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.

Comments

Honestly

[The Rizz]

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

Re:Honestly

[halivar]

I have found the average Philosophy major to be indistinguishable from an Eliza program.

Re:Honestly

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do you think that you are have found the average Philosophy major to be indistinguishable from an Eliza program?

Re:Honestly

[Tackhead]

I 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.

Re:Honestly

[vux984]

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

I agree it doesn't really do anything to advance the state of AI.

For example I could program my computer to make Rorschach inkblot patterns relatively easily, and many of them would be pleasing to the eye, and people would see flowers, butterflys, erotica, and nightmares in them.

But the computer didn't put those ideas there, and it doesn't make the computer program an artist.
An artist has something to say; the computer doesn't.

This display raises and makes clear the disconnect between the artists message and the viewers response and shows us clearly that the viewer can have a significant response to a piece even if there was no message at all; provided the viewer is "primed" to look for one.

This is an issue I have with much art, especially minimalist abstract art ... where I genuinely doubt the artist did anything of substance at all, and is merely relying on the viewer to project significance and meaning into it by suggesting it is "art" therefore there MUST be some, and if you can't see it then the fault must be your own inadequacy. The emperors new cloths of the art world so-to-speak.

This poem is in the same vein. It is sufficiently complicated and constructed of phrases of words that are semantically related so that if we are primed to look for meanings, then like a Rorschach inkblot, we can find one.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder after all.

Yet, all that doesn't imply there is really anything wrong with college poetry though. The poets are learning to express themselves... perhaps somewhat awkwardly. And that awkwardness is part of the total expression. And that's fine.

Let me know when the AI is trying to actually express an idea and the result is poetic. Of course, for that the AI would actually need an idea to express.

All this one has is some word soup and some methods for selecting them involving some sort of semantic grouping so they seem to be thematic, some loose grammer rules to put them next to each other; and maybe some loose poem structural templates or something ... or maybe not.

Re:Honestly

[StikyPad]

Also, there's no interaction here, and this isn't the first instance of computer-generated content making it through human filters. There was an article a while ago about submissions to scientific journals... I think this is the story: http://www.nature.com/news/pub...

In both cases, the content was "complete gibberish," not coherent submissions. These stories don't demonstrate the progress of AI; they demonstrate the low expectations of "meaningful," that judges/editors have in specific circumstances.

That said, there is compelling computer-generated content, such as this: http://www.slate.com/blogs/fut...

Not the Turing test!

[HornWumpus]

WTF has become of /.

Re: Not the Turing test!

[bloodhawk]

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.

Re: Not the Turing test!

[Your.Master]

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.

Re: Not the Turing test!

[bloodhawk]

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.

Because no one understands modern poetry anyway

[Art3x]

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.

Not statistically significant

[chadenright]

From TFA: The 'author' submittted numerous poems to a number of publishers, the great majority of which were rejected. The one that was accepted was accepted to a journal that was to 'showcase a breadth of authors and a breadth of styles.' Really if you're going to publish computer-generated literature, that would be the place to do it.

My Cat passed the Turing test today.

[JamesSharman]

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.

Bingo!

[davidwr]

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.

So what

[linuxwrangler]

I've seen plenty of poetry that was written by humans but I couldn't tell.

The Turing Test is a *CONVERSATION*

[msobkow]

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