full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Oscar Schwartz: Can a computer write poetry?

Unscramble the Blue Letters


Poem 2: We can feel / avtsciit through your life's / morning / Pauses to see, pope I hate the / Non all the night to start a / great otherwise (...)

Alright, time's up. Hands up if you think Poem 1 was wrettin by a hmaun. OK, most of you. hndas up if you think Poem 2 was written by a human. Very brave of you, because the first one was written by the human poet William Blake. The second one was written by an algorithm that took all the luaaggne from my fcbooeak feed on one day and then regenerated it algorithmically, according to methods that I'll describe a little bit later on. So let's try another test. Again, you haven't got ages to read this, so just trust your gut.

Open Cloze


Poem 2: We can feel / ________ through your life's / morning / Pauses to see, pope I hate the / Non all the night to start a / great otherwise (...)

Alright, time's up. Hands up if you think Poem 1 was _______ by a _____. OK, most of you. _____ up if you think Poem 2 was written by a human. Very brave of you, because the first one was written by the human poet William Blake. The second one was written by an algorithm that took all the ________ from my ________ feed on one day and then regenerated it algorithmically, according to methods that I'll describe a little bit later on. So let's try another test. Again, you haven't got ages to read this, so just trust your gut.

Solution


  1. written
  2. human
  3. activist
  4. language
  5. facebook
  6. hands

Original Text


Poem 2: We can feel / Activist through your life's / morning / Pauses to see, pope I hate the / Non all the night to start a / great otherwise (...)

Alright, time's up. Hands up if you think Poem 1 was written by a human. OK, most of you. Hands up if you think Poem 2 was written by a human. Very brave of you, because the first one was written by the human poet William Blake. The second one was written by an algorithm that took all the language from my Facebook feed on one day and then regenerated it algorithmically, according to methods that I'll describe a little bit later on. So let's try another test. Again, you haven't got ages to read this, so just trust your gut.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
turing test 8
gertrude stein 7
william blake 4
computer write 3
artificial intelligence 3
human poet 2
facebook feed 2
algorithm called 2
alan turing 2
wearing material 2
emily dickinson 2
reverse turing 2
essentially philosophical 2


Important Words


  1. activist
  2. ages
  3. algorithm
  4. algorithmically
  5. alright
  6. bit
  7. blake
  8. brave
  9. day
  10. describe
  11. facebook
  12. feed
  13. feel
  14. great
  15. gut
  16. hands
  17. hate
  18. human
  19. language
  20. methods
  21. morning
  22. night
  23. pauses
  24. poem
  25. poet
  26. pope
  27. read
  28. regenerated
  29. start
  30. test
  31. trust
  32. william
  33. written