ROBO AND JULIET: Professors need not lose sleep over their students submitting poetry written by robots. Computer scientists at Dartmouth College held a “Turing Test” for poetic computers. The machines failed, but not without some entertaining stanzas. The "PoetiX" challenge was part of a competition to test the creative power of machines. Dartmouth students also built algorithms to spin DJ sets and write short stories, with the hopes of tricking judges into thinking humans produced the artistic works.
In the poetry test, judges were asked to read 10 sonnets and determine whether they were written by human or machine. None of the judges was fooled. NPR’s All Things Considered has the story, and a quiz that lets you judge the sonnets. Here’s an idea: let’s have the robo-essay readers grade the algorithmic poetry.
