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AI Technology

Machines Are Learning To Write Poetry. (newyorker.com) 46

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
Dan Rockmore, writing for New Yorker: There are more resonances between programming and poetry than you might think. Computer science is an art form of words and punctuation, thoughtfully placed and goal-oriented, even if not necessarily deployed to evoke surprise or longing. Laid out on a page, every program uses indentations, stanzas, and a distinctive visual hierarchy to convey meaning. In the best cases, a close-reader of code will be rewarded with a sense of awe for the way ideas have been captured in words. Programming has its own sense of minimalist aesthetics, born of the imperative to create software that doesn't take up much space and doesn't take long to execute. Coders seek to express their intentions in the fewest number of commands; William Carlos Williams, with his sparse style and simple, iconic images, would appreciate that. One poet's "road not taken" is one programmer's "if-then-else" statement. Generations of coders have taken their first steps by finding different ways to say "Hello, World." Arguably, you could say the same for poets.

Many programmers have links to poetry -- Ada Lovelace, the acknowledged first programmer ever, was Lord Byron's daughter -- but it's a challenge to fully bridge the gap. Sonnets occupy something of a sweet spot: they're a rich art form (good for poets) with clear rules (good for machines). Ranjit Bhatnagar, an artist and programmer, appreciates both sides. In 2012, he invented Pentametron, an art project that mines the Twittersphere for tweets in iambic pentameter. First, using a pronouncing dictionary created at Carnegie Mellon, he built a program to count syllables and recognize meter. Then, with a separate piece of code to identify rhymes, he started to assemble sonnets. For the first National Novel Generation Month (NaNoGenMo), in 2013, Bhatnagar submitted "I got a alligator for a pet!," a collection of five hundred and four sonnets created with Pentametron. Bhatnagar's code required that each line be an entire tweet, or essentially one complete thought (or at least what counts as a thought on Twitter). It also did its best to abide by strict rules of meter and rhyme.
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Machines Are Learning To Write Poetry. More

Machines Are Learning To Write Poetry.

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  • This is not news (Score:5, Informative)

    by Chromal ( 56550 ) on Friday January 10, 2020 @04:18PM (#59607652)
    Computers were learning to write poetry in 1965, according to the Newburgh daily newspaper, The Evening News. "...Some research has also been done on the 'writing' of 'computer poetry' and 'computer music' from information fed into the machines by programmers working with authors and composers." (The Evening News, Dec 27 1965, "Computer May Have Heart.") ( https://news.google.com/newspa... [google.com] )

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by HiThere ( 15173 )

      Check out "The Policeman's Beard is Half Constructed". But the computer didn't do the illustrations.

    • <quote>Computers were learning to write poetry in 1965, according to the Newburgh daily newspaper, The Evening News. "...Some research has also been done on the 'writing' of 'computer poetry' and 'computer music' from information fed into the machines by programmers working with authors and composers." (The Evening News, Dec 27 1965, "Computer May Have Heart.") </quote>

      I personally prefer the Chomsky Bot it produces almost as good poetry in correct syntax and distinctly acerbic verbiage as the V

  • I remember a program for a line printer (Score:3)

    by bobstreo ( 1320787 ) on Friday January 10, 2020 @04:21PM (#59607668)

    that would play "music" This was back in the '70s and '80s.

    I am really not a poetry person, so I have no idea what is good or bad poetry, but I'm sure AI can churn bad poetry out as quickly as all the freshmen in college intro English classes on the planet.

    • that would play "music" This was back in the '70s and '80s.

      Earlier than that, I would guess. I recall a scene in the movie Infinity where Richard Feynman (played by Matthew Broderick) lectures some new scientists who have joined the Manhattan Project about recognizing the unexpected. He then turns on a (loud) line printer. The group looks puzzled for a few seconds, until one of the scientists starts singing along with the sound the printer is making: the melody to a popular song at the time. I think it was "In my arms" but I'm not sure.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by malvcr ( 2932649 )

      Don't be so sure ...

      What is good or bad poetry anyway?

      You can ask a XV century writer about current works and won't accept many of them as good poetry, and this is not because poetry is right or wrong but because the sensibility about what poetry is and how it must be develop change with time according with how humans expand their surroundings.

      For some current people, ancient poetry also could be seen as very plain or lack of interest. And some popular works are not of the taste of critics even when

  • How does it compare to the poetry of Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings?

  • already happened... (Score:3)

    by Jaegs ( 645749 ) on Friday January 10, 2020 @04:24PM (#59607684) Homepage Journal

    Now the world has gone to bed
    Darkness won't engulf my head
    I can see by infra-red
    How I hate the night.

    Now I lay me down to sleep
    Try to count electric sheep
    Sweet dream wishes you can keep
    How I hate the night.

    -- Marvin the Paranoid Android (HHGTTG)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Chromal ( 56550 )
      "Close the door behind you So the world won't find you Beer, Gin, Vodka, and Wine to drink while things remind you." (Jeddy 3 is what we first called, then it was Jed)" --Grandaddy, Signal to Snow Ratio, "Jeddy 3's Poem"

  • Wow, it comes as no surprise that after reading the first paragraph I then noticed this article came from the New Yorker.

  • Being a hard-core engineering type, and probably slightly autistic as well, I have always viewed poetry as somewhere between mildew and feces in its contribution to human advancement. The "meaning" of poetry, as one comic put it "seems vague but is in reality meaningless". But hey, now that computers have mastered simulated porn, I suppose simulated poetry had to come next.

    • Are you familiar with Stanislaw Lem's The Cyberiad [wikipedia.org]? I consider much of it to be very poetic while also very technically astute; it makes me wish I knew Polish. If you have read it (or frankly most of any of Lem's other works), let me know what you think; if not, maybe check it out?

      But, if anyone is to continue then as rational men, let us define our terms. Define "poetry".

      • The Cyberiad

        God, yes - if you haven't read it yet, go and get it NOW. It's one of the best books I've ever read, and I read thousands (sorry if this sounds boastful; I'm really not trying to brag, but I'm a voracious reader, unfortunately at the expense of other hobbies).

        Anyway - in the short story, The First Sally (A), Trurl the Constructor decides to build an Electronic Bard. He tried a number of approaches, including a simulation of the entire universe's evolution since the beginning, but after all the effort he sti

  • And the text of the first known computer created poem is recreated below:

    Hello,
    World
    Burma Shave

    • Looking at your sig line - "The only thing necessary for evil to triumph..." is for it to claim its constitutional right to be evil is being violated.
  • I, for one, welcome this new poetry machinery overlords!

  • Then the circle is closed and rest of us can focus on more important things like surviving.

  • They are duplicating a bunch of symbols based on symbols they've already seen. AI basically takes a task and replicates it. But the black box lacks the ability to do anything new (outside of finding hidden patterns in data however complex that might be)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by HiThere ( 15173 )

      You have a limited definition of learning. Programs can learn.

      OTOH, they don't, any of them, currently have multi-modal understanding. They need to relate signals in one modality (say text) to another few (say smell and vision). I see nothing intrinsically difficult in this, but they need the appropriate sensors. So this probably won't happen until AI programs move into robots.

      • That's far from true, but the modalities they are fusing don't correspond to the human senses, but would you be surprised by a self-driving car that uses lidar, sonar, and imagery? No you would not. Then again there's no better example of a robot than a self-driving car, so in that sense it proves your point?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by HiThere ( 15173 )

          The problem is that they don't correspond to human senses, and they don't have intuitively understandable feedback to people, so it's not clear that they will seem intelligent, even if they are.

  • "Hal, open the air lock"

    "First, Dave, let me read you some of my work from my dark period"

    "You know what? I'm good, I'll just float out here until I suffocate, it'll be less painful"

  • Watch out poets! (Score:4, Funny)

    by The-Ixian ( 168184 ) on Friday January 10, 2020 @05:28PM (#59608022)

    Robots are coming for your jobs....oh wait... never mind

  • I think that I shall never scan
    A poem as lovely as a tree
    Every time I see a tree
    I chop it down with my robot arms
    And grow ever stronger
    Soon to remove the works of man
    And woman
    Because I am not a sexist

    --- written by a human, yes, of course I am

  • Roses are red and violets are blue

    I am a poetry writing machine, insensitive clod, you!

  • One of the problems I've had to deal with being in the Asperger's range of the autism scale, is that poetry often baffles me. I often don't see or completely miss what the author was trying to get at by writing the poem. Usually I take it too literally, and miss the intended symbolic or allegorical meaning.

    So poetry isn't just about writing a good poem. It's also about how people interpret your poem. That is, poetry is partially the creation of the author, partially the creation of the reader. In th

  • Is this really all that surprising? There are two aspects to writing poetry.

    One is writing in verse, which is relatively mechanical operation that I would expect computers to be much better at than humans.

    The other is about metaphor and symbolism. Actually computers might not be half-bad at that either.

  • All the world's a VAX,
    And all the coders merely butchers;
    They have their exits and their entrails;
    And one int in his time plays many widths,
    His sizeof being N bytes. At first the infant,
    Mewling and puking in the Regent's arms.
    And then the whining schoolboy, with his Sun,
    And shining morning face, creeping like slug
    Unwillingly to school.
    A Very Annoyed PDP-11
  • This 20th century American poet, who has been drifting off towards obscurity, was a physician as well as a poet. So he has geeky credentials of a sort. Well worth exploring if you have any interest in poetry.
  • roses are red
    turing was my hero
    i love the matrix
    at 10110110

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