AI or Shakespeare?

• Engels
• Middelbare school
• vwo
• Leerjaar 5

Can you figure out who these initials refer to?

W. S.

T.S. E.

E. A. P.

A.I.

William Shakespeare - T.S. Elliot  -     Edgar Allan Poe

and... AI = Artificial Intelligence!

AI or Shakespeare?

Lesson goals:

- Familiarize yourself with a few poetry forms 

- Think about what makes poetry 'good' and 'enjoyable'

Last week in the news:

Source: newscientist.com

Why do you think people prefer AI generated poems to the work of poets?

Open the link in the next slide for the answer 

The reasons why people preferred the AI generated poems to the 'real' ones are in fact a bit more complex than what you can read in the link, but we'll get to that once we read the entire article...

Note: you only have to read the text that is available without a subscription

www.newscientist.com

After the researchers revealed which poems were AI-generated, participants' evaluation of these poems lowered. Why, do you think?

Now read the article

You can find a link in the next slide.

Note: If you'd like to know more about the topic, or prefer to work at a higher level, skip the next slide and read the article behind the second link. This article goes into more depth than the first one.

phys.org

www.smithsonianmag.com

Does this research prove AI is a real poet? What do you think?

Real poets have nothing to fear

But however well AI can imitate human poets, it will never be able to replace the real thing, scientist Brian Porter believes, precisely because a chatbot only imitates. ‘I think it's unlikely that human poets will lose their jobs to AI any time soon,’ he says. What makes a lot of art special - whether it's a poem, a novel, a cabaret performance or even a viral tweet - is that it expresses something true about the human experience that you haven't heard that way before. That is something chatbots are unlikely to excel at for now, as they can only access what has already been said. Moreover, it is important to realise that ChatGPT's brief was to mimic the style of existing poets. I don't think the future of poetry lies in successful imitation. What the research really shows is not that AI can produce poetry as profound and unique as that of successful human poets, but that AI can mimic the tone and style of poets well enough that we can't always discern the difference as easily as we think.’

Source: scientias.nl, translated with DeepL.com

Different kinds of poetry

A few examples:

• Haiku: a three-line poem with a syllable count of five, then seven, then five.
  
• Limerick: a humorous five-line poem.
  
• Sonnet: a 14-line poem usually written in iambic pentameter with a rhyme scheme.
• Free verse: poetry without a set structure or rhyme scheme.

There was an old man of Nantucket

Who kept all his cash in a bucket;

But his daughter, named Nan,

Ran away with a man,

And as for the bucket, Nantucket.

I write, erase, rewrite

Erase again, and then

A poppy blooms.

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;

Coral is far more red than her lips' red;

If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;

If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.

I have seen roses damasked, red and white,

But no such roses see I in her cheeks;

And in some perfumes is there more delight

Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.

I love to hear her speak, yet well I know

That music hath a far more pleasing sound;

I grant I never saw a goddess go;

My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground.

  And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare

  As any she belied with false compare.

Haiku

Sonnet

Limerick

AI or poet?

Whispering wind speaks,
Nature's wisdom flows through leaves,
Silent songs of peace.

1. AI
2. poet

Whispering breeze sighs,
Cherry blossoms gently fall,
Spring's sweet lullaby.

1. AI
2. poet

How awkward when playing with glue
To suddenly find out that you
Have stuck nice and tight
Your left hand to your right
In a permanent how-do-you-do!

1. AI
2. poet

There was a young lady of Lynn,
Who was so uncommonly thin
That when she essayed
To drink lemonade
She slipped through the straw and fell in.

1. AI
2. poet

There once was a cat from Peru
Whose antics were quite a to-do
He'd dance on his paws
And break all the laws
While singing a jolly "meow-dee-doo!"

1. AI
2. poet