said to “ deal with any of the yucky human stuff“.

I don't think the article says very much. If you give a gigantic machine learning model lots of text, it's going to find patterns of all sorts in it. Something like poetry probably requires understanding of meter and rhyming structure; imagine that poem's lines are enumerated, a sophisticated text prediction algorithm working within an ABAB rhyming structure will likely have knowledge very similar to odd and even numbers, and that "adding 1" to the line number changes the required set of words to write to satisfy the rhyming pattern.

The stuff about arithmetic in it is about priming the model with explicitly arithmetical statements; even if it can add and subtract in terms of line number within a rhyming structure that doesn't mean it can generalise that addition and subtraction to the number symbols. It works in networks of connected symbols, rather than working in networks of connected concepts (though the distinction there is maybe just a matter of network complexity and scope of training data).

The rest is a discussion over whether increasing the number of parameters in the machine learning model is eventually going to stop leading to task improvements on various metrics.

There isn't much discussion over whether it's going to be "better poetry" or whatever, since that's a hazy thing to begin with.

Here are two of mine...hope you enjoy them:

He’s An Englishman Doing An American Accent

He’s an Englishman
Doing an American accent.
Which means he’s gonna use “gonna” a lot.

He’s gonna use “wanna” every bit as much.
And “Gotta” will be working overtime, too,
As will the double negatives.

If you are an Englishman
Who wants to do an American accent,
A great sentence to practice would be:

“I don’t wanna be no party pooper,
But I gotta be home by 10,
So I’m gonna leave now.”




An Eye Sore Is An Eyesore

A stye
Is an eye sore;
A sty
Is an eyesore.

Ain’t English a bitch!

There are many reasons to engage in art, poetry included. Two of these that I’ve so far found most central are a) a need to express something this is otherwise inexpressible via commonplace language and b) a need to imbibe this expression with the closest proximity one can get to a perfect, and thereby powerful, aesthetic. To me everything else is technical know-how that can be learned via (a) and (b), but which when devoid of (a) and (b) will seem somewhat hollow.

I’ve for example worked with a visual artist that excelled at technical know-how, but was always going about asking others what he should draw or paint next—not having an internal impetus to express something of personal significance for as long as I’ve known him. To me, at least, there was always something missing form his otherwise exceptionally portrayed artwork.

The AI poetry reminds me of this high level of technical know-how sans the burning desire to express something that one holds to be important—to me, for the obvious reason that the AI is not strong AI endowed with consciousness. For example:

Between mouthfuls of apple pie,
they discuss the panda's defection,
the new twelfth-man problem, the low
cardinality of Jesus, and whether
Saint John broke the bread at the Lord's Supper
instead of the guest Aava.
Their talk is either philosophical
on the one hand, or distressing personal
on the other.
Eve, it is whispered, died of exposure. — csalisbury

At the risk of sounding stupid or snobbish—which I probably will—what is it that this stanza (or poem?) communicates? There’s a lot of technical know-how to it, but what is its content—moreover, a content whose aesthetic reaches into my being, captivating me, in manners that refuse to let go (so that I will remember it's affect upon me a long time after)? One can project abstractions into it—just as one can into a blank canvas—in this particular case, maybe something about the ennui of certain conversations. Still, why would this quoted poem not be one more case of the emperor’s new clothes phenomena?

As an apropos, for decades now, one litmus test for good quality poetry I’ve pointed out to is the poet's ability to express the positive aspects of intense romantic love via metaphorical concepts in manners that don’t result in kitsch, i.e. in something one deems to be silly if not worse. This to me is one of the most difficult things to accomplish via poetry.

I don’t foresee being elated and enlightened about romantic love by AI produced poems within my life. Still, if enough good quality love poems are poured into some AI program, and if monkeys at typewriters could type out a good quality play if given sufficient time, what AI could accomplish in the future in this respect is to me an interesting question.

One potential, positive, way of framing that comes to mind is : it helps us, by negation, to focus on what is important to us in poetry. If an AI can do this and this, then maybe it can help us recognize when we, too, are in autopilot, just doing this and this, deluding ourselves. not to shut us down, but refocus. — csalisbury

Sure, that's a potential positive byproduct, but surely it wasn't worth the dollars and hours required to produce this AI jargon. Surely that's just an accidental bonus.

The second thought is that the AI becomes just another part of the natural world, and its words are just one swirl of things among others - they’re an accretion of language. I’ve been reading Moby Dick and Starbuck gets at Ahab about seeing an offense in something incapable of giving offense. It’s just another part of what is now. — csalisbury

That's maybe a deeper philosophical point, yeah. I.e. a question of the position that AI holds in the world now. But that feels like a larger question that doesn't just include AI generated poetry. But still applicable, yeah.

The AI poetry reminds me of this high level of technical know-how sans the burning desire to express something that one holds to be important — javra

Yes yes yes.

As an apropos, for decades now, one litmus test for good quality poetry I’ve pointed out to is the poet's ability to express the positive aspects of intense romantic love via metaphorical concepts in manners that don’t result in kitsch, i.e. in something one deems to be silly if not worse. This to me is one of the most difficult things to accomplish via poetry. — javra

I really appreciate the audaciousness of this idea of yours because it's so true. To write a love poem (the most stereotypical of stereotypes) is truly a great feat. And it does test the metal of the poet. And I can't imagine reading an AI poem that moves me to the degree of a great love poem written by a human. Well said.

:blush: Blushing on account of your reply, but thanks. Yea, I agree with your embellishments in terms of love poems. Definitely.

It's fair enough. T.S. Eliot, somewhere or another, talked about living with the suspicion one is incapable of loving. Then: Prufrock. & then, Phillip Larkin. Finally, John Ashbery gets at the incapacity better than anyone,( as always) :

'I feel as though
Somebody had just brought me an equation.
I say, "I can't answer this - I know
That it's true, please believe me,
I can see the proof, lofty, invisible
In the sky far above the striped awnings. I just see
That I want it to go on, without
Anybody's getting hurt, and for the shuffling
To resume between me and my side of the night."

(but is it 'real poetry?')

In any case, I'm not championing Ai at the expense of the shit that feels real, and never have been. Robots aren't conscious; and they produce interesting poems. Can we start from there, please? No one is demeaning actual poets, including me; but almost all comments seem to be defending poetry as real against the robots. Yeah, I agree, but I never for a second felt threatened by them - why do so many people here? I didn't think anyone would worry about robot poets replacing poets, but many here seem to be pre-emptively defending against that.

Robots aren't conscious; and they produce interesting poems. Can we start from there, please? — csalisbury

That’s the problem isn’t it? Are they actually producing anything? It’s like saying a sausage machine produce sausages without input from humans.

That’s the problem isn’t it? Are they actually producing anything? It’s like saying a sausage machine produce sausages without input from humans. — Brett

They produce what they produce. They don't produce sausages, naturally. But the whole robot/soul thing is realllllly throwing us off the scent. The whole thread keeps focusing on that - I'm not trying to say robots can replace poets! Please look closer

I’m not saying they can replace poets either. First I wondered if they could produce poetry then I wondered if they could produce anything at all without human input. I was referring to your last post where you asked us to begin again.

Though I can stick to the idea about whether they can produce poetry, putting the issue of “anything” aside.

But if we can’t define “poem” then how do we progress?

They produced what they produced. I think it’s good. I also think any randomly chosen Emily Dickinson poem is probably better. But this is easy to do: select a poem, oppose it to an AI poem, and do the close reading. Show why the human poem is better. I’m confused why simply showing interesting AI poems is generating such passionate, reflexive, philosophical shutdown - I’m only saying I think they’re pretty. (literally, I wasn’t trying to start a debate, only wanted to say: check this out!)

It’s only a threat if you worry you can’t show why it doesn’t match up to human poems. If you think you can, there’s nothing to sweat.

I think it’s good. — csalisbury

I’m only saying I think they’re pretty — csalisbury

That’s fine. So what are we here for?

That’s fine. So what are we here for? — Brett

Well, what do you mean?

What’s the point of the OP?

Maybe that's the confusion. The OP doesn't have a point. It's closer to : I found this, and thought it was cool, take a look.

(take a look at the OP!)

And some thought it wasn’t so cool. I thought it was interesting to begin with but then started thinking on it some more and decided it was not much more than Burrough’s cut ups.