Google Poems

As a followup to my post on Artificial Consciousness, I have to mention an experience I had last week.

One of the common arguments against the possibility of sentient and conscious artificial intelligence is that everything they do comes from simple rules we write for them. As such, they have no free will, and no creativity or spontaneity.

Just last week I was introduced to Google Poems. This is a phenomena that arose from the automatic suggestions that the Google search gives you while you’re typing in a query. In certain cases, they seem to form very beautiful poems. Here’s one I found myself:

If you didn’t know where this poem came from (removed all bias), it could be considered a beautiful work of art. What’s even more artistic about these poems they capture the collective concerns of the entire population since the suggestions are based on popular searches. Even more they are also tailored to the person who is doing the searching, since Google tracks their preferences and habits.

Right here, in front of our eyes, seemingly wonderful works of art have emerged from a simple artificial system. Rather or not it was their intent, this artificial system has created incredibly powerful and personified pieces of poetry.

I’ve included a few more poems below that were discovered recently, but I urge you to check them out yourself.