As a poet and a scholar of poetry (I feel the need to start that way) I am fascinated by AI poetry and have an educated skepticism of its future as anything more than run-of-the-mill versification, which greeting card writers have been doing for a century without think piece being written about them. Still, I appreciate your think piece because it contains thought!
The difference for me is that the greetings card versifiers and the versifiers who came before them showed no potential of changing what they wrote whereas the technological question of whether AI can write better poetry than it does now is an open one. We’re running an experiment!
doesn't your point about 'run of the mill versification' itself imply that there is human poetry out there that's 'better than' ai poetry..? (also isn't much ai poetry already beyond that standard, even just in technical terms ie in complex use of verse etc?)
I began with my deep knowledge of poetry in order to say simply that 'better' is an expert game. It's easy for anyone to see 'better' in fields where there are clear metrics. But there are no metrics in poetry for the public, beyond "I like it, it appeals to me," which is fine but doesn't really make the case for the academic field of poetry and poetics. I'm saying that AI isn't part of the community of interpretants.
Poetry schmoetry.
you are a poet and you don't know it
:)
As a poet and a scholar of poetry (I feel the need to start that way) I am fascinated by AI poetry and have an educated skepticism of its future as anything more than run-of-the-mill versification, which greeting card writers have been doing for a century without think piece being written about them. Still, I appreciate your think piece because it contains thought!
The difference for me is that the greetings card versifiers and the versifiers who came before them showed no potential of changing what they wrote whereas the technological question of whether AI can write better poetry than it does now is an open one. We’re running an experiment!
What is this "better" you speak of?
You don’t thing some poetry is better than others?
How is it decided?
doesn't your point about 'run of the mill versification' itself imply that there is human poetry out there that's 'better than' ai poetry..? (also isn't much ai poetry already beyond that standard, even just in technical terms ie in complex use of verse etc?)
I began with my deep knowledge of poetry in order to say simply that 'better' is an expert game. It's easy for anyone to see 'better' in fields where there are clear metrics. But there are no metrics in poetry for the public, beyond "I like it, it appeals to me," which is fine but doesn't really make the case for the academic field of poetry and poetics. I'm saying that AI isn't part of the community of interpretants.