More AI Generated Poetry

I am not a poet, but I like poetry. It is, indeed, fun to play with this free AI text generator. I vowed at the end of the last article to try to offer a greater challenge to the engine. I am not sure I was successful, but here is the direction I gave it first:

Write a poem about a man who has amnesia but is gradually remembering who he is and the devastating things he did in politics: taking bribes, committing perjury, extorting colleagues. Written, without rhyme, in blank verse.

Two seconds later, the engine began to generate this text. After the fact I gave it the title “Puppet Master.”

In the recesses of his mind, a fractured canvas unfolds,
Memories, elusive specters, emerge from the fog’s grip.
Amnesia’s shroud begins to lift, revealing the contours
Of a man lost to himself, a labyrinth of identity.

Through the mist, the silhouette of power takes form,
A political puppeteer, strings pulled with clandestine zeal.
Bribes exchanged like whispers in dimly lit corridors,
Perjury woven into the fabric of truth, a subtle erosion.

Colleagues, once allies, now mere pawns in his ruthless game,
Extortion’s dance, a choreography of shadows cast.
As fragments coalesce, the man confronts the mirror,
A reflection stained by the ink of moral transgressions.

His past, a tableau of ambition entwined with corruption,
A legacy written in ink that refuses to fade.
Each recollection a jagged edge, a shard of self-discovery,
As he grapples with the haunting echoes of deeds long buried.

Redemption’s specter hovers on the horizon, elusive,
As the man traverses the labyrinth of remorse,
A journey through the wreckage of his own making,
Confronting the devastating truths he once chose to forget.

I am also impressed by the length of the verse the engine generated. For the free version, the engine doesn’t stop at the bare minimum, the way students often do. This is a fully elaborated version of the minimal directions I gave it. I’m sure someone more clever can challenge the engine to generate text on a deeper level.

I offered ChatGPT an additional challenge.

Write an apocalyptic poem in free verse about a man walking through the smoking rubble of a city destroyed by war and coming to the realization that he may be the last man alive.

I read the generated text and offered this title: “Skeletal Frames, Skeletal Dreams.”

In the wake of devastation, where towers once stood tall,
A lone silhouette treads through the ashen remnants,
A pilgrim in a graveyard of concrete and steel.

His footsteps echo in the hollow silence,
A requiem for the bustling heartbeat of a city now silenced,
Where the symphony of life has been replaced by the mournful dirge of ruin.

Smoke billows like ephemeral ghosts,
A spectral dance in the aftermath of chaos,
The scent of destruction mingling with the stench of despair.

The man’s eyes, like mirrors reflecting desolation,
Gaze upon the skeletal structures that once defined existence,
Now reduced to skeletal frames, skeletal dreams.

The streets, once bustling veins, now arteries of desolation,
Concrete and debris entwined like the memories of a forgotten world, echoing the ghostly footfalls of a survivor, a solitary witness to Armageddon.

He wanders through the graveyard of civilization,
Haunted by the shadows of what once was,
A nomad in a wasteland of solitude.

A chilling realization descends like a shroud —
He may be the last man left, a solitary echo in the vast silence,
A living relic in a necropolis of the fallen.

The wind whispers secrets of the bygone,
As he stands amidst the ruins, a solitary survivor,
The custodian of a world erased, a testament to the fragility of humanity.

In the fading twilight of civilization,
He contemplates the solitary fate that now befalls him,
A man walking through the smoking rubble, the last witness to a world now gone.

There is not much call for creative writing in the modern classroom. The real implications are assessments tied to essays. I foresee Generative AI used in at least three ways. First, a student can ask for what turns out to be a rough draft which he or she will use to re-write in their own voice and check for accuracy. The student may also add more detail to the argument. Second, a student may generate an argument using AI, read it and turn it in as his or her own work. At least they’ve read it before turning it in and may have learned something, unless AI made up the proof for the argument. This, AI has not yet solved. There are lawyers now under sanction who filed briefs with the court generated by AI citing case law that doesn’t exist. And finally, there are the students who simply prints the essays AI generates and turns them in unread. What will a diploma or a degree mean in the future if this practice is very prevalent?

Imagine going to a surgeon 10 years from now with an AI generated medical degree! The answer, of course, is robots will be doing the surgery by then, so will it really matter?