this post was submitted on 18 Nov 2024
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51
AI-generated poetry is indistinguishable from human-written poetry and is rated more favorably - Scientific Reports (www.nature.com)
submitted 4 hours ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 hour ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 35 minutes ago

Literally dozens of them.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 33 minutes ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 minutes ago

Or maybe accept that this idea was crap all along?

You desperately try to create some form of human superiority, just to feel important. That superiority doesn't exist. There's no value in anything just because it's made with "love", that's an illusion.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 2 hours ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 hour ago

This. Marvel superhero movies are also more popular with the general public than art films, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're better.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 hour ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 hour ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 hour ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 3 hours ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 23 minutes ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 hours ago

And knows all the words and how they rhyme.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 hours ago

Oh man there’s nothing i like better than rating some poetry.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 hours ago (3 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 hours ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 hours ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 59 minutes ago

Most people don't "get" poetry.

Did you channel your edgy 15 year old self for that? That's incredibly arrogant and self absorbed.