Can We Build A Poet?

Overview

Synopsis

(The focus paper is available to DOWNLOAD HERE)

Large Language Models can generate content resembling poetry but is it actually poetry and does this mean we have created a poet? Poetry and poets have existed throughout history and the definitions of both have been debated continuously. This paper attempts to define the acceptance criteria for an artificial poet and how this task could be interpreted by Romantic and Modernist poets. Would either consider the building of an artificial poet possible?

Questions for discussion

• Is lived experience necessary for poetry, or only for poets?
• Can meaning exist without intention?
• If AI learns poetry from human poetry, is it creating anything new or just recombining? Does this matter? Is this just what humans do anyway?
• Is the fact that AI poetry is preferred to human poetry evidence that LLMs do in fact understand human feeling in the same way that we do? Is it just that the exact mechanism of that understanding is hidden within the model parameters and not understood by us yet?
• If machines could feel, could a sufficiently advanced AI ever satisfy the Romantic criteria for a “poet for machines”?
• Do you agree with the limitations of AI with respect to modernist poetry? Does AI actually fulfil Eliot’s theory of poetry better than humans do?
• Do you agree that AI cannot accurately identify emotions?
• If you read a poem, feel deeply moved, and later discover it was written by a machine—has the value of the poem changed, or only your interpretation of it?

What to Expect

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Practical Details

(The focus paper is available to DOWNLOAD HERE)

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