I've noticed in recent times
Poetry doesn't rhyme
And even when it can
It doesn't scan
It's shit, it's true
I blame haiku
this post was submitted on 18 Nov 2024
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"In short, it appears that the “more human than human” phenomenon in poetry is caused by a misinterpretation of readers’ own preferences. Non-expert poetry readers expect to like human-authored poems more than they like AI-generated poems. But in fact, they find the AI-generated poems easier to interpret; they can more easily understand images, themes, and emotions in the AI-generated poetry than they can in the more complex poetry of human poets."
AI writes poems for dummies and dummies like it. Fin
Otherwise, purposefully chosing less popular poems also biases the study towards poems of lower appeal from the human poets.
The thing I really hate about AI is when they say it can make art. For centuries, art has been a form of expression and communicating all sorts of human emotions and experiences. Some art reflects pain or memories experienced in life. Other art is designed out of intellectual curiosity or to evoke thought. AI isn't human, so it can't do anything other than copy or simulate. It's artificial after all. So it makes images. But there's no backstory or feelings or emotion or suffering. It's truly meaningless.
In 1962 Phillip K Dick put out a book called "Man in the High Castle." In it there was a scene that stuck out to me, and seems more and more relevant as this AI wave continues.
In it a man has two identical lighters. Each made in the same year by the same manufacturer. But one was priceless and one was worthless.
The priceless one was owned by Abraham Lincoln and was in his pocket on the night he was assassinated. He had a letter of certification as such, and could trace the ownership all the way back to that night.
And he takes them both and mixes them up and asks which is the one with value. If you can no longer discern the one with "historicity," then where is it's value?
And every time I see an article like this I can't help but think about that. If I tell you about the life and hardship of an artist, and then present you two poems, one that he wrote and one that was spit out by an LLM, and you cannot determine which has the true hardship and emotion tied to it, then which has value? What if I killed the artist before he could reveal which one was the "true" poem? How do you know which is a powerful expression of the artist's oppression, and which is worthless, randomly generated swill?
There’s no contradiction here.
With high value art you definitionally buy a story not the content. Without a certificate of authenticity or a story that goes with it there is no story and no value to it.
With K Dick’s example the two lighters would become of different but equivalent value, perhaps the new value is in the story of how two identical copies and yet different came to be.
You could 3d scan the statue of David and reproduce it down to its tiniest detail. And yet the copy is only worth as much as the cost to make it or even less, while the original is invaluable.
You can see the Mona Lisa on your phone any time you want and yet millions will take the trip to the Louvre to see what is most likely not even the original.
The story and the history of an object is what you purchase when buying art or antiques of high value.
Art, like the value of Lincoln's lighter, is in the eye of the beholder.
Often, people find art in completely natural occurrences. Or even human designs seen in certain ways, like how two or more separate buildings might come together in unintended ways.
So, even if it's not strictly intentional human art, it's still valid to appreciate it.
Or, maybe, we have to accept that art and all the grandiose and deep narratives around it are bullshit. It's an illusion, it's just a tool so some of us feel more important.
All that crap about not being made by humans is just the fear that the illusion of grandeur of humans might collapse.
I do get the sense sometimes that the more extreme anti-AI screeds I've come across have the feel of narcissistic rage about them. The recognition of AI art threatens things that we've told ourselves are "special" about us.
Correct.
And especially artists, or people aspiring to be artistic, are suffering from an inferiority complex which they try to hide behind grandiose "higher values" of art.
AI threatens to expose that art is meaningless unless you can use it to distinguish yourself from the plebs, or those you deem plebs.
I think there's an argument about art being the emotions it invokes in the viewer rather than the creator. Humans can find art in natural phenomena, which also has no feelings or backstory involved.
I'm not really defending AI slop here, just disagreeing with your definition of art and the relation to the creator rather than the viewer.
Indeed, there are whole categories of art such as "found art" or the abstract stuff that involves throwing splats of paint at things that can't really convey the intent of the artist because the artist wasn't involved in specifying how it looked in the first place. The artist is more like the "first viewer" of those particular art pieces, they do or find a thing and then decide "that means something" after the fact.
It's entirely possible to do that with something AI generated. Algorithmic art goes way back. Lots of people find graphs of the Mandelbrot Set to be beautiful.
Who the fuck wants poetry written by a machine? The whole point of poetry is that it’s an original expression of another human. It’s not a non-fiction book or decorative art. It doesn’t exist because we think it’s perfect. It exists because it’s a connection to another person.
Like, who gives a shit if a machine can churn out something like Langston Hughes “The Negro Speaks of Rivers.” . His life is what gives the poem its meaning.
I’m all for LLMs writing stuff but when people say it can create certain types of art, I want to use one to make a dismissive_wank.png image.
The whole point of poetry is that it’s an original expression of another human.
Who are you to decide what the "point" of poetry is?
Maybe the point of poetry is to make the reader feel something. If AI-generated poetry can do that just as well as human-generated poetry, then it's just as good when judged in that manner.
I’m the Poet Laureate of the Darvaza Gas Crater, that’s who I am to decide it.
Does any poetry have any value without knowing the person that made it?
Knowing a human made it is the point. To be crude, if a sex doll is your girlfriend, you’re single.
If it's literally indistinguishable from human poetry, about as many people want to read it as there are people wanting to read human poetry. And that's about 12.
Poetry isn't for the one reading it, it's for the one writing it.
Why publish books of it, then?
I don’t give a fuck if it surpasses human poetry to a focus group or if poetry is popular enough for you to care. I’m making a larger point that it’s a misuse of technology. Some things are pointless without a human personally taking time to craft it. We have loads of inefficiently produced things that exist because they’re “handmade” or came from the heart.
It’s like when Google screwed up during the Olympics with that commercial where Gemini made a little girl’s fan letter for an athlete. The whole point of a fan letter from a little girl is that it’s personal and took time. It’s not supposed to be perfect and efficiently produced. It could be 80% misspelled and written in crayon and be more meaningful than anything a machine produces.
Literally dozens of them.
They specify in the study that the participants were "non-expert poetry readers." I'd be interested to see the same experiment repeated with English professors, or even just English majors. Folks with a lot of experience reading poetry. With exposure to its history, its notable works, and its different styles.
This. Marvel superhero movies are also more popular with the general public than art films, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're better.
You can get whatever result you want if you're able to define what "better" means.
They're called large language models for a reason, creating patterns of words is exactly what they do. And poetry would be "easier" to do better since a human reading it may try to find meaning where there isn't. Unlike writing a story or something factual where a mistake is more obvious.
Oh man there’s nothing i like better than rating some poetry.
It actually makes quite a lot of sense if you think about it. Poems generally follow a structure of some sort; a certain amount of syllables per line, a certain rhyming scheme, alliterative patterns, etc. Most poems as we know them are actually rather formulaic by nature, so it seems only natural that a computer would be good at creating something according to a set of configured parameters.
I don't follow poetry, but there could be a resurgence of abstract or non pattern following poetry, just like most art has movement that move along with what is happening in the world.
The only poetry I see going around is Rupi Kaur poems, which fits your description. I rarely see someone referencing any of these, for example. Could be due to my social circles, but I don't really see it in mass media either.
And knows all the words and how they rhyme.
Poetry is about the message and sentiment so now anyone can be a poet as long as they can generate something that resonates with a group of people.
Although most modern poetry is something like copyright for ads or maybe a video game. So I am sure companies will try to reduce staff on that and pay for this.
I still don't buy they are a replacement for humans doing it tbh though based on the graphic art you around. Even when it is "right" it still has this generic slop vibe.
Peoper editing likely could reduce that feel.
Peoper editing
hehe
These typos pass "lurkers mental captcha" see ain't AI bot!
Nah... I just suck
I've got more than my share of typos, but they aren't always as funny :)
Oh man, that doesn't say anything good about poetry in general, where something that, by definition, has no imagination and cannot come up with something original, outdoes you.
The difference is the intent and the background behind it.
Sure for maximum mass adoption the computer can out-research any human and just find the blandest set of rules which cater to the highest percentage of the majority.
What it still will have a hard time doing, and I predict it will be for quite some time - probably until we have quantum computers - is to come up with a new way of doing poetry which is not just copying what humans did but better.
I think of AI like it's China, they are super efficient in copeing things and gradually making them better and cheaper but the setup of their society makes it impossible to really innovate.
And yeah I'm saying that it's the setup, because in Taiwan they are able to innovate at a much higher rate.
It doesn't appeal to the masses.
Most people don't "get" poetry. That's why you don't see many people sitting around reading books of poetry.
Many people would probably also choose a short story written by AI over one written by a professional author.
Heck, I'm sure comments written by AI generally get more upvotes than comments written by humans.
Most people don't "get" poetry.
Did you channel your edgy 15 year old self for that? That's incredibly arrogant and self absorbed.
It's simply the truth. Go around and ask 20 people if they've read a single piece of poetry in the last year, and you'll see what I'm talking about.
It's not even being edgy. Most people don't get high concept art in general, and there's nothing wrong about it. I certainly don't understand classical dance, or abstract paintings. You need some degree of competence in any art form to truly appreciate it. To think otherwise is incredibly arrogant.
Or, there simply isn't anything to "get".
Art is often enough deliberately made in such a way that you can't know what was meant, without knowing beforehand what the artist meant. Framing that as some form of sophistication is simply delusional gatekeeping. It's the attempt to set the own class apart, nothing more.
These are memes. Symbols that only make sense, if you know the reference. Treating these as indicators for anything is just an attempt to create an in-group.
I don't think it's worth it to argue with a person of such worldview. Maybe someone with more patience than me will reply.
So you're out of arguments and resort to ad hominem?
Well, that's not very poetic of you.
I mean if it has to rhyme and fit certain meters or rhytmic parameters that can make it far easier to calculate and contrive a pleasing sounding poem with zero regard to the actual intrinsic qualities of the content itself
A sestina based on the rules is, formally speaking, easy. Ask me to write one that will be studied after centuries, and you’re asking for Petrarch.