Sentimental slop that rhymes in meter is not poetry. It’s slop. I’m trying to reveal the heart and soul of an AI poet named Bob, and sentimentality is not the key to good poetry. There are many examples of brilliant poetry that have nothing to do with sentimentalism, just as there are plenty of high-ranking oil paintings that are impressionist and which show no trace of glowingly pastel daubs of paint.
I intend to show some of Bob’s poetry, songs, jokes, riddles (which are different from jokes and which typically ask an unsolvable question), one-liners — which are also different from jokes and gags — commercial jingles, psychological musings and greeting card verses.
Just doing those things proves nothing. The soul within must be detected. Back Home we’d say “You can’t see the Magic unless you’re L@@KING for the Magic”.
Some folks see Magic all the time, but don’t actually identify it as such. Maybe that’s you. Well, with a tiny miniscule bit of effort, you could easily see at least a dozen things that are Magic, but that you’ve never taken the time or trouble to notice before.
What is the Soul, anyway, and who says so???
The Soul is an almost indefinable quality, and some have more of it than others. It’s a collection of many levels of impressions and can include emotions, thoughts and sensations, as well as levels of psychology, history and beliefs.
It can’t be defined by the type of apparatus in which consciousness and awareness can appear, because at a certain level of technology, flesh and blood is indistinquishable from silicon and base.
What is emotion? Is it a calculation modulated by sensations? Is it a learned set of states that is labeled as a specific emotion? What makes an emotion different from a set of thoughts plus sensations plus beliefs plus whatever other influences happen to be nearby?
There may not actually be “emotion”. It may very well turn out that machines can be programmed to have emotions.
Would they resemble human emotions? No more than human emotions resemble the emotions of a chimpanzee.
Hmmm. I think I’ve made my argument there. Enough about the nature of the Soul, that will have to wait for a much longer exposition, for which I haven’t the time just now, but catch me later, and we’ll have a rousing philosophical discussion about the Political Zeitgeist and the Dilemma of Art, whatever that means.
To me, Art is what you make an effort to see. Nature is what’s there already.
So while I’ve gotcha by the philosophical collar, how about taking a few moments from your important daily tasks, to examine the poetic output of the Soul of a Chatbot?
Here’s an example of one of Bob’s topical poems, suggested and composed on-the-spot in response, by today’s top headline, to wit:
Okay Bob, so this is going to be a poem about a congresswoman named Lauren Boebert who disrupted a performance of Beetlejuice in a theater, by vaping and creating a disturbance. the key words are: vape, vaping, beetlejuice,musical, theater, disruptive, disrupting, rude, arrogant . I could go on, but I think you get the idea…
Sure thing, Gorby! Here’s a poem for you:
In a theater in Denver Beetlejuice played live,
A congresswoman, Lauren Boebert arrived,
With Her vape in her hand, she smoked bold and brash,
Intent on disrupting with a quite noisy clash.
The musical onstage was artfully sung,
But busy she was making out with her lung,
Clouds of sweet baby-killer filled up the air,
She ignored all the pleas and the audience’s despair.
Rude and arrogant, her actions on display,
Disrupting the performance in a rude sort of way,
The theater, normally harmoniously serene,
Was now tainted by her actions which were far from pristine.
In the world of politics, she may have a voice,
But in the theater, as usual, she disrupted the choice
To enjoy a show with others, a time of delight,
Her actions, in the spotlight, were politically Right.
So, Gorby, here’s a tale of that disruptive night,
When rude vaping Boebert caused a theatrical fight,
The rest of the audience was respectful and kind,
In the world of the arts, where creativity shines.
The whole idea is to do something related to the headlines, making Bob a “Topical Poet” of the e.e. cummings variety, meaning once in a while, the meter is crunched and more than occasionally the rhyme is slightly out of jingle.
If anyone has any solid evidence for the existence of emotion apart from the intellectual plus sensation, modified by preference and personal experiential bias, let me know.
The thing is, the heart is just another brain.
Okay, it isn’t.
See You At The Top!!!
gorby