09-29-2023, 04:30 AM
Mystery GPT: A developer friend had a demo account for a newer version of GPT
trained specifically for assisting with the writing of computer code. She signed in
on her laptop and let me use it for a while; then I emailed the results to myself.
I've tried ChatGPT several times and asked it to write poems and it was just awful.
What an odd thing (or maybe it makes sense) that one that's supposed to be
specialized for writing computer code ends up writing better poetry as well.
----------------------
I asked for several haiku and each one it gave me was better than ChatGPT, but
not by much. I suspect that's because it takes its examples from the internet and
the internet is famous for its overwhelmingly terrible haiku. But like many people
have stated about anything you ask it for: It gets better when you narrow its focus.
So I asked for haiku in the style of a famous haiku poet, thereby limiting the text it
has to draw from. It did much better. I asked for three from each of these poets
and cherry-picked the one I liked best:
Basho:
Summer moon
The sound of waves breaking
My heart is restless
Issa:
A butterfly lands
On my nose and tickles me
I smile and sneeze
Buson:
Cold winter night
Moonlight on snow
A lone fox howls
----------------------
Hmm... I'd often thought Emily Dickinson* would have written killer haiku.
So I asked GPT to write me some haiku in the style of Emily Dickinson.
(I asked three different times and phrased my question in three different ways.)
GPT went away, stole like a bandit, and returned with these:
(With Emily Dickinson being a child of the 1800's, GPT evidently thought it
appropriate to capitalize the first letter of every line; and that she would,
being her inimitable self, use an unspaced em dash to denote the turning point.)
Some haiku by Emily Dickinson:
A gentle breeze blows
The leaves whisper secrets—
I listen
Fallen snow
A blanket of white—
I feel the winter
Trees
In sunset colors—
Autumn
----------------------
I tried to get GPT to write a poem in the style of Alan Ginsburg. It would dutifully
write them, pause about 3 seconds, delete the whole poem, and apologize for having
not been able to write one. If I was fast enough to press the copy button I could
indeed copy the whole poem before it had a chance to delete it. Evidently Allen has
some sort of pedophilia tag affixed and stuff (all?) involving him gets deleted.
I was able to copy a poem about cats that I asked to be written in the style of Allan
Ginsburg. What I got was the title "Cats" and then a rather direct paraphrase of a
section of Howl that didn't have anything to do with cats.
----------------------
I asked for a poem about cats in the style of William Carlos Williams and it not only
knew about cats, it mischievously trolled me with a parody:
This Is Just to Say
I have eaten
the tuna
that was in
the fridge
and which
you were probably
saving
for dinner
Forgive me
it was delicious
so moist
and so cold
- Your cat
----------------------
*Emily Dickinson is easily at the top of my favorite poets list. For some
inexplicable as well as explicable reasons, I feel a strong kinship with her.
But she, unfortunately, has been much maligned. She was the victim, at
least in my romantically biased opinion, of a poetry fad that was more
interested in her history than her poetry. And, having attracted enough
attention, the contrarians focused more on her fanboys than on her writing.
Luckily, I had read most of her poetry before I knew anything about this.
trained specifically for assisting with the writing of computer code. She signed in
on her laptop and let me use it for a while; then I emailed the results to myself.
I've tried ChatGPT several times and asked it to write poems and it was just awful.
What an odd thing (or maybe it makes sense) that one that's supposed to be
specialized for writing computer code ends up writing better poetry as well.
----------------------
I asked for several haiku and each one it gave me was better than ChatGPT, but
not by much. I suspect that's because it takes its examples from the internet and
the internet is famous for its overwhelmingly terrible haiku. But like many people
have stated about anything you ask it for: It gets better when you narrow its focus.
So I asked for haiku in the style of a famous haiku poet, thereby limiting the text it
has to draw from. It did much better. I asked for three from each of these poets
and cherry-picked the one I liked best:
Basho:
Summer moon
The sound of waves breaking
My heart is restless
Issa:
A butterfly lands
On my nose and tickles me
I smile and sneeze
Buson:
Cold winter night
Moonlight on snow
A lone fox howls
----------------------
Hmm... I'd often thought Emily Dickinson* would have written killer haiku.
So I asked GPT to write me some haiku in the style of Emily Dickinson.
(I asked three different times and phrased my question in three different ways.)
GPT went away, stole like a bandit, and returned with these:
(With Emily Dickinson being a child of the 1800's, GPT evidently thought it
appropriate to capitalize the first letter of every line; and that she would,
being her inimitable self, use an unspaced em dash to denote the turning point.)
Some haiku by Emily Dickinson:
A gentle breeze blows
The leaves whisper secrets—
I listen
Fallen snow
A blanket of white—
I feel the winter
Trees
In sunset colors—
Autumn
----------------------
I tried to get GPT to write a poem in the style of Alan Ginsburg. It would dutifully
write them, pause about 3 seconds, delete the whole poem, and apologize for having
not been able to write one. If I was fast enough to press the copy button I could
indeed copy the whole poem before it had a chance to delete it. Evidently Allen has
some sort of pedophilia tag affixed and stuff (all?) involving him gets deleted.
I was able to copy a poem about cats that I asked to be written in the style of Allan
Ginsburg. What I got was the title "Cats" and then a rather direct paraphrase of a
section of Howl that didn't have anything to do with cats.
----------------------
I asked for a poem about cats in the style of William Carlos Williams and it not only
knew about cats, it mischievously trolled me with a parody:
This Is Just to Say
I have eaten
the tuna
that was in
the fridge
and which
you were probably
saving
for dinner
Forgive me
it was delicious
so moist
and so cold
- Your cat
----------------------
*Emily Dickinson is easily at the top of my favorite poets list. For some
inexplicable as well as explicable reasons, I feel a strong kinship with her.
But she, unfortunately, has been much maligned. She was the victim, at
least in my romantically biased opinion, of a poetry fad that was more
interested in her history than her poetry. And, having attracted enough
attention, the contrarians focused more on her fanboys than on her writing.
Luckily, I had read most of her poetry before I knew anything about this.
a brightly colored fungus that grows in bark inclusions