Token poetry
It was a funny turn of events. Or was it weird. I’m still not sure. Still processing…
The group that I meet with every couple of months (stemming from our experiences in a ULab coaching circle), had agreed to do another poetry share session (I wrote about the power of the last one here).
The first poem shared really rattled the group.
We were doing our usual thing: each of us were to read the poem we brought, then have a few moments of quiet reflection solo and then share what was on our hearts and minds, what we felt in our bodies, what sorts of images and gestures were coming up for us. (This forms the rough basis of the ULab case clinic method).
The first poem was read. She didn’t share a title or the author — a bit strange but ok, I thought. She got to the end of the poem, and there was a level of discomfort that I couldn’t quite pinpoint (but I suspected was more than just not knowing the title of the poem). I looked at the others on the zoom call in our solo reflection time and thought — hmmm you all seem to be really taking it in. So I tried a bit harder. Not much was happening for me.
She read it again. Same.
It felt oddly familiar, but surface level. A degree of comfort bubbling up, and some clunkiness, but not much else. It was unlike other poetry we’d shared where something deep seems to sprout, where there is a sense that it ‘landed’. Then I also thought — well it is 6.45am right now (joys of having an international group call!), maybe I need to take up drinking coffee afterall!
In another moment, I thought — oh maybe this is her own poem and that’s why she didn’t say who the author was. (And the next thought was — this is going to be quite an awkward reflect back moment!).
But that wasn’t it.
After some awkward reflection time, she shared the author: “By ChatGPT”, she revealed with a glint of mischieviousness in her eyes. The prompt: “A poem”.
It was quite a funny moment. Of course, AI-related things are everywhere for a lot of people right now. Especially for me, working on a PhD what responsibility practices look like in AI development. But even so, I still wasn’t suspecting it, despite sensing there was just something a bit ‘off’ about the whole thing. Fascinating.
All four of us listeners of the poem were quite taken aback. Some, actually relieved. What I had interpreted as me missing the poem’s purpose and the others ‘getting it’, was incorrect — we were all actually quite perplexed. Our bodily reactions to it were unfamiliar compared to other poetry we’d read.
Here are some of our combined reflections about how we felt in that moment, not knowing that the poem was in fact generated by ChatGPT.
- “It felt vacuous” — each of us reflected in some way about the emptiness of the words of the poem. One described it as just ‘floating’, without a lot of groundedness. Another described how usually they gather something else from a second reading, but in this case, “nothing arrived”. A couple of us thought we were just missing the point; that it was us. Interestingly, knowing it was ChatGPT-generated comforted us!
- “There was no sensory, embodied dimension” — one of us, who is a real lover of poetry, talked about how poems for him create a sensory space, transporting him to a different, very felt reality. He felt like there was nothing of the sort happening with this poem. The lack of materiality and uniqueness involved with the words was striking (but of course makes total sense when you consider ChatGPT is essentially connecting the most predictable sequence of words together). It was interesting to compare and contrast this experience with the poem he later shared — “How to Triumph Like a Girl” by Ada Limón — which was so amazingly visceral in its three dimensional imagery of an “8-pound female horse heart, giant with power, heavy with blood”.
- “There was no soul connection” — we struggled with connecting with the poem. We just couldn’t find that deeper layer of meaning that made it interesting and real for us. We reflected that often poems wade in an interesting ambiguity and indirectness that invite us to form a connection of our own with it. Instead, we felt quite separated from this poem, which decreased our enjoyment of it. One of us described the situation as like an up and down curve with reduced amplitude. All the averaging out done by ChatGPT “squashed down the delight”. This prompted her to share the poem she brought — “Created for Joy” by Persian poet from the 1300s, Hafiz — to demonstrate the contrast. The emotional connection to this poem was entirely different, as Hafiz invited us to untangle our feet, free our soul and dance.
It was a fascinating (and quite unexpected) experiment.
And it served as a great example of what AI-enabled tools are good for and what we, as humans, can uniquely contribute.
We agreed to do one more poetry share (for the poems that we didn’t get to). Who knows what may emerge from that session!
Lorenn is a PhD candidate at the Australian National University’s School of Cybernetics, a Responsible Tech Collaborator at Centre for Public Impact and undertakes freelance consulting on responsible AI, governance, stakeholder engagement and strategy. Previously, Lorenn was a Director at PwC’s Indigenous Consulting (now Yamagigu Consulting) and a Director of Marketing & Innovation at a Ugandan Solar Energy Company whilst a Global Fellow with Impact Investor, Acumen. She also co-founded a social enterprise leveraging sensor technology for community-led landmine detection whilst a part of Singularity University’s Global Solutions Program. Her research investigates conditions for dignity-centred AI development, with a particular focus on entrepreneurial ecosystems.
