Howdy and welcome back to my blog! This week’s reading was about aleatory poetry, which was interesting to learn about. I knew about the idea, but I have never put an official name to it.

10/25 - Update on my hands-on activity: it is not going well for this week. I am struggling to implement this Tracery-type poem/story into my blog. Each time I try to add to the code given in the reading, it stops working. I will work on it more tomorrow. It is getting late, so maybe that is why I am not thinking well right now.

Okay, back to the reflection blog post! I chose an article from NPR titled Human Or Machine: Can You Tell Who Wrote These Poems?

Basically, this article discusses the idea that computers can write poems just like humans can. This was discussed in the weekly reading, but I think this article frames this topic in more of a “can computers create better poems that humans, even though they don’t have emotions” way. I hope that made sense to you.

The article briefly touches on the inspiration behind the game, which is essentially a game where the reader guesses whether the provided poems were written by a human being or a computer. I would encourage you to look into the poems in the article and guess for yourself!

I am going to read the poems and guess on each one. I’ll tell you what I think and my reasoning behind my answer, and at the end I will tell you which ones I got right and wrong. Let’s go!

Sonnet #1 Answer – Human My Reasoning: Computers do not have emotions. They cannot comprehend how it feels to mourn the loss of a loved one. Reading this poem made me tear up a little because it stings the heart when it says: I felt that week your ending has begun”. A machine cannot write that, and if it can then I will be scared.

Sonnet #2 Answer – Machine My Reasoning: It doesn’t make much sense to me. I would need to really dive into this poem to understand the meaning behind it, which makes me think a machine strung these words together.

Sonnet #3 Answer – Human My Reasoning: This poem is well written, rhymes, and has a nice structure. There are a lot of aspects to think about here, and I do not think a computer could have created this.

Sonnet #4 Answer – Human My Reasoning: I do not think a machine can understand symbolism in the human language (maybe it can, I don’t really know) and for that reason, I think a human being wrote this.

Sonnet #5 Answer – Human My Reasoning: Like I mentioned earlier, machines cannot feel emotions like humans can. Because of this, machines and computers cannot feel love or understand the deep connection two human beings can make with one another. I knew a human wrote this three lines in and I am confident in my answer.

Sonnet #6 Answer – Human. My Reasoning: This was the toughest one for me, but in the end I decided a human wrote it. My reasoning is the same as all the other poems!

The results: I got every answer correct! This was an interesting article to read and interact with, and it also gave me a good perspective on computer writing poetry.