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Poetic Intellect

It used to be that writing good poetry was a test of intelligence and creativity both. Now with AI being able to do it more masterfully, the standard for good poetry had likely changed. Here is a AI production when I prompted it to write a poem about chickens in a farm a la Neruda. 

Hens with eyes like polished amber,

Roosters crowned in crimson and copper light,

You transform simple dirt into symphonies of life,

Clucking secrets older than the farm's wooden bones.

Your wings, folded maps of rural persistence,

Carry the weight of generations—

Eggs like pale moons, smooth as promises,

Nestled in straw kingdoms of soft rebellion.

Humble creatures of sunlight and soil,

You dance your ancient choreography

Between fence posts and forgotten dreams,

Singing psalms of survival with each determined step.

There is obviously no remote comparison a real work of Neruda and the words are like empty shells where there should have been meaning - yet it is a poem after a fashion. Interesting to a professor's take on the subject and where she thinks LLMs can shine 

create an unexpected juxtaposition. We are limited when we’re thinking about writing in a purely intentional way. We’re limited in the kinds of ideas that we produce. So instead, we roll the dice. We create a system of rules. We follow that system of rules in order to create these unexpected juxtapositions of words, phrases, lines of poetry that do something that we would be incapable of doing on our own…. There’s untapped potential for things that might bring us joy in what we can do with our linguistic capacity.

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