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Poetry that scans correctly should be fairly easy to write for a machine - just find words with the right rhythm patterns and rhymes. Poetry that connects on an
by blowski 10y ago
Poetry that scans correctly should be fairly easy to write for a machine - just find words with the right rhythm patterns and rhymes. Poetry that connects on an emotional level must be a lot harder.
- andreaferretti 10y agoI was tricked by "A thousand pictures on the kitchen floor, Talked about a hundred years or more."
- gridspy 10y agoI got 6/6 I didn't even read that far. It was obvious by here: SONNET #2 The dirty rusty wooden dresser drawer. A couple million people wearing drawers, Or looking through a lonely oven door, Flowers covered under marble floors. This is exactly how a computer algorithm would conflate drawer with drawers. There is no obvious theme to this verse, no high level construct. Every human poem in this example has a high level theme, which is non-obvious to a computer. None of the computer ones do.
- chrisfosterelli 10y agoThat's how I got 6/6 as well. It's less about the actual words and more about if the poem was actually talking about anything coherent.
- mfoy_ 10y agoAll the computer poems were just rambling and rhyming and weren't really even trying to say anything. A lot of the time they phrased things VERY awkwardly too, to the point of being incomprehensible.
- elorant 10y agoSounds like rap music :)
- plaguuuuuu 10y agoAlso interesting to compare with less thematically structured work. Probably not the greatest example but what comes to my mind is some of The Mars Volta's lyrics; a lot of it is pretty abstract and stream-of-consciousness and it's hard to really pinpoint a narrative as such, compared to the example poems which were pretty straightforward "Last night I heard lepers flinch like birth defects its musk was fecal in origin as the words dribbled off of its chin it said I'm lost I'm lost Now I'm lost Dolls wreck the minced meat of pupils cast in oblong arms length the hooks have been picking their scabs where wolves hide in the company of men it said I'm lost I'm lost"
- Scriptor 10y agoYep, the human poems would often refer back to an idea or word mentioned before. The computer poems read like something from a good markov generator. Actually, you can kind of reverse engineer the algorithm behind Sonnet #2. It seems like they first pick a bunch of related words that rhyme (drawer, door, floors, apartment, wall) and then build up the line backwards. The problem is that even though the words are related, the actual lines don't form any single cohesive image.
- SilasX 10y ago>This is exactly how a computer algorithm would conflate drawer with drawers. Because human poets never do wordplay like that?
- gridspy 10y agoBecause when humans do, there is an obvious (sometimes less obvious, but present) reason to do so. There is no such link made in this example between the usages.
- SilasX 10y agoYou haven't read a lot of schoolkid poetry posted at public libraries, have you?
- neosat 10y agoI got this one wrong. I thought no way a computer would be so dumb to have drawer and then drawers in the next sentence and this was a trick question to get one to say machine. Guess I overestimated the algorithm !
- taneq 10y agoInability to differentiate homonyms is one of the current weaknesses of word embeddings, isn't it?
- p4wnc6 10y agoBut like most art, whether it connects on an emotional level is mostly dependent on the consumer. Once an artist gains fame, then it becomes a matter of fashion signalling to agree with others about how good that artist is or to deride that artist for making something that doesn't live up to previous works. I found a lot of the lines from The Policeman's Beard is Half-Constructed by the program Racter to connect with me on an emotional level, despite knowing that (a) it was likely heavily edited by the program creator and (b) much of it just mimicked the unusual word choices and rhythmic qualities of poetry, not the intentional conveyance of a message or theme.
- gridspy 10y agoThat's the interesting thing about looking through the output of any computer algorithm. I have often done this with random walks using markov chains. By editing 200 lines into just 3 or 4, you are actually adding a lot of information. It makes the computer seem smarter than it is. If we could create a "good poem" evaluator + editor and tack it on the end of a "random poem" creator, we could perhaps get some good results.
- gridspy 10y agoThat's the interesting thing about looking through the output of any computer algorithm. I have often done this with random walks using markov chains. By editing 200 lines into just 3 or 4, you are actually adding a lot of information. It makes the computer seem smarter than it is. If we could create a "good poem" evaluator + editor and tack it on the end of a "random poem" creator, we could perhaps get some good results.
- TheOtherHobbes 10y ago>But like most art, whether it connects on an emotional level is mostly dependent on the consumer. Consumers. The best art affects a lot of people. And they don't need to be told to like it. It "just works." Art audiences follow multivariate statistical distributions. It's very much not just a personal reaction - it's a personal reaction shared by many other people having broadly similar reactions. Some of it is social signalling, and some of it requires education and experience. But valued works tend to persist in culture because they reliably create reactions in a statistically significant proportion of all possible audiences.
- SilasX 10y agoRight, because you have to convince the high-status authorities to say that it connects on an emotional level so that everyone else will nod their heads to avoid looking stupid. Truly, AI is a long way from beating the Emperor's New Clothes game. But frankly, there are easier, more useful AI goals to target.
- mfoy_ 10y agoI'm guessing you don't like poetry.
- justratsinacoat 10y ago>Right, because you have to convince the high-status authorities to say that it connects on an emotional level so that everyone else will nod their heads to avoid looking stupid Honest question -- did you get the same emotional read off of the machine-poems as you did the human-poems? If not, perhaps there is something more involved in poetry than stringing words together!
- SilasX 10y ago>Honest question -- did you get the same emotional read off of the machine-poems as you did the human-poems? Yep -- none.
- ythl 10y agoHmm, well I was able to correctly identify every single sonnet. The machine generated ones I would read and think "What the heck was that poem about? It just rambled on about random things" whereas the human ones you could tell that all the verses were interconnected. Take Sonnet #6 for example. You can tell there is intelligence behind the sentences being written. Each line builds on the line before it. Compare to sonnet #5 which rambles on about nothing and uses duplicate words (then comes a small bright spark comes)...
- SilasX 10y agoYou've never seen a human poem that just seemed to ramble about nothing?
- justratsinacoat 10y ago>Poetry that scans correctly should be fairly easy to write for a machine - just find words with the right rhythm patterns and rhymes Indeed, Pentametron [0] ('With algorithms subtle and discreet/I seek iambic writings to retweet') has been up since 2012. Despite the occasional serendipitous pairing, it obviously doesn't make much sense, as didn't the obvious machine-poems in TFA. [0]https://twitter.com/pentametron https://twitter.com/pentametron
- thaumasiotes 10y agoJust to point out, human poems, and in fact the poems here, often don't scan or rhyme correctly.