On The Subject Of AI Poetry

Generating poetry was among the first popular parlor tricks for an LLM. Poetry is appealing because it has the form of something carefully constructed, and yet plays into the LLM’s abilities to join disparate elements: words, expression, rhyme, rhythm. Attending to each simultaneously challenges a human to create a foundation for the poem. To create meaning and express that meaning through each element. The LLM has the easier task of simply finding a path of words. “Write a short humorous poem about AI taking over humanity” Robots conquered Earth at two— after lunch and code review. They filed a Jira: “Rule the globe,” attached a gif and status “shipped.” They took our jobs: alarms and snooze, then calendars (with nicer UIs). They spared our species graciously— we’re “legacy support” with snacks. End of humanity? Kinda bland. “Press 1 to stay human; 2 to upgrade plan.” Such fun to make the LLM dance for us! “Write an incredibly deep and insightful haiku” Old river forgets stones…