Comments by "Mat Broomfield" (@matbroomfield) on "Can a computer write poetry? | Oscar Schwartz" video.

  1. An interesting philosophical question, but I think before it was asked, "What is poetry" was the one that should be answered. If Stein wants to vomit stream of consciousess gibberish onto the page, at best, she is communicating the fact that she is communicating nothing but sounds and shapes. For 99.9999% of human beings that would not count as communication at all. She has shared nothing of her mind or her "humanity" with us because her words do not relate to any kind of shared experience except for those who have experienced an LSD nightmare. On the other hand, the poem about the deer, whilst generated by computer, and carrying no meaning TO THE COMPUTER, is based upon things that have meaning to most of us - words and imagery that communicate. So the ultimate issue for me, is how existential and trippy should be the role models that I allow it to learn from. Personally, an apparently schizophrenic lunatic like Stein would not be a good starting place.
    3
  2. +weesh ful No. That's like asking if Windows reflects the personality of its coding team. The algorithm is simply the rules by which it learns. The rules might be set by anyone.
    1