To represent the other side, I enjoy reading Urdu and Persian poetry but I will never be interested in reading anything generated by an LLM. No matter how 'high quality' it is represented to be, I'm aware that it was produced by a process that shares nothing with my own experience of the world. It has felt no hope, disappointment, fear, pain, mortality, loss of loved ones, lack of control over itself, a world model that has changed over the years, and doesn't know that it all doesn't amount to much in the end and yet this is all there is for itself. It may turn out to be sentient in some way, but it's almost certainly not sentient in the way that I am sentient. I know it's just mimicking being human as instructed; to take it seriously devalues everything about my own humanity. I'm not ready for that kind of enlightened insight, I think.
> I know it's just mimicking being human as instructed; to take it seriously devalues everything about my own humanity.
Since it is mirroring human culture, why do you see it in such a negative light? Instead see it like what it is, an interactive reconstruction, or maybe like a microscope to zoom into any idea.
I’m happy to use LLMs in all other contexts, quite enthusiastically actually. I’ve got DeepSeek 32B running locally on a beefy PC already.
It’s just in the context of poetry, and literary writing in general, that I feel differently about them. There’s also the fact that I haven’t read all that human writers and poets have already written (and will never be able to in this short life) so there’s no need to turn to synthetic output. No supply problem exists. Poetry in particular is something to ponder over and over. You can’t really run out.
> It has felt no hope, disappointment, fear, pain, mortality, loss of loved ones, lack of control over itself, a world model that has changed over the years, and doesn't know that it all doesn't amount to much in the end and yet this is all there is for itself.
You can't know what any poet felt or didn't feel while writing a poem. Perhaps it was a commission piece, or an experiment or an emulation of something the poet had heard elsewhere.
And more generally, whether the specific emotion another man feels is similar or even comparable to your own is also unknowable. He might use the same word to describe it, but the subjective experience associated with it might be completely different, and completely impossible to share.
Yes but at least it was possible for that poet to have felt what I feel they might have felt while writing that poem. And the closer they are to me culturally the more likely it is that I am not misidentifying their emotions entirely.
Also poems are not really puzzles to be solved. If it produces an effect and is solid craft-wise, that is enough. There’s a lot to the craft side btw in the Urdu and Persian ghazal form which is what I had in mind while writing my original comment. LLMs can easily master the latter but have nothing to do with the former. Their output is pure form without substance.
Edit: I want to add that ambiguity (ابہام) is even a desirable property in Urdu ghazal, specifically. The more interpretations a couplet can have, the greater is the accomplishment in terms of craft.
