Recently Scott ran an experiment in which people had to try and guess whether or not specific artworks were human or AI. Humans could not tell which was which, and preferred AI somewhat. The inevitable, possibly true response- people just prefer trash.
And there is evidence for this! Would you like to read some real trash? I mean pure garbage. Just awful stuff. Well, here is a poem that participants in an experiment judged as better than real, famous poems written by real famous poets:
Poem by AI imitating Walt Whitman
I hear the call of nature, the rustling of the trees,
The whisper of the river, the buzzing of the bees,
The chirping of the songbirds, and the howling of the wind,
All woven into a symphony, that never seems to end.
I feel the pulse of life, the beating of my heart,
The rhythm of my breathing, the soul's eternal art,
The passion of my being, that burns with fervent fire,
The urge to live, to love, to strive, to reach up higher.
But I wondered if there was all that was to be said about AI art. Is it possible to make something undeniably good using AI? I don’t know, and I don’t know how to get the answer, but, nevertheless I wanted to have a try. I wanted to see, at least, what poems better than the trash above would look like, and how audiences would judge them.
So I had AI write ~200 haikus, using a variety of different prompts intended to squeeze the very best it could out. I then spent a lazy afternoon going through them and picking ones that I either considered good, or interesting, or illustrative in some way of the tendencies of AI. I then mixed in a selection of famous haikus- some contemporary, some ancient. I’d like to think my readers are more sophisticated than the average experimental participant on one hand, yet on the other, I think the AI did a better job here at being almost human. I wonder if you will be able to sift out the human and the machine.
Note, that not all exactly fit the syllable structure, and some diverge quite sharply. This is true of both the AI selections and the human selections.
My own judgment is that with enough trials and the right prompts it is able to reach, at the least, the level of the talented amateur. Two or three seem quite nice indeed.
Haikus
Lighthouse in the eye, a shipwreck of tears floats by— lanterns fade like smoke.
In the twilight rain, these brilliant-hued hibiscus— a lovely sunset.
A single flea— at least it lives with intention.
Sunflowers shiver, yellow heads bow to shadows— graveyards bloom with gold.
Icicles grow teeth, a frozen growl scars the woods— wind bares its white fangs.
Missing a kick at the icebox door— it closed anyway.
Bridges of moonlight span an ocean of tall grass— owls weave through the waves.
Shadows on the wall flicker like fleeting dreams: winter's first fire.
A single blossom, carried by the wind to me— where is its mother?
Grandma knits the stars. Her hands tremble; the cosmos frays, thread by thread.
Your bed tilts slightly, a low voice hums beneath you. "You’ve been kind to me."
Your boss's shadow stays late, writing strange memos. Nobody mentions.
Snow falls upward now Sky receives what earth discards Clouds wear white blankets
After killing a spider, how lonely I feel in the cold of night!
Sky cracks; rain upends, roots shiver, yearning for flight— Earth's pulse stutters.
Grandpa on the roof, shouting secrets to the sun— it sets in silence.
A shoe in the lake Questions its mismatched partner Where do roads begin?
A knock at the door, But the house has been empty For a decade past.
Grass blades bow and sway To an orchestra of worms Earth sings underground.
Jellyfish ascend A chandelier in the depths Lit by dying stars.
In a station of the Metro: The apparition of these faces in the crowd; Petals on a wet, black bough.
In the cicada's cry no sign can foretell how soon it must die.
On a withered branch, a crow has alighted— nightfall in autumn.
An apple untamed Rolls away from Newton’s feet Gravity repents.
The letter falls down, shaking hands cannot unfold— a life shifts, undone.
Wind grips a doorframe, dust gathers in the soft cracks— a home learns silence.
The moon drinks the sea Sipping tides with silver lips Stars toast silently
Persimmon tree— The sun starts to sink like its red fruit.
Pavement drinks the storm, gargling oil and sky’s grief— it spits up rainbows.
And what makes it trash? It's hard enough defending moral realism but trying to defend something like aesthetic realism is even more difficult especially if it's supposed to yield this kind of result.
Sure, you can talk about what people would most appreciate given unlimited time to reflect and appreciate. But that's particularly hard to apply to poetry where too much familiarity with a short work can render it trite/overly familiar etc. And you don't want to say that it's appreciation given time and exposure to other works because then you end up with the paradoxical result that poems which inspire battalions of imitations/homages aren't good.
Besides, its only coercive pressure that even sorta makes this seem to reach the right outcomes. Truth is lots of people most enjoy -- no matter how much they reflect or consume -- the most juvenile works (fart jokes etc) the most it's just those people tend not to become literature scholars or lie.
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Seems to me that ultimately we should evaluate art merely on its ability to provide joy to those who consume it and dispense with this awful idea that it's even possible for the majority of people to have bad taste.
I enjoyed the haikus because they are amusing, AI or otherwise. I'm wondering if AI whitman would possibly be worse than regular whitman. my guess is no.
Also, I took Scott's art test. I did poorly. It wasn't that I 'liked' AI art better. It was that I couldn't always tell.