Be A Good Robot

The gap between man and machine is narrowing, as evinced by AARON, a program that is capable of painting. AARON is produced by Kurzweil Cyberart Technologies which also has a program that writes poetry. Apparently the program "reads" a selection of poetry and then tries to imitate (mimesis?) the poetry from the selection it has read. What the "Cybernetic Poet" comes up with is terrible, but it just about equates with modern poetry. Here are some of the poems that a machine has "written":

LONG YEARS HAVE PASSED
(A poem written by Ray Kurzweil's Cybernetic Poet after reading poems by Randi and Kathryn Lynn.)
Long years have passed.
I think of goodbye.
Locked tight in the night
I think of passion;
Drawn to for blue, the night
During the page
My shattered pieces of life
watching the joy
shattered pieces of love
My shattered pieces of love
gone stale.

Aside from the poem being nonsensical, it's hard to believe that a program would have "shattered pieces of love" that have "gone stale." But the frightening thing is I could imagine some human poet writing some similar crap and publishing it as poetry. It's disturbing in its insanity.

The Cybernetic Poet also attempted Haikus, but the meter is wrong:

MOON CHILD
(A haiku written by Ray Kurzweil's Cybernetic Poet after reading poems by Kathleen Frances Wheeler.)
Crazy moon child
Hide from your coffin
To spite your doom.

SANDALS
(A haiku written by Ray Kurzweil's Cybernetic Poet after reading poems by Kimberly McLauchlin and Ray Kurzweil.)
Scattered sandals
a call back to myself,
so hollow I would echo.

Apparently, one of the major differences between man and machine is man's ability to discern meter. None of the haikus that the Cybernetic Poet had written has the 5-7-5 meter of a traditional Japanese haiku. And modern poets think blank verse is acceptable-- meter is what makes us human!

My absolute favorite of the techno-poems is this one:

WONDERED
(A poem written by Ray Kurzweil's Cybernetic Poet after reading poems by Dave Gitomer.)
today i wondered
if i mused
today i saw you
i learned
in awe and you
if i wondered
if i mused
today i had one wish
if i saw you
if i saw you
if i had one wish

Though these are horrible poems, it is not hard to believe that a person might have wrote them. I have also seen some of the paintings done by AARON, but unfortunately I could not reproduce them on my blog. The website will show you the wonderful art that programs can produce.

Of course, as technology advances, it will only get harder and harder to tell what a human wrote and what a program wrote (I imagine that programmers will teach machines how to determine meter), but for now, these poems are really funny. I will leave you now with one more poem:

IMAGINE NOW AND SING
(A poem written by Ray Kurzweil's Cybernetic Poet after reading poems by Wendy Dennis and Ray Kurzweil and love poems by various authors.)
Imagine now and sing,
creating myths
forming jewels from the falling snow.