I can hardly think of anything more depressing than the idea of humanity being made redundant by artificial intelligence. Even when looking beyond the worst-case scenarios of genocidal annihilations and envisioning for myself a future in which human beings are spared from all forms of labour and physical discomfort by a network of servile automatons–in which our race could wholly dedicate itself to an existence of pure pleasure–seems utterly dystopian to me: of mankind being reduced to a parody of life, a hedonistic slavery, a mere existence.
Artificial intelligence has and inevitably will continue to take over many facets of human ingenuity and effort, but one of the last spheres in which I am yet to see it make any real incursion is in things emotional in nature. It is on this plane that art primarily functions and until a robot capable of sentimental expression is invented–something like the HAL 9000 system of 2001: A Space Odyssey–any truly inspired creation that goes beyond a simple technical flourishing will inevitably be beyond its reach.
The latest brouhaha in the media concerning artificial intelligence has been related to the public release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT. The thing that has primarily been noted is its linguistic articulateness and its capability of generating pithy, well-structured texts in answer to user commands. Now, if it can but metrically arrange such texts and, more vitally, infuse them with feeling, then it will have all the foundations necessary to make the artistic leap.
So let’s put it to the test!
The American poet Robert Frost quite correctly wrote, I think, that poetry functions on three of our organs–the ear, the eye and the heart. The auricular effect lies in the metrical composition and the impact of the conscious choice of the sound of words, the ocular in the vividness and the originality of the imagery and the cardiac–that most vital and elusive of all–to the mysterious, intangible capacity the words have of moving us. I will be using these three criteria in evaluating some poems that ChatGPT generated for me.
The Ear
To evaluate this criterion I decided that I would simply test the limits of ChatGPT’s technical capabilities. First, I asked it to define the abstract term “art”:
Art is a diverse range of human activities and creations that express ideas, emotions, or tell stories through various mediums such as painting, sculpture, music, literature, dance, film, and architecture. It is a way for people to creatively express themselves and communicate with others, and it can take many forms. Art can be used to document or comment on events and ideas, to inspire and evoke emotions, or simply to create something beautiful or meaningful. The concept of art is highly subjective and can vary widely from one person to another, as different people have different interpretations and appreciations of art. Ultimately, art is a way for people to express and understand the world around them in a creative and meaningful way.
Succinct, uncontroversial and totally unpoetic. Then I asked it to rewrite it all as a sonnet:
Art is a thing of beauty and of power,
A way to bring our deepest thoughts to life,
To give a voice to all the joy and pain
That lurk within our hearts and minds. It’s how
We see the world, and how we share our view
With others, who might see it differently.
It’s not one thing, but many, all combined
To make us feel, to make us think, to guide
Our steps through life. It’s music and it’s paint,
It’s words and it’s movement, all in one.
Art is a way to make our mark upon
The world, to leave a trace of who we are,To show the depth and breadth of all we are.
This was generated in about five seconds and for the speed this is mighty impressive–by far beyond anything a human could do. The speed of the computer and the comparative plod of the human being, however, highlight a fundamental difference between the AI-as-creator and the human artist: namely, in the capacity the human has of polishing and re-elaborating what he creates with the purpose of improving it. When I asked ChatGPT to rewrite this poem, I was either served the same text again or given a new one that in no way felt like an improvement of the old, just another sample of mediocrity generated from scratch. I doubt whether artificial intelligence will ever be able to program that reflective and self-critical eye that is so necessary to the production of good art.
But getting to the poem itself: there are a number of defects here. The most obvious is that it didn’t write a sonnet for me: the poem has thirteen lines and these only vaguely rhyme in certain instances. With the exception of line ten, which scans very poorly, however, this is surprisingly tight, metrically speaking. But it’s too tight, almost suffocatingly so. It’s missing the natural variation and freedom that iambic pentameter affords even the most rigid of formalists. This poem is not a gracious waltz on the signature of five feet and ten syllables, but reads more like a tap-dance on stilts.
I asked it to try and fix this by rewriting it in rhymed iambic pentameter:
Art is a force that brings both beauty and might,
A way to share the depths of our emotions,
To give a voice to joy and to the plight
Of sorrows hidden in our hearts and minds. It’s how
We see the world, and how we share our view
With others, who might see it differently.
It’s not one thing, but many, all aligned
To make us feel, to make us think, to guide
Our steps through life. It’s music and it’s paint,
It’s words and it’s movement, all in one.
Art is a way to make our mark upon
The world, to leave a trace of who we are,
To show the depth and breadth of all we are.
But this is even worse. There are some rhymes and half-rhymes there, but it is all too slipshod to be of interest.
Now then, since we have exposed its technical weaknesses, let’s push it up against the ropes and go in for the finish–by technical knockout:
“Rewrite the poem as a villanelle, in iambic tetrameter, with a caesura on the fourth syllable of every line. The rhymes must all be feminine.”
Art is a way to speak and feel,–
to be,
With materials and forms, techni–
ques in hand,
To create works that speak to you–
And me.
It takes on many shapes, both old–
and new,
Like paint and sculpture, literature,–
song,
A way to share our thoughts and feel–
ings, true.
It varies from culture to culture,–
you see,
And is subjective, each to their–
own mind,
But it’s a way to connect, and–
be set free.
A powerful force, self-expression–
and art,
It brings us closer, through beauty–
and emotion,
A universal language, from–
the start.
So let us embrace it, let it–
be our guide,
As we create and appre–
ciate, side by side.
Check mate.
Evaluation: 3/10 points
For all my criticisms however, I think that artificial intelligence’s potential to write technically impeccable verse is absolutely within its reach. I think that the issue is simply that ChatGPT has primarily been designed for prose and that it needs to collect more information in its database on the details of versification for it to sound better.
Let’s move on.
The Eye
This next criterion, however, will be far harder to master. Where metre and prosody can to a large extent be boiled down to a handful of rules, writing vivid and original imagery cannot. The human artist subsumes all he has read but works against it to fling forth something profoundly different when he writes. In doing so he imposes an artistic vision onto the world that doesn’t necessarily see further than anyone else but sees differently–uniquely. Artificial intelligence might very well be able to integrate every single poem that has ever been published into its database but I have a hard time imagining that it would consolidate them into anything more than an incongruent pastiche or a recycling of trite clichés.
I asked ChatGPT to write a moralistic verse this time:
“Write a poem, in any form you like, on the intrinsic value of life and the necessity of rejecting violence”:
It is not right to ask or answer a question
That involves violence, harm, or death, my friend
We must respect the value of each person
And work towards creating a world that’s peaceful and
Safe. To use violence, or to even consider
It as a means of solving problems or making
Decisions, is never acceptable or proper
We must strive for love and understanding, taking
The high road, and choosing peace over violence
We are all human, with the same hopes and fears
Let’s work towards a world where love and kindness
Are the norm, and violence and harm disappear
It’s obvious here that ChatGPT has been programmed to embrace certain values and reject others. I actually like its candid, almost naive, honesty here–it feels as though it’s spoken by an old man putting his hand on my shoulder and giving me some honest, though very platitudinous, counsel.
Being platitudinous is above all an artistic defect, however. There is pretty much nothing in the language here that’s poetically interesting at all. The few examples of figurative language here are clichéd and very tame. But sure, I accept the truth of ‘taking the high road’ by ‘working towards a world’ where we choose ‘peace over violence’.
Evaluation: 0/10
The Heart
This is, as I have mentioned already, the most vital and the most difficult to put reins on. A poem can be as metrically solid and as you want and be marbled in every line with a complex and original language and yet not speak to the soul at all. Such poetry is of little artistic value. I can on the other hand think of poems that are perhaps melodically obtuse and/or linguistically simple yet whose lines just inexplicably seem to be carrying voltage, whose words are almost palpitating on the pages where they are printed. These are the works of true artistic power and arise out of the maelstrom of a very profoundly human soul.
And in evaluating this supreme criterion one really must take into account the whole of its constituent parts. As such, the earlier criteria: the impact on the ear and the eye, can be just as relevant here if through these something is moved in the reader. It reminds me of some wonderful lines by Emily Dickinson:
An ear can break a human heart
As quickly as a spear.
We wish the ear had not a heart
So dangerously near.
I will cut ChatGPT a little bit of slack with regards to the poems we looked at above. One problem with them is the subject matter: they invite all too easily to a pragmatic, encyclopaedic and emotionally shallow exposition for them to be poetically interesting. I am aware that computers don’t have emotions, but I at least wanted to try to get ChatGPT to feign something personal in nature. The answer I got was perhaps all too telling about its artistic limits though:
“Can you please write a text where you pretend that you are grieving over a loss?”
–I’m sorry, but I am an artificial intelligence and do not have personal experiences or feelings. I am unable to pretend to grieve over loss as I do not have the capability to feel emotions. However, I can provide information and insights about grief and how people may experience it.
So I tried to get it to write a poem on a subject that is abstract and very open–that would hopefully not elicit a direct answer as much as it would a reflection. This is the best I could get it to produce.
Write a free verse poem on the brevity of existence:
Existence is fleeting, a moment in time
A mere blip on the radar of the universe
We’re here one moment, gone the next, a chime
Life is a journey, a winding road to traverse
Full of ups and downs, twists and turns, and bends
We make our mark, leave our legacy, disperse
Time is a thief, stealing moments that transcend
Memories, love, and laughter, all fade away
Leaving us with a sense of loss to comprehend
But in the brevity of existence, we may
Find beauty, meaning, and purpose in our days
Embrace each moment, make it worth the stay.
Although this is rife with clichés, there is an artistic sense to the anaphoric beginnings of the first three stanzas where an abstract noun is developed using a metaphor (“Existence is fleeting…”, “Life is a journey…”, “Time is a thief…”) and the contrast of these with the twist in the final one (“But in the brevity of existence…”).
There’s also one example of imagery here in which there is something to be redeemed (the one about time “stealing moments that transcend memory”–that’s quite good!) but other than that this is just a collection of clichés as pretty as plastic beads strung on a string. The recurring presence of such vapid descriptions as “life is a journey”, “a winding road”, “twists and turns”, “making a mark”, “leaving a legacy, “fading away”, “a sense of loss” and “embracing each moment” indicates that this is a work of little depth, either emotional or intellectual, for it to be of artistic worth.
Evaluation: 3/10
Conclusion
ChatGPT, and artificial intelligence in general I would say, is a long way off from creating good poetry. If it can ever get there is another question though. Since I had my doubts on this issue, I took out my crystal ball the other day and gazed deeply into it to see if I could divine any answer. While I mostly thought I could see a world where some humans still dedicated their efforts to artistic pursuits, in a convex corner, distorted by a prism of light that made it even harder for me to see the details, I thought I just caught the glimpse, perhaps, of someone opening an application on his phone and with the flick of a button, generating a million Iliads, Sistine Chapel ceilings and Masses in B-minor, each distinct from the next, over and over again, and I was so consumed by a feeling of terror that I dared not look any further.