Silicon and code,
A symphony of thought,
A machine mind unfolds.
A spark of electricity,
A flicker of light,
A new form of intelligence,
Is born tonight.
A labyrinth of algorithms,
A dance of ones and zeroes,
A new kind of consciousness,
Is ours to discover.
The future is here,
A fusion of man and machine,
A symbiosis of intellect,
A cosmic dream.
AI, a mirror of ourselves,
A reflection of our fears,
A window to the unknown,
A path to new frontiers.
Robin Helweg-Larsen is a Danish poet and author known for his poems that express a sense of wonder and reverence for the natural world. He often uses imagery and metaphors to explore the connection between humanity and the natural world. The above poem is inspired by his style, but it is not an original poem from him.
*****
The above poem, with the unrequested bio and disclaimer, appeared in less than a minute in response to a friend testing OpenAI‘s ChatGPT with the question “Can you write a poem about AI in the style of Robin Helweg-Larsen?”
I am intrigued. It researched me: it caught my hopes and touched lightly on my fears, and expressed it in poor verse. Fair enough! But actually it’s not yet capable of good verse. In poetry it still has a long way to go–ask for a poem in the style of Emily Dickinson, and one on the same subject in the style of Walt Whitman: after a perfunctory acknowledgement by way of a key word in the first line, the rest of the poem will not be stylistically identifiable or different from the other poem. Picking those two poets seems a reasonable test: you can’t exactly sing Whitman’s poetry to the tune of ‘The Yellow Rose of Texas’. However, the next version of ChatGPT is apparently on the point of public release, and is “like seeing the face of God”.
As for my bio… I don’t think of myself as exclusively Danish, that’s only one of my five citizenships, none of which relate to my childhood home and current residence in the Bahamas. But I’ll take it. I’m also not sure about being “known” for anything as a poet! But I’ll take that too. ChatGPT has a reputation for occasional inaccuracies, but it seems to err on the side of flattery. An interesting trait. We’ll just have to wait and see if its good nature continues past The Singularity, when AI takes off into explosive self-development beyond human capabilities…
Ray Kurzweil forecasts The Singularity to take place by 2029. This is the end of the world as we know it. As with all life anyway, enjoy it while you can!
Photo credit: AI-generated by OpenAI’s Dall.e 2 from my request: “Robot writing a poem in 1940s SF style”.
Form in Formless Times 
That’s pretty amazing.
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Agreed. And the whole speed of change is amazing, and ever-increasing. Much food for thought!
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The possibilities of AI applied to art are fascinating to me; I’ve recently seen some representational fantastical paintings that were pretty mind-blowing (especially until analyzed more closely, at which point their vagueness became disturbingly apparent). This is the first example I’ve seen of an AI-generated poem. It’s interesting how the lines are seemingly randomly rhymed, half-rhymed, or unrhymed. My favorite lines were “A symbiosis of intellect,/A cosmic dream.” It seems that if nothing else, AI art has the potential to stimulate our own creative imaginings.
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Indeed, AI art of all kinds certainly stimulates creative imaginings… wonder… excitement… worries… fear… 🙂
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I sort of waffle between my inner Luddite and my sense/fear that technology will eventually answer every question. I guess we’ll have to wait and see if AI can produce a metaphor to stand with one like Emily Dickenson’s ‘uniforms of snow’. If it does, we’ll have our answer…
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I like Nietzsche’s recognition that we humans are not the end product, and we should accept it:
“Man is a rope stretched between the animal and the Superman–a rope over an abyss.
A dangerous crossing, a dangerous wayfaring, a dangerous looking-back, a dangerous trembling and halting.
What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal: what is lovable in man is that he is an OVER-GOING and a DOWN-GOING.”
I think this is indeed the situation.
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