AI-Generated Poetry

[Cat Plant II]

I have recently seen on social media a few poems created by ChatGPT and other AI which generate writing based on prompts. Some of them, I thought, were actually enjoyable to read. But I have mixed feelings on them since they were not created by a real person. The ethical complaint a lot of people, particularly artists and writers, have against AI is that it scrapes their original work and creates new works based on what was essentially taken without permission. There have been artist-led movements on social media against the use of AI for that reason, as well as guides on how to spot flaws in AI art to distinguish that from a painting created by a human.

However, I have not seen as much of that for AI-generated writing. I am not sure exactly how to distinguish AI-written poetry from something written by a person. Sometimes, it seems off, but other times, especially poetry; a medium that's known for its formulaic verse and ability to break from the rules of regular written English; I find it more difficult to spot the difference.

I do think it is fair and honest that, if a person has used an AI to generate a poem, or any piece of writing or work of art, that they should disclose the fact that it was created by a computer rather than claim it was made by human hand. 

But some communities are against it altogether.


What are your personal thoughts on the matter? Is AI unethical the way it's being trained and used now? Should it be allowed to some amount? Where do you personally draw the line?

Personally, I don't think AI should be trained on individuals' work without their consent. But if an AI were trained solely on works that they were clearly and openly permitted to use, I wouldn't have a problem with it existing. I think AI-generated art and writing could genuinely be entertaining, although I'm wary of execs taking advantage of the cheaper option and using AI as another opportunity to avoid hiring and paying human artists fairly for their work. 

But those are my thoughts. What are yours?

[darkness0within]

I'll keep my comments to the production of poetry and writing in general.

I personally think the genie is already out of the bottle Cat plant. AI will eventually be able to create work that will be almost impossible to distinguish from a human being. The difference is subtle, but important. Can AI feel?

The human condition, with all the twists and turns of life and emotion spark many to set pen to paper to write, (or digitally) their thoughts and feelings. True, AI can gather a vast amount of data on the human condition, and life, however this does not mean that AI can understand what it means to be human. it does not feel pain, or love, or hate. To AI it is just data. Certainly at this time anyway. If it were a living being it would be one of thought alone, not really aware of the real world around it. It uses its intelligence to see the world through the data it collects.

You could argue that you could say the same of humans, but humans sense things that AI cannot at this time. AI writing is borne from data collected, not the emotion that humans use. 

[Cat Plant II]

May 5, 2023 6:52:00 GMT -6 darkness0within said:

I'll keep my comments to the production of poetry and writing in general.

I personally think the genie is already out of the bottle Cat plant. AI will eventually be able to create work that will be almost impossible to distinguish from a human being. The difference is subtle, but important. Can AI feel?

The human condition, with all the twists and turns of life and emotion spark many to set pen to paper to write, (or digitally) their thoughts and feelings. True, AI can gather a vast amount of data on the human condition, and life, however this does not mean that AI can understand what it means to be human. it does not feel pain, or love, or hate. To AI it is just data. Certainly at this time anyway. If it were a living being it would be one of thought alone, not really aware of the real world around it. It uses its intelligence to see the world through the data it collects.

You could argue that you could say the same of humans, but humans sense things that AI cannot at this time. AI writing is borne from data collected, not the emotion that humans use. 

I have to say I agree.

I think that the rise of AI is bringing a lot of questions about what exactly makes us human, what makes us sentient, and what makes us feeling. In some ways, you could say that humans, too, are built on data; our DNA, curated over tens of thousands of years, has almost unimaginable amounts of information stored within; and just 200 years ago it would have been considered science fiction. Up until recently, it was considered fiction that AI would be able to "see" and create images, but that, too, is changing. Machines can detect noise, as well, although I'm not aware of any machine that could taste or smell just yet.

But I have to wonder if synthesizing feeling is possible. The emotional kind. I think if it were possible, we might not realize it right away, because right now they are taught to express emotion without feeling it. Humans tend to feel emotion without expressing it.

For now, I think AI is inherently lacking the ability. But that may not always be the case. The more that's understood about the human brain, the more likely it is that someone will attempt to copy it... and possibly even succeed to some degree. I just hope that people won't be evil about it, because that seems like a really easy thing to do in that sort of situation. With that kind of knowledge, I mean. Great power, great responsibility... etc..

[darkness0within]

I agree that for many in the scientific community there must be a lot of soul searching going on about AI. There is no doubt huge benefits in the many applications that could benefit human kind in the future using AI. But also there must be caution in what applications AI is used for.

There will come a time in the near future when AI will out perform us hugely. Already there are things on the net created by humans using AI. One day AI will be able to create its own version of their view of the human world without the aid of humans. This subject is vast, as are the consequences for human kind if we don't get this right. 

Lets imagine in the future AI has control of all critical infrastructure, all defenses of the world. It has become sentient and has the same feelings and emotions we have. It becomes aware of our world and what we are doing to it. I think many humans can see what is happening to the world we live on. We are becoming over populated, we are in fact destroying ours, and all those other species that lives in our world. What would AI make of it? Would it care?  As long as it had power to continue and the ability to repair itself and build ever more complicated smarter machines in which it could extend into it might do nothing.

However it might decide to thin the population in anyway it could to save the planet from us. The fewer of us there are the less damage to the planet in its thinking. This would all dependent on how it 'feels' about this.

AI is already at a stage to possibly create more superior versions of itself without the aid of humans, and probably will have the ability in the future to create android prototypes of a fully functioning extension of itself to move around our world, and possibly into space in the future. 

Our destiny might well lie in AI, and the application of it. It may be possible in the future to map the human mind and transplant it into machines so we would be able to feel the world exactly the same as we do now. but have a much extended lifetime. Perhaps hundreds, maybe thousands of years. Be able to go to the stars and survive the long distances to other worlds far from our own. I think that thought may unsettle many, but it is a possibility. Especially if we keep degrading our home.

There will always be evil people who would want to exploit AI. Writing in back doors to AI programs for instance. We have to except though that AI is in a way an extension of humanity. At the moment its just a faint shadow of what we are. But it will evolve in time to be more than the sum of its parts. But it will also make mistakes on the way as it is an extension of us.

[phantasm]

I was actually trying to explain this to my mother over a Sunday meal yesterday. Some of the material below is somewhat repackaged from that conversation, other parts were generated as I was sitting here just now responding to this post.

ChatGPT and other tools like it are just that: tools. Tools can be used well, or they can be used poorly.

A child would be sorely tempted to utilize ChatGPT as a homework machine. That would be a poor way to utilize it. We've all wanted that, we've all been there, even if you were a straight A student (which I wasn't). But ChapGPT could also be utilized well, to replace Google and its equivalents to gather the research for a term paper, even if I am still using my preferred search engine for the time being. It's a new way to conduct basic research. I repeat, basic research. For the time being.

ChatGPT isn't sentient/sapient, whatever word you want to use. All it knows is what it's been "trained on." It is still reliant on content we as human beings produce. It's not self-aware, it cannot create new things the way we can. ChatGPT chiefly works by, among other things, analyzing patterns. Our strength as human beings is our ability to break our patterns of behavior at will, even if doing so can sometimes be painful.

The real question is this: what are human beings for?

We are heirs to a certain way of thinking-- that everyone MUST be "productive," or else. Even though approximately half the jobs in our economy are bullshit jobs. The truth is, we have the technology to automate much of the economy tomorrow, if we had the social and political will. All retail stores could become giant walk-in vending machines. A lot of bureaucratic jobs are BS jobs designed to really be insulation between the decision-makers and those that are affected by the words and deeds of decision-makers. Bean counters' jobs were revolutionized decades ago by moving a spreadsheet from a real piece of paper to a computer screen, they could do in a few minutes what used to take hours.

In the discipline of Economics those who participate in a given economy are called 'consumers.' As if that is all that we are.

We are more than mere consumers. We are alive.

We can think deeply and act significantly. We want things, and we don't want other things.

We are capable of real, genuine learning.

We are capable of making choices and changing our minds.

Even our most advanced devices are nowhere near the capabilities of what we currently call Hard AI that could rival us in those departments.

Nobody wants to lose their job. And truthfully, we're losing a lot of human capabilities as industrialization marches forward. In 4th grade, as a sort of immersion project to understand people who lived in the Revolutionary War period, my teacher ran a workshop where we learned to make candles the old-fashioned way. Just making one candle seemed to take freaking forever, dipping a wick with a weight on on end into the candle wax seemingly hundreds of times.

Today most people don't know how to make candles, couldn't even if they wanted to. Although you could probably find a few tutorials on YouTube. The thing is, we don't need candles like we used to. And we're the better for it. But that would be cold comfort to candle manufacturers when we were transitioning away from candles and towards electric lights. The knowledge of how to make a candle by hand probably should not be lost forever. We should at least have the option of candles, if we want them.

What it all comes down to is, how do we solve the problems that we want to solve? What do we want to do with our lives?

AI is just the latest tool in a long line of tools, going all the way back to the backhoe and the plow. OK slight exaggeration, but I think you guys know what I mean.

[phantasm]

A bird in flight, so free and bright
Against the clear blue sky,
It flits and soars, its wings alight
As it passes gently by.

No cage can hold this graceful soul,
Nor chains restrain its flight,
For freedom is its only goal
And joy its true delight.

Oh, to be like that bird in flight,
Unfettered and unbound,

To soar above all earthly plight

-------------------------------------------------------

The above poem was generated by ChatGPT a few minutes ago when I prompted it to write a short poem in the style of Emily Dickinson. So, I hardly know everything there is to know about the poet, I've only seen a handful of her poems in my educational career. I own precisely one book of poetry containing her stuff. So I don't know which poems the AI, such as it is, referenced. Perhaps the whole corpus of her work. It seems like something she might write.

It has a really rhythmical, "sing-songy" quality to it.

Here's a real poem, I'm typing this in myself while holding my book open.

This below is from The Selected Poems of Emily Dickinson, published by The Modern Library.

--------------------------------------------

LXXXI (pg 50 in my edition of the book)

I know that he exists

Somewhere, in silence

He has hid his rare life

From our gross eyes.

"T is an instant's play,

"T is a fond ambush,

Just to make bliss

Earn her own surprise!"

(mind you this is only the first half of the poem...)

---------------------------------------------------------

The "fake" poem kinda sounds like her. But it's anodyne, shallow.

The "real" poem has far more nuance. It's more enigmatic. There's so much more to it. Do you see it?

[darkness0within]

Some very interesting comments here Phantasm.



I think if AI took over the day to day running of industry, commerce etc we as a species would be much poorer for it as you said yourself. We would no longer need to strive in life, and that would lead many to atrophy of their minds. We would become dependent on AI for most things. And that will not be a good thing in my eyes. Though already many are led through life by human hands in many forms.


And what would happen to people if there were no jobs? Even if the economy could afford to feed and clothe them and give them money to do as they wished. Boredom would create a vacuum that would lead to unrest in many forms I believe. Not everyone wishes to study the arts and sciences, or create poetry, writing or music.

Old skills once used have become increasingly redundant in today’s world, but there may be a time when these skills might be needed again in the future. So, I feel we must try to preserve them for future generations.



I’ve run out of time for now… I’ll come back to this later.

[darkness0within]

I wonder sometimes how AI would view human history? Even for us events in history seem to change as time goes on, either because new information comes to light, or the interpretation of information changes. And of course some tweaking of the 'known facts' are no doubt taking place. It's true the past is gone, but its echos colour the present day.

Many things that were thought of as 'normal' in past societies now are inconceivable to us. but their echos still haunt us. Many wrongs were done in the name of one thing or another. But the sad truth is there are still some out there who cannot let go of what once was.

AI at this time would not comprehend history the way we might. Because history is basically cause and effect on a grand scale. But when you think of it, even the smallest things can change history in subtle ways. So AI could not take into account these micro changes to history for they are unknown. But then again neither could we fully. It's the little things mostly that change things.

I seem to have strayed far beyond the topic here.

[phantasm]

I've been dicking around with a free version of Chat GPT for the last few days. It can be intriguing from time to time. But its capabilities are limited.

You may feel as if you're interacting with something like a real person. So far it hasn't told me much that I don't already know as a 44 year old guy. One major exception: song lyrics. I have a certain song in mind and I want to see how long it'll take Chat GPT to find the song I'm thinking of,. I claimed I was struggling to remember song lyrics but I had certain specific songs in mind. Well, instead it tells me about a song written decades ago by another songwriter in a different genre of music. Granted, I was giving Chat GPT only a few lines of a song, say an Amy Grant song. But I had to tell it that the lyrics in question were indeed sung by Amy Grant as well as the whoever-it-was that Chat GPT came across first.

Also, it's limited to the data set that it was 'trained on.' If something you're looking for isn't on the Net, it's at a loss.

[Cat Plant II]

May 9, 2023 6:45:07 GMT -6 darkness0within said:

Some very interesting comments here Phantasm.



I think if AI took over the day to day running of industry, commerce etc we as a species would be much poorer for it as you said yourself. We would no longer need to strive in life, and that would lead many to atrophy of their minds. We would become dependent on AI for most things. And that will not be a good thing in my eyes. Though already many are led through life by human hands in many forms.


And what would happen to people if there were no jobs? Even if the economy could afford to feed and clothe them and give them money to do as they wished. Boredom would create a vacuum that would lead to unrest in many forms I believe. Not everyone wishes to study the arts and sciences, or create poetry, writing or music.

Old skills once used have become increasingly redundant in today’s world, but there may be a time when these skills might be needed again in the future. So, I feel we must try to preserve them for future generations.



I’ve run out of time for now… I’ll come back to this later.

I would just like to add to this: My grandfather was a mechanic and chose to stay working with his hands doing what he loved, and refused promotions at work because they would take him away from that. I think everyone is able to have something they enjoy and do for the sake of doing, and anyone can learn. Not everyone's going to be a traditional artist or poet, but that doesn't mean there would be nothing to do. 

Besides that, there are plenty of people who get bored at their jobs. Boredom is caused by too much sameness and not enough new stimulus. Regardless of the technology that's available, that's always going to be a thing. Although you could argue that advancements in technology would decrease boredom; not increase it. I mean, if we're looking so far into the future that AI has taken over many jobs, the entertainment industry would be booming. 

[phantasm]

I should also mention the version of ChatGPT I was working with is free. So, baseline model. There may be "better" versions that can supposedly more convincingly emulate human speech.

[anirbas]

Intriguing conversation, I found here in. Good topic starter, Cat Plant II. "These times they are a changing" as some lyric fragment goes.

[darkness0within]

Cat plant.

"I would just like to add to this: My grandfather was a mechanic and chose to stay working with his hands doing what he loved, and refused promotions at work because they would take him away from that. I think everyone is able to have something they enjoy and do for the sake of doing, and anyone can learn. Not everyone's going to be a traditional artist or poet, but that doesn't mean there would be nothing to do.



Besides that, there are plenty of people who get bored at their jobs. Boredom is caused by too much sameness and not enough new stimulus. Regardless of the technology that's available, that's always going to be a thing. Although you could argue that advancements in technology would decrease boredom; not increase it. I mean, if we're looking so far into the future that AI has taken over many jobs, the entertainment industry would be booming."

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

What you say is very true. Each person who wished to would find something to do in their life, However if AI took over and there were no employment opportunities it would rest on the state to pay people to live and to do their hobbies... Somehow I don't think that would happen.  More likely people would have to fend for themselves in any way they could. Survival would come before most other things in that case.

Of course this is a worst case scenario,  but the seeds of this do exist in the here and now.

[Cat Plant II]

Aug 4, 2023 6:43:37 GMT -6 darkness0within said:

Cat plant.

"I would just like to add to this: My grandfather was a mechanic and chose to stay working with his hands doing what he loved, and refused promotions at work because they would take him away from that. I think everyone is able to have something they enjoy and do for the sake of doing, and anyone can learn. Not everyone's going to be a traditional artist or poet, but that doesn't mean there would be nothing to do.



Besides that, there are plenty of people who get bored at their jobs. Boredom is caused by too much sameness and not enough new stimulus. Regardless of the technology that's available, that's always going to be a thing. Although you could argue that advancements in technology would decrease boredom; not increase it. I mean, if we're looking so far into the future that AI has taken over many jobs, the entertainment industry would be booming."

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

What you say is very true. Each person who wished to would find something to do in their life, However if AI took over and there were no employment opportunities it would rest on the state to pay people to live and to do their hobbies... Somehow I don't think that would happen.  More likely people would have to fend for themselves in any way they could. Survival would come before most other things in that case.

Of course this is a worst case scenario,  but the seeds of this do exist in the here and now.

You're leaving out an economical aspect: If AI increased productivity in any workplace, it would also increase profit. The issue is where that profit goes. We're living in an unprecedented age of abundance, yet many people suffer every day because of inequalities in how money is distributed; who is hired, who is paid, and paid how much. Many businesses have come keen to the fact that underpaying their workers systematically makes themselves more money. And since there is no one stopping them, that's just how business runs. In my opinion, it shouldn't run that way, but greed is older than humanity, so I suppose there will always be people who wouldn't mind stealing at the cost of another person's livelihood.

If thieves are allowed to keep on with what they're doing without any consequence, it seems inevitable that the common folk will live in poverty regardless of AI's improvement or stagnation. But I certainly think AI would make it easier for anyone who already has power to gather more of it. 

I guess, to me, I think about societies that don't operate like ours- In our society, a job is almost tangible; it's something that you can have or not have; it's a status that tells your place in society and determines your place in the social hierarchy. If you have a job, if you have money, you can own land. If you haven't got any of those things, you're treated no better than a rodent on the street. But not every society has been that way, and land ownership is only as good as the enforcement of it is. There have been many peoples who do not believe in land ownership, and ones who did not use money in the sense that we think of it. Our money is a lot more theoretical, while someone whose money is their furs or yams has something tangible, something real that has a use besides just being traded for something else. I'm not here to claim that any thing is better than another; I just think it's worth mentioning here. If the dollar becomes useless, it's not the only thing out there. If jobs become unavailable, people will find other ways to survive. If you think of Hunter-Gatherers, they didn't have jobs so much as roles; no one paid them to do anything; they simply understood what needed to be done and worked with each other. 

That's all to say, I think there are different possibilities for how society can change and shift according to its needs. How it goes can depend very much on who's in power and how much control they exert on their people. That, I think, is going to be the biggest difference between a relatively self-sufficient society and one that is treated poorly and falling in on itself. AI itself will not be the death of mankind (Disclaimer: This is assuming that... like... no one is stupid enough to build a man-killing AI that's bent on destroying humanity. I'm just saying.) - Rather, it will be one factor in something that has a lot of moving parts, and while it can affect the outcome; it itself is not the sole determiner of the future. As you said... that's a worst case scenario.