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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.

7 of 187 comments (clear)

  1. 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. 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.

  3. Not statistically significant by chadenright · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  4. My Cat passed the Turing test today. by JamesSharman · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

  5. 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.
  6. Re:Honestly by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

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