5 ms·

I was hanging out with a girl who worked to verify the authenticity of social media profiles. She saw a number of computer generated profiles. One that stuck

I was hanging out with a girl who worked to verify the authenticity of social media profiles. She saw a number of computer generated profiles. One that stuck with her had a line, “Every year I look for a raise, but it never comes.” Since it’s computer generated, it’s not a story about someone’s experience. It’s not a communique from one human to another. I thought it was like tap dancing on the keyboard of the human mind, and when the computer lands an evocative line, which we thought this was, it has something to say about ourselves. My hope with computer generated poetry is that we might be able to use it know ourselves better.

jumbododo 4y ago
> I thought it was like tap dancing on the keyboard of the human mind, and when the computer lands an evocative line, which we thought this was, it has something to say about ourselves. To me this is no different conceptually as 'seeing' a face in the grill of a car or the front of a building. A sort of mental version of 'Pareidolia'.
jameshart 4y ago
That’s a very good point. If a computer program can generate words that make you feel something, does it even matter that there was no intent behind the program that selected those words? A landscape can be breathtakingly beautiful. It doesn’t matter that it wasn’t created specifically to invoke that feeling - just that the forces of nature conspired to create something so exquisite is enough. Maybe the same goes for computerized creativity. Pieces of beauty found among the landscape of possible things it can emit are like natural wonders, rather than works of art.