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The Poem That Passed the Turing Test

Posted by timothy on from the stuff-it-in-the-ceiling dept.

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.

10 of 187 comments (clear)

  1. Honestly by The+Rizz · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I think that says more about crappy college poetry than the state of computer AI...

    1. Re:Honestly by khasim · · Score: 3, Insightful

      And even more about crappy reporting. This has NOTHING to do with Turing or his test.

  2. Not the Turing test! by HornWumpus · · Score: 5, Insightful

    WTF has become of /.

    --
    John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    1. Re: Not the Turing test! by bloodhawk · · Score: 5, Insightful

      This has nothing to do with turing or the turing test. The turing test involves a conversation with a computer and the person having the conversation not being able to distinguish if it is a computer or human they are conversing with. Last time I checked you don't converse with a poem... unless you are in a nice tight jacket and a small padded room.

    2. Re: Not the Turing test! by Your.Master · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It has one very obvious thing to do with the turing test: failing to distinguish software from another human being.

      They aren't exactly the same, but that's not the same as having nothing to do with each other. The Slashdot article title was poetic, which is very fitting. I expect the Slashdot title was written by a human.

    3. Re: Not the Turing test! by bloodhawk · · Score: 4, Insightful

      sorry but that is bullshit. Turing test is all about interaction Not generating text and seeing if someone reading it can tell whether it was human or computer generated, that isn't even closely related to what the turing test was about.

  3. Because no one understands modern poetry anyway by Art3x · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's much easier for a computer to get away with writing a poem than prose. The modern trend is to write poetry that sounds cool but no one understands. The same is true for modern songwriting.

    P. S. Now get off my lawn.

  4. Bingo! by davidwr · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It didn't happen in this case, but if your computer algorithm churned out 10,000 "poems" and you or a team of people sifted through them to find the ones that sounded like they were written by a person, then submitted them for publication without telling anyone that 99.99% of the computer's output had been discarded by a person before submission, it would hit /. with a similar article title.

    --
    Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
  5. RACTER by Rotworm · · Score: 3, Insightful
    We've had programs writing poetry for a while now. The earliest I'm aware of is RACTER with The Policeman's Beard is Half Constructed, 1983. I found much of it to be banal, but I found some of it to be amazing. It wrote:

    More than iron, more than lead, more than gold I need electricity.
    I need it more than I need lamb or pork or lettuce or cucumber.
    I need it for my dreams.

  6. The Turing Test is a *CONVERSATION* by msobkow · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Publishing a poem is not a conversation. Worse, poetry is expected to be artsy gibberish that would raise red flags in a real conversation.

    --
    I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.