What We’re Reading: Can AI write poetry?
Hi everyone,
What role does poetry play in your life?
Growing up as the child of a librarian, I was surrounded by books. Pulitzer finalist Lucille Clifton’s affirming words, Gwendolyn Brooks’ tales of Chicago, and Langston Hughes’ lush letters figured prominently in my home. We had quite a bit of Rumi, Shel Silverstein, and Carl Sandburg added in for good measure.
I was recently pleased to learn that Wendy Van Camp, the current poet laureate of Anaheim, California, writes on Medium. Earlier this year, Van Camp described what it’s like to have that gig.
Van Camp is one of hundreds of poets who call Medium home. If you aren’t already familiar with the vast world of verses here, I invite you to take a look at the poetry topic page or explore this guide to poetry on Medium. After all, it’s National Poetry Month in the U.S.!
Do you have a favorite poet or poetry publication on Medium? Respond to this post to let me know — I’d love to hear about it.
See you on Medium.
Adrienne Gibbs, Director of Content at Medium
What We’re Reading
What Schools Get Wrong About Career Day
Published by Mark A. Herschberg
The better alternative to the existing approach is to speak about what actually happens in the jobs. Yes, speak about the consequences like helping sick people but also talk about the day to day. Speak about having lots of meetings, or a few meetings. Talk about how much time is spent on the road, and while it’s exciting to go to new cities it can also be difficult to be away from home. Share how much work you do by yourself, or with others.
The State of Generative AI, 2024
Published by Alberto Romero
Generative AI could unfold similarly: early turmoil mixed with enthusiasm, followed by indifference, and finally, eventually, a resurgence. Does it need the popular approval it’s been deservedly losing for a while? I don’t think so; it’s not hype or consensus that builds the new world but the work of people quietly watching over progress while everyone else has moved on (even if they only manage to reap the overhanging fruits two hundred years later thanks to an “unrelated” innovation they couldn’t foresee, like cheaper paper).
Cherry Blossom Dreamscape №1
Published by Natalie Wilkinson in Scribe
The fourth of the six spring seasons is called shunbun (春分) Spring Equinox in the traditional Japanese calendar. Each of the twenty-four seasons in the calendar is divided into three micro-seasons for a total of seventy-two.
Today’s Final Word goes to Sierra Elman, who writes about her experiment asking AI to create poetry. Can a language learning model really imitate the emotion needed to write a good poem? In “The Future of Poetry: Is AI Smarter Than an 8th Grader?” Elman says this:
“‘Write a poem about a sunrise.’ I asked three AI chatbots — OpenAI’s ChatGPT-4, Google’s Bard, and Anthropic’s Claude — and myself — an 8th grade human. I then surveyed a panel of 38 AI experts and 39 English experts to judge the results. Is AI smarter than an 8th grader?
And the survey says…AI is not smarter than an 8th grader, at least not yet. The 8th grader won 1st place, and by a higher margin when judged by English experts. Bard, ChatGPT-4, and Claude came in 2nd, 3rd, and 4th places, respectively, both in writing quality and their ability to fool the judges into believing they were authored by a human. Most strikingly, English experts were far better at discerning which poems were written by AI, with 11 English experts vs. only 3 AI experts guessing the author (human vs. AI) of all four poems correctly. This points to a need for English experts to play a greater role in helping shape future versions of AI technology.”
Keep reading here.
Read or write anything new? Share it in the responses — we’d love to check it out.
