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ChatGPT Is Pretty Bad At Poetry, According To Poets

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Summary

In December of 2020, ChatGPT was released to the public, prompting many tech influencers to hype up its potential to create poetry. However, poets are skeptical of the claims that AI could replace them and point out that ChatGPT's efforts are competent, but not brilliant. Poetry is not only an art form, but it often serves to express the human condition and is often political, which ChatGPT cannot match. Poets also point out that AI's attempts to create poetry are often generic and lack the emotion and individual experience that makes poetry powerful. The OpenAI research claims that poets could be replaced by AI, but the authors are employed by OpenAI and the paper is biased. Poetry is not a lucrative pursuit and its "beautiful uselessness" may be what saves it from being mass-produced by AI.

Q&As

What did tech influencers believe at the release of ChatGPT?
Tech influencers believed that ChatGPT was capable of writing poetry at a towering new height.

What do poets think of ChatGPT's ability to write poetry?
Poets think that ChatGPT's ability to write poetry is terrible and clunky, with tired metaphors and cliched abstractions.

How do LLMs perform in creative writing?
LLMs perform well in creative writing.

How do OpenAI researchers understand the nature of poetry?
OpenAI researchers do not necessarily understand the nature of poetry.

What do critics have to say about the use of LLMs in the labor market?
Critics have called the use of LLMs in the labor market a "science fiction-infused marketing frenzy" and have warned of apocalyptic predictions.

AI Comments

👍 This article does a great job of discussing how AI cannot replace human poets and their craft. The poets interviewed provide an insightful look into how AI cannot replicate the emotional and creative aspects of poetry.

👎 This article fails to provide any tangible solutions to the potential threat AI poses to the poetry industry. The article focuses too much on the potential of AI and not enough on the potential of human poets.

AI Discussion

Me: It's about how ChatGPT, a language model, is pretty bad at writing poetry. It goes on to discuss the implications of AI writing poetry and how it might be able to replace human poets in the future.

Friend: Interesting. What are some of the implications they discuss?

Me: Well, the article points out that poetry is often inseparable from the human condition and that it's more than just words - it's also about conveying emotion. So, AI might struggle to match the level of human-created verse. Additionally, the article discusses how poetry can often be political and AI might not be able to capture these nuances. Lastly, the article talks about how poetry is not very lucrative, so there's no real reason to create an AI to do it.

Action items

Research the current state of AI technology and its potential applications in the field of poetry.
Explore the implications of AI-generated poetry on the creative arts industry.
Consider the ethical implications of using AI to automate creative tasks such as poetry.

Technical terms

ChatGPT: ChatGPT is a text generator developed by OpenAI, a company that specializes in artificial intelligence.
GPT-4: GPT-4 is a large language model developed by OpenAI. It is used to generate text and can be used for a variety of tasks, including creative writing.
LaMDA: LaMDA is a large language model developed by OpenAI. It is used to generate text and can be used for a variety of tasks, including creative writing.
LLMs: LLMs stands for large language models. These are models developed by OpenAI that are used to generate text and can be used for a variety of tasks, including creative writing.
Palindrome: A palindrome is a word, phrase, or sentence that reads the same backward and forward.
Cinquain: A cinquain is a five-line poem with a specific syllable count for each line.
NYT: NYT stands for The New York Times, a major American newspaper.
Kevin Roose: Kevin Roose is a technology columnist for The New York Times.
Daily Mail: The Daily Mail is a British tabloid newspaper.
Hallmark: Hallmark is a company that produces greeting cards and other products.