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AI poetry is indistinguishable from human poetry and is rated more favorably

nature.com

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Re: AI poetry is indistinguishable from human poetry and is rated more favorably

#31

Post by jklinger410 »

tombert wrote: post #15
exabrial wrote: post #11

I don't need an AI to do art so I can wash the dishes. I need an AI that can do the dishes so I can do art. - Someone else on twitter.

I think this line of reasoning is really bizarre, as if there's this straight-line path of progress, and then we stop the second it starts doing shit that we consider "fun". Who is to say that "washing dishes" (to use your example) is a less complicated problem than art, at least in regards to robotics and the like?

> as if there's this straight-line path of progress

I think your rebuttal is really bizarre. OP is simply saying what they want AI to do.

> Who is to say that "washing dishes" (to use your example) is a less complicated problem than art

I think dish washing is a bad example, because we have dishwashers. But until the market brings AI and robotic solutions to market at an affordable cost that actually fulfill most people's needs, it will continue to be a net drain on the average person.

You don't get to tell people what they want or need.

Re: AI poetry is indistinguishable from human poetry and is rated more favorably

#32

Post by mda »

MR4D wrote: post #25
kusokurae wrote: post #20

Maybe my logic is choppy but I'm unconvinced that it is useful to use (inexperienced) popular sentiment as a marker of some kind of reference for cultural quality here. The average person has read at most 100 poems; people who really like poetry will be reading quite a bit more, and that experience has relevance in a context such as this. I'm more curious what happens when we look at specifically those humans who eng…

Just for fun, I had ChatGPT rewrite your comment as a poem. Here’s the result: ———— My logic may be choppy, but I’m not yet sold, That popular sentiment should be the gold, For judging culture's worth or depth or art, When most have seen so little, played no part. The average person, read just a hundred lines, While those who love the craft cross many signs, With pages turned, they gain a richer view, That shapes wha…

Do you think this is a good poem by any measure? Imo it is terrible.

Re: AI poetry is indistinguishable from human poetry and is rated more favorably

#33

Post by layer8 »

tombert wrote: post #15
exabrial wrote: post #11

I don't need an AI to do art so I can wash the dishes. I need an AI that can do the dishes so I can do art. - Someone else on twitter.

I think this line of reasoning is really bizarre, as if there's this straight-line path of progress, and then we stop the second it starts doing shit that we consider "fun". Who is to say that "washing dishes" (to use your example) is a less complicated problem than art, at least in regards to robotics and the like?

The comment you’re replying to doesn’t offer any line of reasoning. They’re expressing a preference regarding what they would find beneficial.

Re: AI poetry is indistinguishable from human poetry and is rated more favorably

#34

Post by aithrowawaycomm »

Ernest Davis has an outstanding and definitive rebuttal of these claims: https://cs.nyu.edu/~davise/papers/GPT-Poetry.pdf

The basic problem is that GPT generates easy poetry, and the authors were comparing to difficult human poets like Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson, and rating using a bunch of people who don't particuarly like poetry. If you actually do like poetry, comparing PlathGPT to Sylvia Plath is so offensive as to be misanthropic: the human Sylvia Plath is objectively better by any possible honest measure. I don't think the authors have any interest in being honest: ignorance is no excuse for something like this.

Given the audience, it would be much more honest if the authors compared with popular poets, like Robert Frost, whose work is sophisticated but approachable.

Re: AI poetry is indistinguishable from human poetry and is rated more favorably

#35

Post by jamespo »

MR4D wrote: post #25
kusokurae wrote: post #20

Maybe my logic is choppy but I'm unconvinced that it is useful to use (inexperienced) popular sentiment as a marker of some kind of reference for cultural quality here. The average person has read at most 100 poems; people who really like poetry will be reading quite a bit more, and that experience has relevance in a context such as this. I'm more curious what happens when we look at specifically those humans who eng…

Just for fun, I had ChatGPT rewrite your comment as a poem. Here’s the result: ———— My logic may be choppy, but I’m not yet sold, That popular sentiment should be the gold, For judging culture's worth or depth or art, When most have seen so little, played no part. The average person, read just a hundred lines, While those who love the craft cross many signs, With pages turned, they gain a richer view, That shapes wha…

Was this with a Vogon plugin?

Re: AI poetry is indistinguishable from human poetry and is rated more favorably

#36

Post by aithrowawaycomm »

atomsatomsatoms wrote: post #2

Are we just deluding ourselves by thinking this won't happen in every single domain of human endeavor?

We're deluding ourselves by thinking it's happening to poetry! This study is ignorant and dishonest, it should have never been published in the first place: https://cs.nyu.edu/~davise/papers/GPT-Poetry.pdf

AI research is worse than all the social sciences combined when it comes to provocative titles/abstracts that are not supported by the actual data.

Re: AI poetry is indistinguishable from human poetry and is rated more favorably

#37

Post by thomasfromcdnjs »

graemep wrote: post #6

The headline is misleading. The actual text says: > Notably, participants were more likely to judge AI-generated poems as human-authored than actual human-authored poems There is clearly a significant difference between AI generated poems and human generated poems. A random group of people probably do not read poetry. It would be be interesting to see what people who do read poetry regularly do on this. Also, which t…

Anecdote incoming - I read poetry, weekly if you will, over about 15 years now.

I also play with LLM's often, for creative side projects and work commercially with them (prompt engineering stuff)

I don't find it far fetched that individual poetry can be indistinguishable at times when AI generated. I was asking it to write in iambic pentameter (sonnets) and it consistenly got the structure right, it's approach to the provided themes were as complicated or glib as I wanted. But that's all subjective right, which leads me to my main point.

My view of poetry over the years, has always been centred around the poet, the poet living in a time and place. As a generalisation most people buy into the artists life because it may represent some part of themself.

If someone managed to write an intriguing corpus of texts using LLM's that was extolled, I think that would almost be besides the point. What is important is the narrators life, ups and downs, joys and woes. Their ability to convey a memorable story even heavily relying on AI would still be impressive. Anyway sounding a bit wanky I will stop lol

(I do think LLM's write a little too perfect and that is easy to think it is not human, but you can kinda prompt them to throw in errors too so who knows)

Re: AI poetry is indistinguishable from human poetry and is rated more favorably

#38

Post by jackyinger »

MR4D wrote: post #25
kusokurae wrote: post #20

Maybe my logic is choppy but I'm unconvinced that it is useful to use (inexperienced) popular sentiment as a marker of some kind of reference for cultural quality here. The average person has read at most 100 poems; people who really like poetry will be reading quite a bit more, and that experience has relevance in a context such as this. I'm more curious what happens when we look at specifically those humans who eng…

Just for fun, I had ChatGPT rewrite your comment as a poem. Here’s the result: ———— My logic may be choppy, but I’m not yet sold, That popular sentiment should be the gold, For judging culture's worth or depth or art, When most have seen so little, played no part. The average person, read just a hundred lines, While those who love the craft cross many signs, With pages turned, they gain a richer view, That shapes wha…

Hmm, I’m not convinced. That’s just the comment in the guise of poetry. There are a bunch of dangling implications in this “poem” where a real master would weave the implications together.

I guess I’d also say it is not only doing the right thing that counts, one must also be doing it for the right reason.

AI “art” is mimicry, burdened by the inevitable mundanity of the majority of its training corpus. The avant garde remains exclusively the domain of a comparative handful of forward thinking humans, in my humble opinion.

Or said another way: AI art is kitschy, and I don’t think it can escape it.

Re: AI poetry is indistinguishable from human poetry and is rated more favorably

#39

Post by n4r9 »

aithrowawaycomm wrote: post #34

Ernest Davis has an outstanding and definitive rebuttal of these claims: https://cs.nyu.edu/~davise/papers/GPT-Poetry.pdf The basic problem is that GPT generates easy poetry, and the authors were comparing to difficult human poets like Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson, and rating using a bunch of people who don't particuarly like poetry. If you actually do like poetry, comparing PlathGPT to Sylvia Plath is so offensi…

Huh, that sounds a little like claiming that AI can draw pictures just as well as humans because they look realistic at a first glance. But not if you check whether the text, repetitive elements, and partially-occluded objects in the background look correct.

Re: AI poetry is indistinguishable from human poetry and is rated more favorably

#40

Post by Ylpertnodi »

ubertaco wrote: post #18

Poetry, like humor, involves the use of the reader's expectations, but is typically most effective when subverting those expectations. There's a lot of bad poetry in the world that just follows readers' expectations. I should know, I've written some of it. Unfortunately, I'd suspect that most readers' understanding of poetry lacks that crucial element of subversion, and so an LLM – which mostly just spits out the mos…

>There's a lot of bad poetry in the world that just follows readers' expectations. I should know, I've written some of it.

Apparently, in 'the good old days (of the internet)', your poetry would be published by yourself, on your webpage - complete with a starry-twinkling background, a 'number of visitors' counter in the bottom right, and in a pink font.

I miss those days.

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