Poetry by AI
Someone trained a beefed-up version of last year's GPT-2 text-generator AI on a giant corpus of poetry, then let it generate a million words, and posted it publically for people to sift through
It's, like ----it's pretty good. Here are three bits I found in my first foray.
-------
When you get to be President,
A lot of things will change.
You will have people to dinner
And they'll want what you've got.
And, they'll want to give you money,
And you'll want to take it.
They'll want to give you orders,
And you'll want to take them.
The Oval Office will be
Full of people you never knew.
And you'll wish you had been born
Another boy or girl.
They will be, what, pre-adults now?
Have you ever seen so many P.M.s?
When the President gets things started
It's difficult 'at last to stop 'em;
It's difficult 'at all those lobbyists
Have ever represented the people.
It's not so difficult when you've already got
A duty to do and an influence
To give your vote, your advice to anyone.
If it wasn't for him I'm afraid
The railroads and all the other things
They've been clamoring for wouldn't get through,
For he's the biggest silent guy in the country
And one voice can always drown them all.
I'm sure, though, if I had to bet,
It's Mr. Smith will be the next one in.
-----
It was late by the time she climbed down from the ladder
And pulled the bed-sheet off the statue of George Washington
And walked across the wet grass to the car;
It was late when she came back and made me a coffee;
It was late when she put her purse in the seat and got in.
------
The wedding was held on the island this year,
And was a success beyond all expectations.
There was much fun,
But my memory's failing.
There was dancing and music and singing and good wine,
And good beer for Peter to drink,
For he drank nothing but water with his food.
He looked dreadful--sick.
His face was drawn and yellow;
He hadn't a lump or a spot;
But he looked so ill,
With his long hair down over his pajamas-trousers,
I nearly went home with a neighbor's daughter,
To take a pint of poison and observe her death.
It's, like ----it's pretty good. Here are three bits I found in my first foray.
-------
When you get to be President,
A lot of things will change.
You will have people to dinner
And they'll want what you've got.
And, they'll want to give you money,
And you'll want to take it.
They'll want to give you orders,
And you'll want to take them.
The Oval Office will be
Full of people you never knew.
And you'll wish you had been born
Another boy or girl.
They will be, what, pre-adults now?
Have you ever seen so many P.M.s?
When the President gets things started
It's difficult 'at last to stop 'em;
It's difficult 'at all those lobbyists
Have ever represented the people.
It's not so difficult when you've already got
A duty to do and an influence
To give your vote, your advice to anyone.
If it wasn't for him I'm afraid
The railroads and all the other things
They've been clamoring for wouldn't get through,
For he's the biggest silent guy in the country
And one voice can always drown them all.
I'm sure, though, if I had to bet,
It's Mr. Smith will be the next one in.
-----
It was late by the time she climbed down from the ladder
And pulled the bed-sheet off the statue of George Washington
And walked across the wet grass to the car;
It was late when she came back and made me a coffee;
It was late when she put her purse in the seat and got in.
------
The wedding was held on the island this year,
And was a success beyond all expectations.
There was much fun,
But my memory's failing.
There was dancing and music and singing and good wine,
And good beer for Peter to drink,
For he drank nothing but water with his food.
He looked dreadful--sick.
His face was drawn and yellow;
He hadn't a lump or a spot;
But he looked so ill,
With his long hair down over his pajamas-trousers,
I nearly went home with a neighbor's daughter,
To take a pint of poison and observe her death.
Comments (98)
Fascinating and apparently beautiful. Thanks for posting this.
If I wanted to get a little more in depth, I would wonder what eras and traditions the poetry the AI was fed come from. Poetry is so dependent on cultural context. If you read Paradise Lost today, you might appreciate it or even love it, but the style, and even the content will feel removed and sort of academic, in the sense that it's not so visceral to your own real experience; in contrast to something like the John Ashberry stuff you've been posting, for instance. So that being said, if doing this is just a fun game, then whatever. But if there's any hope of actually generating compelling poetry, you would need to take cultural context into consideration...but philosophically, I'm pretty opposed to this sort of thing myself. I wanted to avoid pulling the "those deng compooters can't replace the human spirit dammit!" card, but that's where I stand...anyways.
I think this is really interesting. When you say you found this in your first foray does it mean you sifted through a bit to find it?
I don’t agree with on cultural context. Has the AI just done what so many poets do, which is raid the pantry. Or am I mistaken in what he was getting at?
Can you provide support for the idea that poets "raid the pantry", and maybe define what that means?
That they work in a tradition with a long unbroken tail. They steal from the past and reposition it in relation to cultural contexts. They “Make it new” and refresh our perceptions and experiences.
Yeah sure, all I'm saying is that a studied poet understands it's history, and their place in that history, and their work will probably flow naturally from that historical position that they occupy. AI on the other hand, if it's referencing a boat load of poetry from the past 1,000 years, would do so seemingly at random...unless there are elements in the code that delineate eras and styles. But reading these examples from the OP, there's absolutely no tone or style. It's completely flat. So if there is an element to the code that generated those poems that did take style and era into consideration...it certainly doesn't come across at all.
Here's a further wrinkle beneath a wrinkle: we're so far only dealing with the English language here. To say nothing of the notorious untranslatability of poetry.
Quoting Noble Dust
I’d agree to some degree. But there seems to be contemporary ideas in the lines. Of course these are the lines given to us by so she may have lifted the work that she relates to.
True, it does read like a bad translation. On the other hand if it was regarded as a first draft with work to be done then that could change. Metaphors and similes might be formed at that stage.
There's contemporary information in the lines, which I assume was part of the information the AI absorbed. That doesn't equate to a style.
I'm not sure if you've ever written a poem or not, but metaphors and similes (i.e. poetic language) generally are not added later...
I just realised it might appear that I’m arguing that an AI can write poetry, which I’m not. It’s more like William Burrough’s “cut ups”.
Quoting Noble Dust
There’s no correct way to produce art.
I didn't think you were arguing for anything in particular necessarily; just responding with some thoughts.
I agree. But there are more genuine and less genuine ways.
Of course.
We crossed over there. My comment was in regard to “...some thoughts”.
“Genuine”. This is getting tricky now. Isn’t it possible a metaphor may come to mind spontaneously while in the process of writing or playing with an idea? Is that not genuine simply because it was spontaneous?
Of course I don’t believe that an AI could go on to create a metaphor.
I'm not sure how it's getting tricky, because what you described there is basically what I meant. So going back to you saying "On the other hand if it was regarded as a first draft with work to be done then that could change. Metaphors and similes might be formed at that stage", what I meant in responding was that metaphors are generally spontaneous, rather than requiring drafts. That may be an oversimplification; of course new metaphors could spring up on repeated drafts. But in my own experience of writing poetry, poetic language does tend to be spontaneous, and not something that is improved much with drafts; usually a few simple versions, maybe, but generally, the original "inspiration" of the language is what sticks; drafts only refine, they don't redefine.
“Tricky” was in relation to “genuine”.
Quoting Noble Dust
That’s my feeling. I don’t mean that a metaphor is formed later as a conscious act because the writer felt a metaphor was needed at a certain point, but that the creative act creates its own momentum and throws up new, unexpected possibilities. Maybe my use of the word “first draft” was wrong and instead I should have just used “process”.
By "genuine" I was suggesting that a natural creative process will produce poetic language; if it doesn't, it would be more akin to some sort of scientific (AI generated, maybe?) process. Yes, the creative process does throw up new possibilities. In my own experience, the best (most genuine) work tends to be a process of "all the ideas are given at the beginning, and are then refined over time". But there is a mysterious alternative where, occasionally, half-formed ideas that have promise can be slowly perfected over time. EDIT: but the original "genius" (in the original sense of that word) almost always suffers and loses something. But I find this process to be the exception to the rule. But no, any good writer or artist hopefully understands the importance of "drafts", so drafts are absolutely important. As is the process of the whole thing. I think we're mainly in agreement.
90% perspiration, 10% inspiration.
Eh. There are no accurate percentages. If perspiration suggests practice, then of course it's crucial, but I would say inspiration would be more like a 90% cut. But practice isn't only 10%. So the pithy quote breaks down, in my view.
It’s not a rule. It’s for amusement. Perspiration refers to hard work.
Yes, I know. Practice is the hard work of art...
Enjambment
Thence down the mountain-sides the bright gold sun
Dapples all the valley below
Simile, assonance
Like dew-beads on the feathery grass,
Repetition, consonance, that thing where the narrator addresses an inanimate object - it also uses "hark" for it because that's what poems do.
One old tree, old as the dawn,
Old as the story of the sea
Old as the dawn of days,
That through the twilight with its weight
Was calling to the dawn,
That through the summer with its gifts
Was calling to the fall,
And saying to the land, "Hark!
There is a joy in heaven above!"
It's learned patterns of stressed and unstressed syllables:
The hour, the hour of golden sunshine,
- + - + - + - + - = -+-+-+-+-
The hour of sharper freezing weather,
- + - +- +- + - = -+-+-+-+-
The hour of yonder dark and dreary cloud
- + - +- + - +-? + = -+-+-+-+-+
(that extra stressed bit also breaks the repeated pattern onto the next line)
It can elaborate an image over multiple lines:
Of light unfading, bright and deep;
A golden river flecking the verdant floor.
A child could not have written this:
If I were of their pride,
If mine were one thought,
If mine were their thought,
O Lord, Who know the secret of the sun
An apostrophe.
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. A lot of poetry is contemplative, meditative, and does seem platonic in its construct. A friend of mine tells me he primarily reads Paradise Lost because of how it assists his own art today.
Btw, on the AI itself, these poems are better (sort of) , but the TalktoTransformer was nonsense 99% of the time. AI just makes me feel like a nihilist. I recall Wayfarer called it the materialist Ahriman.
The AI was fed poems from many times and genres, and many of the poems it’s produced feel mock-ancient-epic or mock-mannered-Donne or mock-romantic. I have a hunch the selections in the OP stem from post 50s American poetry ( New York School especially comes to mind.)
A lot of times and styles there if you check out the link. This one feels almost like (one aspect of) Wallace Stevens:
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.
I think, while agreeing with the distinction between genuine and nongenuine poetry, there’s a beauty here. And formally, technically, this is a wonderful stanza.
Mostly I’ve been slicing and dicing and extracting the good bits while leaving out the AI-junk but it did produce at least one poem coherent from start to finish which, coincidentally, also begins with the death of a woman due (almost) to exposure. The title it chose is odd - ‘Driving to Santa Fe’ - but the rest is a kind of satisfying whole. Here it is:
Driving to Santa Fe
Under the smog of snow a woman
has killed herself because of the pain
she was in. Her husband did not want
to go to the doctor because he said
it wasn't his job to cheer up
people in pain. The tempest is
hiding in the chambers of the man
who keeps the local offices of the Christian
Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.
The committee is made up of church ladies
from all over the county: Mary Ann Vecchio
from Limerick, Lucille McCann of Morgantown,
and Mrs. Wallace Smyth of Chesterfield.
John Nevin is the investigator for the committee.
The committee keeps trying to get
the coroner to open up an investigation
into the death of Rosemary Phagan,
the woman who died in the tobacco barn
on the Mount of Olives. Mary Ann Vecchio
and Mrs. Wallace Smyth came down
to Phagan's wake and were so overcome
by the magnitude of the loss
that they went back to Limerick and wrote
to the coroner. Now the committee
is trying to investigate the death
of Mrs. Phagan because she is a friend
of Mrs. Vecchio's and Mrs. Wallace
Smyth's son is a passenger on a bus
that was supposed to have taken them
to watch the sunrise on Palm Sunday.
The committee thinks that Mary Ann Vecchio
and Mrs. Wallace Smyth have conspired
to kill Mrs. Phagan in Limerick.
I think this last poem, especially, is truly remarkable.
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, and that's the cultural context, at least per your view of current poetry.
: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.
Quoting 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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
He’s An Englishman Doing An American Accent
[i]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.”[/i]
An Eye Sore Is An Eyesore
[i]A stye
Is an eye sore;
A sty
Is an eyesore.
Ain’t English a bitch![/i]
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:
Quoting 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.
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.
Quoting 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.
Yes yes yes.
Quoting 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.
'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.
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.
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?
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.
Quoting csalisbury
Quoting csalisbury
That’s fine. So what are we here for?
Well, what do you mean?
What’s the point of the OP?
(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.
Quoting csalisbury
That sounds like the opening salvo to a discussion to me. More than like or dislike anyway. But fine, I’ll leave it there that the poems are interesting but no more than Burrough’s cut ups.
I've read both Burroughs' cut-ups and these poems; they are different.
Yes they’re different. I said not much more interesting than Burroughs.
Yes, but it's the greatest hits of human capability. It needs to be remembered these are gadgets in a strong sense. The use of a gadget is whatever you use it for. You could in theory have an endless amount of apps for generating specific material.
An advocate may argue, there is no one writing 12th century poetry in Portuguese so why not relegate it to an app, which is probably true.
But then there is a danger of becoming too mindless. On some level, the experts know it's just a piece of software even if they can't sell it as such. It takes millions upon millions of pics to train an AI (and sometimes failing at that: https://boingboing.net/2018/01/11/gorilla-chimp-monkey-unpersone.html)
whereas a child needs one image. That is a Zebra, job done. There aren't children's books with 4 million zebras in to ensure they understand what they are.
What brought Burrough’s cut-ups to mind and the comparison was your post that said “ The AI was fed poems from many times and genre ... “
So my impression was that the AI had juxtaposed these different lines. (I don’t know if they were fed lines, word or phrases), that the juxtaposing then created interesting stanzas that then generated interesting ideas.
The Oval Office will be
Full of people you never knew.
And you’ll wish you had been born
Another boy or girl.
They will be, what, pre-adults now?
Have you ever seen so many P.M.s?
So, like Burroughs, pre existing material was juxtaposed to create new material in the sense of making it new or creating unexpected, even original, connections, etc.
I don’t see anything wrong with that, except that the writer is still required to keep driving the work in a specific direction.
What drives the direction of AI? If there’s no sense of direction then it’s merely interesting to watch it juggle words and lines.
Of course we can take what we want from it, just like we do with poetry, if you go along with literary theory views the reader bringing meaning to the work, not the author.
I personally find that idea interesting, to a degree. And in that sense, if the reader-response theory wins out then the AI is the next Shakespeare.
Quoting Forgottenticket
That’s a very interesting point. There are many writers I like reading who are long dead. I’ve read all their books and can’t find any books by authors that come close enough to satisfy me. I might be very interested if AI could produce work just like theirs, that ticks all the boxes that does it for me.
To a model, a poem is basically a time series of line index numbers; something like the following story;
Make a poem, model!
1. I have generated line 1 now.
2. Given that line 1 is "I have generated line one now" What should I generate here? I know, I'll generate this.
3. Given that line 1 and 2 are as written, what should I generate here? I know, I'll generate this.
...
The dependence of a line upon the history of lines before it is called serial dependence. How far back in line number a model can go from the previous one while generating semantically/thematically/image relevant content is constrained by how much serial dependence the model can ape.
Something like a theme for a poem, like desolation in "A Measure of Desolation" by Ursula Le Guinn:
Again and again the landwind blows,
sending back the rain
to the house of the rain.
Seeking, seeking, the heron goes
longlegged from creek
to thirsty creek.
They cry and cry, the windblown crows
across the sky,
the bare clear sky.
From land to land the dry wind blows
the thin dry sand
from the house of sand.
requires that the model "think about" all the previous steps and devices to embed the consistency/relatedness of each verse to each other. There're multiple serial dependences in it; the first line of each verse is predictive of all the others' structure, the second line in each verse is predictive of all the others' structure. The middle line of each verse is a descriptive elaboration of the bit after the double space in each first line and a rhyme with the last word before the double space.
Dealing with multiple serial dependences to create a consistent image dealing with a theme is hard. Before we start talking about how much branching/association there has to be to grok the associations of semantic content that make imagery work - there's word to word serial dependence too, as well as sentence to sentence serial dependence, motif motif serial dependence, device device serial dependence...
It's amazing that the model can do so much of this, I'm just hypothesizing that a poem dealing with a theme is a particularly hard task in terms of serial dependence.
Yes, there is a bit of discomfort that I feel in seeing noteworthy aesthetics originated by a non-sentient entity with a significant degree of regularity. An aesthetics which I grant being present in the technical know-how that the AI acquired.
As to the OP’s presentation, I’m grateful for it. Thanks. Good to know such things. As to philosophical comments on what the OP presents, I think one underlying issue is the nature of what art is:
A sunrise can, on some occasions, be beautiful. Does this of itself make the sunrise art? I’ll argue that if and only if one assumes that the sunrise was the intentional creation of one or more sentient originators, one can then hold that the sunrise is art. If no such assumption is made, the aesthetics of the sunrise then does not get interpreted as an instantiation of art. Same will then apply, for example, to some dog accidentally kicking over a number of paint buckets with the result of an aesthetic arrangement of colors. Since no aesthetics was intended, the dog did not create a work of art.
On the other hand, I can mason a brick wall without any intention of conveying anything by it. I would be a sentient originator of the brick wall but, because there was nothing I intended to communicate by it, it would not be to me an instantiation of art. However, after the brick wall is finished, I then place a loose random brick on top of it with the explicit intention of conveying “the precarious nature of abstraction is always supported by a solid substratum of concreteness”. (Why not, right?) This brick I subsequently place on top the brick wall I built is now to me an artistic manifestation, thought the brick wall is not. And it will to me be art irrespective of how good an art piece it is. (In this case, not that great.)
In these scenarios, the difference between that which is and is not art is the occurrence of a sentient being’s intention to convey meaning via that which they originate. To this effect, even ordinary conversations can be deemed to be an art form. And, as goes without saying, poetry is a form of art.
Because the AI program is not sentient, it lacks this intention of conveying meaning. Yet what it produces mimics the outcomes of just such an intention.
There is discomfort in this, for me at least. A bit off topic relative to the OP, but pertinent to the issue of discomfort: AI chat bots are known to exist. They’re not perfect, but are improving by the day. The Orwellian implications of, for example, the degree of propaganda that can occur on social media platforms as a result … are for me unpleasant to think about. And present day AI’s ability to mimic human poetry to me points in such directions.
At any rate, with this I’m just trying to convey where my discomfort is coming from.
As to it being real poetry, verses mimicked poetry - and as per my previous examples - can it be real if it was not originated via a sentient being’s intention to express something of meaning?
In my opinion, AI art does not represent a paradigm shift in terms of the meaning of art, rather it reveals a significant part of the preexistent process called artistic inspiration and democratises it. Art algorithms are really about increasing the economy of scale of art production and they accelerate the pace of art revolutions.
Quoting sime
Can you give evidence for that?
Art has moved in tandem with the accelerating technological trajectory that began with the invention of electronics in the Victorian era. Without semi-autonomous content creation tools, the present creation of vast and open virtual worlds wouldn't be possible. Perhaps we could call the potential algorithmic output of content-creation tools "meta art" in comprising a distribution over art objects, but it is still 'art' in the traditional sense in being ultimately shaped by the vision of it's users who program it, feed data to it, and tweak it's responses. And these tools also complement and fuel the need for traditional artists who produce hand-crafted content, as for example in virtual world content creation where there are neither enough algorithms nor artists to produce the infinite amount of diverse content required.
Quoting sime
That’s an interesting post, but I don’t see it as evidence of algorithms accelerating the pace of art revolutions. I don’t see an art revolution that’s the result of algorithms.
Quoting sime
True.
Quoting sime
We could, but is it? And it’s still only potential.
Quoting sime
So it’s an output tool, like a painting on canvas or printed pages. But what is the vision in feeding AI words and lines from existing poems? There is no vision except to create what is now redefined as a poem, as art. There is no poet, only the programmer. The vision then becomes that of the reader, as in reader-response literary theory. There is no vision of the artist because the construction of the poem is random and the meaning accidental.
Quoting sime
But AI can only produce a work if it’s received the pre-existing work of traditional artists, because it cannot produce “the infinite amount of diverse content required.” In fact without the diverse content it would just be a tool waiting for someone to switch it on. Is that a revolution in art?
Poet style is constrained by what they've learned about poetry; machines face the same constraints.
Poets associate words with each other to build resonant series of imagery; machines do the same thing, though maybe face scope issues - poets face scope issues too.
New work always relates to old work thematically or stylistically; poetry generated by an algorithm does so explicitly.
Poets wonder what to write next and the impenetrable to interpretation expressivity of their minds wonders what fits best for their decided purposes; machines have uncertainty about the next poem element and black box nigh on impenetrable decision making processes regarding improvised fit.
Poets improvise poem structure; machines do this too, just depends on their prompt.
Poets write poems when inspired and prompted by their experiences; machines write poems when prompted.
I can understand why people would be anxious about all this.
Quoting fdrake
Anxious about what?
There being so much data to feed gigantic models that they're getting extremely close to being functionally indistinguishable from human conduct in limited domains. The all too rapid and usually hidden encroachment of machine learning techniques (faciliated by panvasive surveillance and automated tabulation of all human experience) into the folk thought ineluctable freedoms of our souls.
Speaking for myself, you’re projecting metaphysical issues way too much into this. When and if a technological singularity will occur, whatever sentient beings have that distinguishes them from rocks will be had by Strong AI as well in equal measure. Be this the “ineluctable freedoms of souls” or something else. Thereby making whatever metaphysical issue one has qualms about mute in this respect. And besides, anxiety is not it. Anxiety is reserved for more pertinent things.
Again speaking for myself, the issue I was mentioning earlier is that of non-autonomous, non-sentient, decoys which mimic the autonomous and sentient behavior of humans. It’s fathomable that these can be built by humans with big loads of cash and programed so as to manipulate the other humans into beliefs that serve the short sighted interests of those who spend the money on building these decoys. Don’t know about you, but I don’t like the notion of living in (or, more likely, of today’s children growing up to live in) a world of vastly greater misinformation, misinformation that is propagated by AI decoys to boot. As one example, put enough chat bots on the internet which argue for Earth being flat and you’ll have an increased number of voters who vote on the conviction that Earth is in fact flat. This being a very innocuous example.
It's sort of off topic, but those mechanisms of behavioural modification are already in place. Doesn't need the singularity, just needs flexible enough algorithms (already there), almost total surveillance (already there) and experimental levers to pull (see online contagion experiments done by Facebook, Google's ad work with Pokemon go); your fitbit data is already being fed through a machine learning + insurance risk algorithm and sold on to calibrate health insurance costs.
The most salient issue for the thread in terms of the above algorithms is the type of training data and the model flexibility I think; it's a text processor and generator, it's trained on text and outputs text. If it had a resevoir of behavioural data and a linking model, it'd probably be able to ape the human experience informed aspects of poetry (notice this is a placeholder with no ascribed content) much better; it'd be able to link personal experience to words and generalise from it, just not "its own" experience.
Another angle is that an intelligent poem writer isn't necessarily a human; maybe the next version will have the kind of relationship to poetry that eagles have with their wings.
Quoting javra
As in entering a genuinely anxious state? Yeah. As in cordoning off poetry from machine functionality? Nah; that's super prevalent in the thread for mostly unargued reasons. Ego defense mechanism metaphysics everywhere.
Probably something like; series of evocative expressions, rhymes and meters, associations of words, grammatical structure and how to break it for effect... The model maybe wouldn't write in expressions; thought of as a productive relation between idea and pen; it would sample the next effective device, the next effective word choice, from the corpus of its weighted associations. By the looks of it it can already do consistency of style and create effective contrast with just text input...
Could it have done it without the text input? Seems like a relevant question to draw a line between machine poets and human poets; but can a human write a poem without a much broader input? Doesn't a human need even more competences to write evocative, memorable, poignant poetry? If you give an AI a sample of poetry, that's a sample of what humans care about just like an individual's life is a sample of cares.
Modern creative algorithms are accessible to anyone, and have many tuneable parameters that the artist himself can control in accordance with his artistic vision, to influence the style, subject etc . But perhaps this is tangential to the discussion.
Is the creative process a self-directed and inwardly driven process determined by the artistic foresight of the visionary artist? or is it a blind and partly external environment-driven process, whereupon external stimuli bring about artful stimulus-responses in a person said to have artistic temperament?
I suspect that Cartesian minded internalists who believe in the former might have a harder time reconciling AI and the arts compared to externalists who view the artist as a shambolic director of
haphazard external processes.
I think it's with box ticking mistakes are often made. I've seen a screenwriter produce scripts using whiteboards of what works in other episodes and make a complete mess. So then we make it about feeding it more data, the behavioral information of each author, the predictions based on past decisions ect, perhaps social events attended or what they will/would have/could have attend.
And perhaps even random numbers to account for Brownian motion that may occur during the production stage of each chapter. Do we have new books by the author?
The article csalisbury posted on page 2 has vanished because the author was doxed (which is a very human threat and a separate though related issue). But before it did, it showed the algorithm was progressing in a logarithmic fashion. I think there is an argument to make that it may break or come to a crawl.
Is it, as it appears, that the final proof of AI abilities is in producing art, like poetry? Is that what we’re using as proof that it’s equal to the human experience, not just the logical aspects, which AI supposedly excels at, but the actual human experience of living. If that’s the case then it suggests something very particular about art and being human, a benchmark for AI to crest.
If that’s the case does it also mean that logic is not what’s so special about being human?
That was actually the meaning behind my first post in this thread. We can easily move the goalposts to art being away from its traditional definition. Aesthetics is often considered being related to logic.
Anyway, a couple of queries:
1: Is AI generating new logic? if so then shouldn't we go into another short lockdown so it can have the power and equipment to get to Type III civilization theorems in a very short space of time.
2: If it's just machines making use of logic, then every single boss from every video game would count because they continually defeat humans at logic every day. The Turing test for logic was completed on the first defeat.
This?
Quoting Forgottenticket
Do you mean that art challenges the legitimacy of AI?
I find it difficult to be sure what your posts are getting at.
Do you mean that by moving the goalposts about art we allow AI to be creative? And that aesthetics, being related to logic, allows AI to legitimately take part in the creative act. My feeling, anyway, about aesthetics is that it’s the non creative‘s door into art. They take part in art by applying a slide rule to what others do instinctively.
What’s new logic? Is that a logic that lay dormant until we found it? Can there be another sort of logic? I don’t know, I’m not even sure if that’s what you were getting at,
Quoting Forgottenticket
So the AI defeats us in logic, right? And so logic in humans, so what? Move on, nothing special here to look at.
It could. Neither intentionally nor unintentionally but rather as the result of an algorithm programmed by logic or otherwise "to be logical". But. If that higher "new" logic isn't quantified by manual human input to be it's own logic rather "more logical" than (algorithmically favored over) a similarly assembled phrase using the same base logic and algorithm it will be otherwise ignored and would only happen as random chance.
I'm thinking all these algorithms when assembling phrases or ideas have a % of accuracy it assesses when building larger forms. Obviously the earliest versions of any kind of program were more gibberish than coherence. But with human input ie. programming, data processing, probability and assessment it improved to what it is now.
Most of what you say here goes without saying, but it misses the point I was making: not its own experience on account of it not being sentient, or conscious, or aware, or cognizant. That is, not until Strong AI comes about, if it ever will.
Quoting fdrake
Hmm, I’ve given an opening argument for why art, poetry included, necessitates some sentient being’s intention to convey meaning here - thereby precluding Weak AI from being creators of (authentic) poetry, for they lack sentience and thereby sentient intentions to convey meaning. These un-emotional arguments have so far not been addressed, and so have not been debunked.
For the record, I’m more than open to learning how artistic manifestations can be denoted as occurring in the absence of sentient intentions to convey meaning, this without wreaking havoc on commonsense understandings of what constitutes art.
Quoting fdrake
Seems like this is true for all sides of this issue, at least in relation to some.
But yeah, I think what we’d want to defend is why we read and write poetry - and if we admit an unfeeling and unthinking computer as generating poems equal in value to those generate by human poets, we begin to lose why we write and read poetry in the first place. So, I agree that it's important to focus on what we value in human poems versus AI poems. I find, personally, that I like poems that help me reflect on aspects of emotional and spiritual life in ways I wouldn't be able to otherwise, on the one hand, and that also let me admire style and mastery, on the other. Mastery implies something hard-won, the result of a long struggle, and so, to me, can be admirable only in other sentient (conscious/feeling/spiritual) beings. I think we are basically on the same page here.
I wouldn't necessarily agree with the intent to convey meaning, but that may just be a matter of semantics. The reason is something close to what I belive James Baldwin to be talking about here (in an interview with Paris Review:
"When you are standing in the pulpit, you must sound as though you know what you’re talking about. When you’re writing, you’re trying to find out something which you don’t know. The whole language of writing for me is finding out what you don’t want to know, what you don’t want to find out. But something forces you to anyway."
I think the best art is an articulation which, in being articulated, reveals both to the reader and the writer its meaning - its not a message intended ahead of time. That's my personal feeling anyway - obviously 'conceptual art' is very much along the lines of the brick on top of the wall. I don't want to try to draw lines demarcating art and non-art, but what I'm personally drawn to, what I Value is the kind of thing Baldwin is talking about - and I agree AI doesn't do that.
But, the poems are pretty and have their own kind value, yes like a sunset, but also in their own highly novel way.
Very nice quote. Yes, approaching this from my own experiences, I agree with what you address being an important aspect to the process of art creation. To use my own words and understandings here, artistic manifestation is as much a conscious as it is an unconscious goal oriented (hence, intended) processes. In my own experience at making (sometimes crappy) art, the conscious self chooses - if only emotively - between what the unconscious self throws up at it while at first having, maybe, a generalized intention of producing X; and, at the end of the process, what one ends up with is outcome Y - which resembles X only in the most basic structural ways, but is in many ways utterly different, and unforeseen at the very commencement. And this the final product, when it receives the last stamp of approval by its creator, so to speak, reveals meaning to the conscious creator as well as communicating some basic aspect of what the conscious creator intended. Revealed meaning that on occasion can leave the conscious creator in awe in terms of what is gained and learned from what was created (rather than from the egoistic sense of what “I” made). But, notwithstanding, for me the conscious self’s goal-oriented decisions between the alternatives which the unconscious self presents nevertheless play a role throughout. And in this, I'd like to think that the conscious self chooses the meaning which the final product conveys - even if the meaning is only that of a particular aesthetic devoid of conceptual content. .
Its nice to have such complex aspects of art creation brought up and discussed.
Quoting csalisbury
Sometimes aesthetic the way sunsets are sometimes aesthetic - and since no two sunsets are ever exactly the same ... aesthetic in their own novel ways. Yes. :up: No qualms there.
I think my personal preference is for a final product that glimmers with meaning, but that I still don’t quite grasp myself, even though it feels complete- and then I want to see if others feel the glimmer too. But that is a personal preference; there is plenty of poetry - Dante comes to mind - that, though wrought of fiery stuff, is still tightly organized at every level in order to convey a specific meaning. I like that too, and deeply admire those who do it well.
Quoting javra
It is!
It doesn't have a title but I guess I'll call it:
Springtime in Sim City (& Environs)
A cry went out in last year’s canyon. A howl of wisdom and regret. Above, the seven birds of prey wheeled languid double helices. The carts in cities trundled forth, their bright wares spilling. All manner of passerby took heed, absolved themselves of accumulated restraint. A whistle blew, then two, and fresh from heaven wan sunlight spread. A sleeping sow awoke to the din of the general rut. You, Michael, wore the suit I always knew you could. As dashing a man has never lived. Your kids in peaking pride cast wide smiles. The confectioner took double orders, and stacked his pastries high. The wind of change blew soft and swift through every housewife. In sum the world, in self-esteem, shook firmly its own hand.
As news unfurled in rhythmic blast, I sorted files in my office, amazed at it all. My very graphs seemed tinged with bluer blues, and redder reds. The thing the gypsy said came true. My suitcase glimmered. A thing like this, a world anew. I counted each and every paperclip. The bounty of a harvest horn. And did she know, or is she still? But who in truth could not be reached? My skin like milk absorbed the glow. I never knew just how she lived.
And farmers lost in last years flood came sodden back to family fields. With pearls in pockets, seaweed beards, they filed into hay-filled barns. A dance the town had never known broke fiercely out and swept the whole into its sway. All cherry-pie, Miss Lucy laughed, and curved her dress into the fold.
In foreign fields, new tracks were laid. A sigil carved by railroad men. the smoke of trains across the land cast signals into silent space, a message sent across the void to reach the hum of alien lands. At polished altars priestly men inhaled an incense new as rain. The funny pages teemed with jokes, and beetle bailey quit the force.
the course of rivers reaffirmed
the census sent to rabbis wives
the x-ray made of angels bones
the passport stamped with cold finesse
the orange market swept and cleaned
the former mayor tressed and curled
the riddle solved with patient care
the doe a deer a female deer
the ray a drop of golden sun
all these and more with fluid grace flowed swift as swallows toward the well.
in troubled times in years to come
when wracked with anger, hate or fear
an anchorite with bend of head
stoops crookedly down winding halls
where masonry gives way to rock
as city wails fade slowly out
the water cold and full and sharp
will reinscribe upon the soul
the signs of things as once they were
the silence of old ciphered joys
lost memories become new seed
to reawait the vital rain.
I like it a lot. Any reason for using prose form and then stanzas?
No real reason for the form. I had some kind of writing energy that day and wrote a bunch of gibberish that kept shifting around - this came at the end of it and some of that shifting around kept happening. Also, I realized as it went on, that I was falling into a tight repetitive meter and it seemed almost like it made more sense to just break it into individual lines at that point, since it was already becoming that,
[like:
a sigil carved by railroad men
the course of rivers reaffirmed
the smoke of trains across the land
the census sent to rabbis wives
cast signals into silent space
the x ray made of angels bones
a message sent across the land
]
:fire: Quoting csalisbury
I relate to this.
[i]No more phrases, Swenson: I was once
A hunter of those sovereigns of the soul
And savings banks, Fides, the sculptor’s prize.
All eyes and size, and galled Justitia,
Trained to poise the tables of the law,
Patientia, forever soothing wounds.
And mighty Fortitudo, frantic bass.
But these shall not adorn my souvenirs.
These lions, these majestic images.
If the fault is with the soul, the sovereigns
Of the soul must likewise be at fault, and first.
If the fault is with the souvenirs, yet these
Are the soul itself. And the whole of the soul,
Swenson,
As every man in Sweden will concede.
Still hankers after lions, or, to shift.
Still hankers after sovereign images.
If the fault is with the lions, send them back
To Monsieur Dufy's Hamburg whence they came.
The vegetation still abounds with forms. [/i]
It is kind of impressive, like some sort of weird word music that stays in your mind, but it then falls totally down when you simply ask "what the hell does it actually mean"? Like what does any of that disjointed stuff really mean, Sweden and savings banks and Hamburg abounding with vegetation? A text full of total non-sequiturs that in isolation can sound pretty impressive but don't beginn to make a coherent whole. So, yeah, nice try but no banana.
----------------------
Well, obviously not, this is one of my absolute favourite poems - Lions in Sweden by Wallace Stevens. And I have read plenty of learned analysis of the poem, many quite, well, fantastical (not in a good way). Poetry does not have to make total sense (and far from it being "a weak" art form I think it is one of the strongest and oldest), often it doesn't, and it doesn't, totally, here. I see no reason why a random effort could not succeed as brilliant poetry, what we see in this thread are very early efforts, and even they have really lovely lines and cadences. If there ever will be a full AGI, I bet it will do also art better than regular humans (as well as everything else).