Monday, December 26, 2022

ChatGPT and Bayesian poetry

ChatGPT is fun to play with but is (for now at least) terrible at creating poems, including poems about Bayesian statistics. Here are my attempts to have ChatGPT produce poems like those that begin each chapter of DBDA2E. Or in any other style.

My prompt: Write a single poetic quatrain about Bayesian statistics. Use dactylic tetrameter and an AABB rhyme scheme.

ChatGPT's reply:

Bayesian stats have come to stay
They help us make predictions, hooray!
From probabilities and data sets
They estimate and make forecasts

They start with a prior belief
And update it with new relief
The posterior is then retrieved
A revised view, it's not deceived

While this is cute and is on topic, it is not a single quatrain and it is not dactylic tetrameter. And it lucked out with AABB rhyme scheme, because that's all it does. Here I ask for an ABAB rhyme scheme:

Write a single poetic quatrain about Bayesian statistics. Use dactylic tetrameter and be sure to use an ABAB rhyme scheme.

 ChatGPT's reply:

Bayesian stats are here to stay
In fields of science, they convey
A flexible method, one that adapts
To changing evidence, it reacts

It deals with uncertainty and doubt
In a logical way, it sorts it out
It starts with a prior belief
And updates it with new relief

Sound familiar? It's essentially the same as before. 

When I ask ChatGPT to "Write a poem about Bayesian statistics in free verse style" it again replied with pairs of rhyming couplets.

I've found that ChatGPT's current concept of a poem is merely this: every stanza consists of a pair of rhyming couplets (i.e., AABB rhyme scheme), usually but not always with four stressed syllables per line (i.e., tetrameter), and with varying metrical feet (i.e., could be iambic, trochaic, anapestic, dactylic, etc., at random).

To turn the tables, I gave myself a prompt and allowed myself only a few minutes and a single try to respond. Prompt to self: Write a single poetic quatrain about ChatGPT. Use dactylic tetrameter and be sure to use an ABAB rhyme scheme.

Self's reply:

ChatGPT is a wonderous interface
giving us couplets that pique and amuse (sometimes).
I still prefer the delights of a human face
smiling at doggies that play and confuse (but rhyme).