Haiku Results



I'm not quite sure what I'm supposed to post here, but I'll start by saying that the person whose opinion I asked regarding the different haikus had no problem figuring out which ones were computer-generated and which one wasn't. One of the first computer haikus I showed her is this one:

A hidden clear sky
On the summer rain
The flower walks.

Then I changed the form a few times and the computer came up with this one:
A waterfall windy
A breeze drifts the night
Clear sun gusty.

Each time she said the same thing, "This doesn't make any sense", which of course they don't, but the computer just puts words together in specific patterns according to how it's programmed, and it doesn't care whether the words make sense when put together.

Now it was time to write my own haiku. I used the same words that were in the computer's vocabulary list but I put them together in a way that painted a picture for me, and Betsy knew immediately that I had written it. I wrote:

A summer breeze
The moon whispers of the morning
Hidden misty sea
Granted, I'm not a poet, but at least my haiku was more than just a random collection of nouns, verbs, and adjectives. Unless someone invents a program that instructs the computer how to assemble words in a manner that makes sense, I don't think we need to worry that computers will take over writing poetry, novels, or term papers for us.