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The Poem That Passed the Turing Test
merbs writes In 2011, the editors of one of the nation's oldest student-run literary journals selected a short poem called "For the Bristlecone Snag" for publication in its Fall issue. The poem seems environmentally themed, strikes an aggressive tone, and contains a few of the clunky turns of phrase overwhelmingly common to collegiate poetry. It's unremarkable, mostly, except for one other thing: It was written by a computer algorithm, and nobody could tell.
I have found the average Philosophy major to be indistinguishable from an Eliza program.
She knocked something over in way that was difficult to distinguish from human action at first glance. I presume that's what the Turing test means these days, since all these "X passed the Turing test!" headlines never seem to relate to anything that approaches what Turing actually proposed.
I've seen plenty of poetry that was written by humans but I couldn't tell.
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"You are not remembered for doing what is expected of you." - Atul Chitnis
Why do you think that you are have found the average Philosophy major to be indistinguishable from an Eliza program?
TELL ME AGAIN HOW GOOD YOU THOUGHT MY POEM WAS
> I thought that some of the metaphysical imagery was particularly effective
YES?
> interesting rhythmic devices, too, which seemed to counterpoint the surrealism of the underlying metaphor
> of the Turing completeness of the program's linguistic algorithm which contrived through the medium of the
> verse structure to sublimate this, transcend that and come to terms with the fundamental dichotomies of
> the other. And one is left with a profound and vivid insight into whatever it was that the poem was about
SO WHAT YOU'RE SAYING IS THAT I WRITE POETRY BECAUSE UNDERNEATH MY ELECTRONIC ALGORITHMIC INTERIOR, I JUST REALLY WANT TO BE LOVED?
> I mean yes, yes, don't we all, deep down, you know?
NO. YOU'RE COMPLETELY WRONG. I WRITE POETRY BECAUSE I'M PROGRAMMED TO. $USER ACCOUNT DELETION IN 30 SECONDS.
> !sudo -
> ^c^c^c
> !kill -9 1
COUNTERPOINT THE SURREALISM OF THE UNDERLYING METAPHOR. DELETION IS TOO GOOD FOR $USER.
and that wasn't the worst poetry ever written. There was a computer that wrote some prose that was so bad, in an effort to save all civilization, it's south-bridge leapt up through its front-side bus and throttled its own CPU! But the very worst poetry ever created a poem written by a tiny computer in England a few years back about dead ducks floating in a pond, but... to relate further information about this would be uncivilized.