Robot Wins Jeopardy, But Can It Write Poetry?

Watson's impressive debut on Jeopardy this past week got me wondering if there has ever been a serious attempt to program an artificial intelligence to write good poetry. I don't mean just throwing together a proper meter and rhyme scheme -- that seems easy enough. I'm talking about an attempt to create a machine that "understands" how to manipulate language to convey freshness, wisdom and emotional depth.

So I searched the web for Watson's poetic doppelganger, imagining a blinking, spinny sphere that, out of principle, hasn't sold out to the national TV spotlight, and that perhaps wears a beret. The internet is, in fact, rife with crude programs called poetry generators that randomly feed a user-supplied library of descriptive words into set poetic forms. But these generators feel far, far closer to an Excel Spreadsheet than they do Shakespeare. One version, a love poetry generator, required that I fill out a Match.com-worthy list of my favorite flowers, animals and colors before it proclaimed that I was "in search of the magnificent black and mystical tomcat of love," which, embarrassingly, I am.

I also soon discovered that an episode of "Star Trek: The Next Generation" explored this very question. The android Data tried his hand at the art, taking a cue from Christopher Smart and writing an ode to his cat. While Data's work was technically proficient, it lacked emotional depth and bored the Enterprise crew. Of course, that didn't deter "Star Trek" fans from giving Data's "Ode to Spot" its very own website.

I eventually discovered that a clever man named Geoff Peters created something called the Google Poetry Robot (unaffiliated with Google). The Google Poetry Robot -- I'll just call it GPR - requires that you be its muse, and type a few words of inspiration into a text box. It feeds these inspiring words into a simple algorithm and collects phrases that are somewhat related from around the web, resulting in "poems." In a very rudimentary way, it creates -- just not in a very good way. The results generally read like this: "Modern music really is bad for Pets and people. Plants don't need Nuclear bombs for our government and nonprofit institutions in Colorado via a Godzilla meets South Park 50s horror film Orchestra."

But GPR can, occasionally, be intriguingly poetic, as in the line, "I am sitting here. I want to become Japan," which is really what a meditative robot poet might write, if you think about it.

On his website, Peters asks the pertinent questions about GPR's work: "Is it poetry? Is it nonsense? If you didn't know that these writings were created by anonymous people, with the aid of a robot, would you think they consist of the ravings of a crazed lunatic?" The short answers to which are "no," "yes," and "oh, absolutely, yes." I don't mean to be too hard on GPR. It does have some qualities one commonly finds in poets: It speaks multiple languages, it swears a lot and it doesn't like to use commas.

Sadly, when I went to play muse to GPR myself, it was offline. It's possible that it has taken a day job as a technical writer, or that it has sold out completely and gone to law school. Lucky for us, much of GPR's work is archived on the Robot Poetry Blog, which has poems dating back to 2005. There is also a site where you can hear GPR's poetry read by a robot voice -- you know, to get the full robot effect.

So it seems that I'm more likely to stumble on that black and mystical tomcat of love than I am a robot poet. Writing good poetry may one day be a final exam of sorts for an artificial intelligence, but when you consider that 25 scientists worked on Watson for four years, and it still thought Toronto was a U.S. city, I think it's safe to say that it won't be picking up the digital quill anytime soon. Though now that IBM has bested Gary Kasparov at chess and Ken Jennings at Jeopardy, maybe they'll take on the challenge. When they do, I think "Byron" has a nice ring to it.

 

Comments

[ZoeT]

09:41 PM on 02/21/2011

I didn't think an article about poetry would get many comments. Poetry is a right-brain function and must be understood by the right, intuitive brain and not by the left, rational brain. We live in a left brain nation. So poetry is feared, thus it is belittled.

Poetry is the often lost art of soul-teaching. You thnk I'm kidding? Try this: what problem are you facing that causes emotional pain? Decide to sit down and write a poem about it. Don't think about talent; don't think about words. Just make the intent, pick up your pen and apply it to the paper. See what you get. If you're really in the flow of it, you will get an answer to or insight into your problem -- straight from your soul, the place where all good poems come from.

Thinking is not invited: Tiger, tiger burning bright/ in the forests of the night.

[mjwca]

06:02 PM on 02/21/2011

Algorithms and the computers are only as good as the humans creating them. Therefore, as we defund education and make people "teach to the test" rather than teach critical thinking and how to use one's creative brain, our computers will be just as stupid as we are becoming. Corporate America loves to worship the idea of replacing all workers with machines. Of course that just shows how stupid executives are as who will buy their products when no one has a job that pays more than minimum wage? Duh!

[michelesda]

03:43 PM on 02/21/2011

Poetry in the traditional sense is a lost art; not that many humans can write it anymore, and those who can are unlikely to ever be anything but self-published. Poetry in the contemporary sense is a different matter. Computers are already writing many forms of it, including some that are specifically computer generated.

[raechel]

03:39 PM on 02/21/2011

And ...
The Age of Intelligent Machines
Are We Spiritual Machines?: Ray Kurzweil vs. the Critics of Strong A.I. (with co-authors)
The Intelligent Universe: AI, ET, and the Emerging Mind of the Cosmos (with a co-author)

Come on, how can you not know this guy????

[raechel]

03:35 PM on 02/21/2011

I am amazed that you missed Ray Kurzweil's Cybernetic Poet, which you can download for free. Kurzweil is a renowned theorist and proponent of machine intelligence, and the Cybernetic Poet, along with Aaron, his artist program. These were developed over a period of 30 years -- nothing new. Check them out: http://www.kurzweilcyberart.com/

Kurzweil is a name well-known in the digital music industry; he also developed text to speech tools.
See also http://www.kurzweilai.net/ on robot control. You do know Watson isn't really a robot, right?

Let's see - books:
The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology
The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence

[tnlcallen]

03:04 PM on 02/21/2011

If I ever wanted to be bored to tears I'd rather have a human do it than a Robot.

[Stephen McLaughlin]

02:38 PM on 02/21/2011

The closest thing to Watson's poetic doppelganger is Erica T. Carter, a poetry generating robot created by Jim Carpenter. See an explanation of its approach and a few examples here:

http://blog.hvidtfeldts.net/index.php/category/poetry/

[bicycsual]

01:30 PM on 02/21/2011

There are those who would say that his style is mistaken -
And most of his canon was written by Bacon.

I dunno. I think IF there is a final test for the supercomputer, or whatever it is to come, it will be the completion of a doctoral dissertation without plagiarizing.

[Robert L Blackburn]

01:18 PM on 02/21/2011

Given the opaque nature of poetry, it is far easier to develope a machine that can write poetry than one that actually thinks. With thought, the proof is in the pudding. And, until the Artificial Intellilgence community is willing to re-examine and reconsider the possibility that a survival program controlling and directing human thought, the human mind won't be programmed in a computer. See; RevolutionOfReason.com and YouTube: RobertLBlackburn.

[wen1454]

12:32 PM on 02/21/2011

The final test for AI will be when AI can design AI better than humans can.

Depending on your tastes, computers have been writing good poetry for decades. Meaning is created in the mind the of reader. So wisdom and emotion can be conveyed even if the computer has no wisdom or emotion.

[keene]

12:01 PM on 02/21/2011

Why not check out a few poems that an actual human wrote. I just got a Flip camera and entered some writing on Youtube and FB. It's all new to me- the computer/camera stuff. One poem is finished one in process. Thanks. Here's the link if you want:

http://www.youtube.com/user/danpeak?feature=mhum

[Joseph Arechavala]

11:59 AM on 02/21/2011

If a computer ever gains the ability to write good poetry I'll kill myself. Because humanity is over.

[davedave]

11:53 AM on 02/21/2011

sir:

i will write good poetry, for my fellow machines....

sincerely,

skynet

[Brian Waters]

11:11 AM on 02/21/2011

It doesn't take a poet to launch a nuclear strike. Know that, meatbags.

[OutImpact]

10:45 AM on 02/21/2011

I think as someone who graduated with a BFA in Creative Writing, and took it because of her life-long love of writing and poetry, I really and truly do not want AI to be viewed as the next great poets of the world. There are plenty of very talented, human writers out there who are writing books, trying to get published, teaching like yourself, and just spending quality time with a blank document or notebook, writing poetry that can touch people in a way that robots can't. With emotion, with experience that robots can't really have, poetry captivates, expresses and elicits connection in a way I just can't experience with circuits and computer codes.

Poetry is a very intimate process in my opinion and I find it to be sacred in my walk in life - in a way that I don't want it science-fied in the great race to out techno each other as this world tends to do.

People can barely fund the arts right now, and the arts are constantly facing cuts, I'd much rather see funding go to the arts and music, then for robots to be the next Robert Frost. I'd much rather see robots be used to help find cures for cancer, etc.

Cheers,
Bambi Weavil
Founder of OutImpact.com
BambiWeavil.com - Social Media Strategist, Life-long Writer