WEBVTT

00:00:00.881 --> 00:00:02.111
I have a question.

00:00:03.422 --> 00:00:05.365
Can a computer write poetry?

00:00:06.959 --> 00:00:09.036
This is a provocative question.

00:00:09.715 --> 00:00:11.433
You think about it for a minute,

00:00:11.457 --> 00:00:14.047
and you suddenly have a bunch
of other questions like:

00:00:14.769 --> 00:00:16.150
What is a computer?

00:00:16.710 --> 00:00:18.285
What is poetry?

00:00:18.707 --> 00:00:20.396
What is creativity?

00:00:21.650 --> 00:00:22.822
But these are questions

00:00:22.846 --> 00:00:25.916
that people spend their entire
lifetime trying to answer,

00:00:25.940 --> 00:00:28.164
not in a single TED Talk.

00:00:28.188 --> 00:00:30.633
So we're going to have to try
a different approach.

NOTE Paragraph

00:00:30.657 --> 00:00:32.800
So up here, we have two poems.

00:00:33.839 --> 00:00:36.115
One of them is written by a human,

00:00:36.139 --> 00:00:38.241
and the other one's written by a computer.

00:00:38.754 --> 00:00:41.164
I'm going to ask you to tell me
which one's which.

00:00:41.858 --> 00:00:43.014
Have a go:

NOTE Paragraph

00:00:43.038 --> 00:00:47.094
Poem 1: Little Fly / Thy summer's play, /
My thoughtless hand / Has brush'd away.

00:00:47.118 --> 00:00:50.512
Am I not / A fly like thee? /
Or art not thou / A man like me?

NOTE Paragraph

00:00:50.536 --> 00:00:53.835
Poem 2: We can feel / Activist
through your life's / morning /

00:00:53.859 --> 00:00:58.106
Pauses to see, pope I hate the / Non
all the night to start a / great otherwise (...)

NOTE Paragraph

00:00:58.130 --> 00:00:59.489
Alright, time's up.

00:00:59.513 --> 00:01:03.609
Hands up if you think Poem 1
was written by a human.

00:01:05.547 --> 00:01:07.037
OK, most of you.

00:01:07.061 --> 00:01:10.084
Hands up if you think Poem 2
was written by a human.

00:01:11.172 --> 00:01:12.362
Very brave of you,

00:01:12.855 --> 00:01:17.140
because the first one was written
by the human poet William Blake.

00:01:17.784 --> 00:01:20.733
The second one was written by an algorithm

00:01:20.757 --> 00:01:24.449
that took all the language
from my Facebook feed on one day

00:01:24.473 --> 00:01:27.236
and then regenerated it algorithmically,

00:01:27.260 --> 00:01:30.850
according to methods that I'll describe
a little bit later on.

00:01:31.218 --> 00:01:33.622
So let's try another test.

00:01:34.398 --> 00:01:36.491
Again, you haven't got ages to read this,

00:01:36.515 --> 00:01:38.127
so just trust your gut.

NOTE Paragraph

00:01:38.151 --> 00:01:42.196
Poem 1: A lion roars and a dog barks.
It is interesting / and fascinating

00:01:42.220 --> 00:01:46.523
that a bird will fly and not / roar
or bark. Enthralling stories about animals

00:01:46.547 --> 00:01:50.607
are in my dreams and I will sing them all
if I / am not exhausted or weary.

NOTE Paragraph

00:01:50.631 --> 00:01:54.616
Poem 2: Oh! kangaroos, sequins, chocolate
sodas! / You are really beautiful!

00:01:54.640 --> 00:01:58.998
Pearls, / harmonicas, jujubes, aspirins!
All / the stuff they've always talked about (...)

NOTE Paragraph

00:01:59.022 --> 00:02:00.180
Alright, time's up.

00:02:00.204 --> 00:02:03.341
So if you think the first poem
was written by a human,

00:02:03.365 --> 00:02:04.580
put your hand up.

00:02:05.687 --> 00:02:06.841
OK.

00:02:06.865 --> 00:02:09.540
And if you think the second poem
was written by a human,

00:02:09.564 --> 00:02:10.719
put your hand up.

00:02:11.779 --> 00:02:15.589
We have, more or less, a 50/50 split here.

00:02:16.157 --> 00:02:17.593
It was much harder.

NOTE Paragraph

00:02:17.617 --> 00:02:19.329
The answer is,

00:02:19.353 --> 00:02:22.836
the first poem was generated
by an algorithm called Racter,

00:02:22.860 --> 00:02:25.862
that was created back in the 1970s,

00:02:25.886 --> 00:02:29.075
and the second poem was written
by a guy called Frank O'Hara,

00:02:29.099 --> 00:02:31.767
who happens to be
one of my favorite human poets.

NOTE Paragraph

00:02:32.631 --> 00:02:35.689
(Laughter)

NOTE Paragraph

00:02:36.046 --> 00:02:39.274
So what we've just done now
is a Turing test for poetry.

00:02:40.018 --> 00:02:44.565
The Turing test was first proposed
by this guy, Alan Turing, in 1950,

00:02:44.589 --> 00:02:46.153
in order to answer the question,

00:02:46.177 --> 00:02:47.814
can computers think?

00:02:48.245 --> 00:02:51.015
Alan Turing believed that if
a computer was able

00:02:51.039 --> 00:02:54.117
to have a to have a text-based
conversation with a human,

00:02:54.141 --> 00:02:56.911
with such proficiency
such that the human couldn't tell

00:02:56.935 --> 00:02:59.901
whether they are talking
to a computer or a human,

00:02:59.925 --> 00:03:02.781
then the computer can be said
to have intelligence.

NOTE Paragraph

00:03:03.270 --> 00:03:06.565
So in 2013, my friend
Benjamin Laird and I,

00:03:06.589 --> 00:03:09.577
we created a Turing test
for poetry online.

00:03:09.601 --> 00:03:10.878
It's called bot or not,

00:03:10.902 --> 00:03:12.946
and you can go and play it for yourselves.

00:03:12.970 --> 00:03:15.221
But basically, it's the game
we just played.

00:03:15.245 --> 00:03:16.773
You're presented with a poem,

00:03:16.797 --> 00:03:19.825
you don't know whether it was written
by a human or a computer

00:03:19.849 --> 00:03:21.015
and you have to guess.

00:03:21.039 --> 00:03:24.230
So thousands and thousands
of people have taken this test online,

00:03:24.254 --> 00:03:25.703
so we have results.

NOTE Paragraph

00:03:25.727 --> 00:03:27.155
And what are the results?

00:03:27.704 --> 00:03:30.583
Well, Turing said that if a computer
could fool a human

00:03:30.607 --> 00:03:33.626
30 percent of the time
that it was a human,

00:03:33.650 --> 00:03:36.047
then it passes the Turing test
for intelligence.

00:03:36.625 --> 00:03:39.063
We have poems on the bot or not database

00:03:39.087 --> 00:03:42.066
that have fooled 65 percent
of human readers into thinking

00:03:42.090 --> 00:03:43.485
it was written by a human.

00:03:43.959 --> 00:03:46.776
So, I think we have an answer
to our question.

00:03:47.546 --> 00:03:49.894
According to the logic of the Turing test,

00:03:49.918 --> 00:03:51.846
can a computer write poetry?

00:03:51.870 --> 00:03:54.221
Well, yes, absolutely it can.

00:03:55.782 --> 00:03:58.128
But if you're feeling
a little bit uncomfortable

00:03:58.152 --> 00:04:00.079
with this answer, that's OK.

00:04:00.103 --> 00:04:02.419
If you're having a bunch
of gut reactions to it,

00:04:02.443 --> 00:04:05.648
that's also OK because
this isn't the end of the story.

NOTE Paragraph

00:04:06.594 --> 00:04:08.918
Let's play our third and final test.

00:04:10.000 --> 00:04:11.750
Again, you're going to have to read

00:04:11.774 --> 00:04:13.683
and tell me which you think is human.

NOTE Paragraph

00:04:13.707 --> 00:04:17.425
Poem 1: Red flags the reason
for pretty flags. / And ribbons.

00:04:17.449 --> 00:04:21.770
Ribbons of flags / And wearing material /
Reasons for wearing material. (...)

NOTE Paragraph

00:04:21.794 --> 00:04:25.712
Poem 2: A wounded deer leaps
highest, / I've heard the daffodil

00:04:25.736 --> 00:04:29.182
I've heard the flag to-day /
I've heard the hunter tell; /

00:04:29.206 --> 00:04:32.908
'Tis but the ecstasy of death, /
And then the brake is almost done (...)

NOTE Paragraph

00:04:32.932 --> 00:04:34.531
OK, time is up.

00:04:34.555 --> 00:04:38.392
So hands up if you think Poem 1
was written by a human.

00:04:39.973 --> 00:04:43.011
Hands up if you think Poem 2
was written by a human.

00:04:43.035 --> 00:04:45.366
Whoa, that's a lot more people.

00:04:46.327 --> 00:04:49.295
So you'd be surprised to find that Poem 1

00:04:49.319 --> 00:04:53.312
was written by the very
human poet Gertrude Stein.

00:04:54.100 --> 00:04:59.138
And Poem 2 was generated
by an algorithm called RKCP.

00:04:59.162 --> 00:05:02.481
Now before we go on, let me describe
very quickly and simply,

00:05:02.505 --> 00:05:04.286
how RKCP works.

00:05:04.873 --> 00:05:08.723
So RKCP is an algorithm
designed by Ray Kurzweil,

00:05:08.747 --> 00:05:10.969
who's a director of engineering at Google

00:05:10.993 --> 00:05:13.353
and a firm believer
in artificial intelligence.

00:05:13.822 --> 00:05:17.813
So, you give RKCP a source text,

00:05:17.837 --> 00:05:22.306
it analyzes the source text in order
to find out how it uses language,

00:05:22.330 --> 00:05:24.278
and then it regenerates language

00:05:24.302 --> 00:05:26.830
that emulates that first text.

NOTE Paragraph

00:05:26.854 --> 00:05:28.967
So in the poem we just saw before,

00:05:28.991 --> 00:05:31.616
Poem 2, the one that you all
thought was human,

00:05:31.640 --> 00:05:33.190
it was fed a bunch of poems

00:05:33.214 --> 00:05:35.249
by a poet called Emily Dickinson

00:05:35.273 --> 00:05:37.462
it looked at the way she used language,

00:05:37.486 --> 00:05:38.651
learned the model,

00:05:38.675 --> 00:05:42.933
and then it regenerated a model
according to that same structure.

00:05:44.732 --> 00:05:46.910
But the important thing to know about RKCP

00:05:46.934 --> 00:05:49.772
is that it doesn't know the meaning
of the words it's using.

00:05:50.359 --> 00:05:52.635
The language is just raw material,

00:05:52.659 --> 00:05:54.819
it could be Chinese,
it could be in Swedish,

00:05:54.843 --> 00:05:59.022
it could be the collected language
from your Facebook feed for one day.

00:05:59.046 --> 00:06:00.698
It's just raw material.

00:06:01.380 --> 00:06:04.077
And nevertheless, it's able
to create a poem

00:06:04.101 --> 00:06:07.428
that seems more human
than Gertrude Stein's poem,

00:06:07.452 --> 00:06:09.605
and Gertrude Stein is a human.

NOTE Paragraph

00:06:10.846 --> 00:06:14.918
So what we've done here is,
more or less, a reverse Turing test.

00:06:15.940 --> 00:06:21.119
So Gertrude Stein, who's a human,
is able to write a poem

00:06:21.143 --> 00:06:24.881
that fools a majority
of human judges into thinking

00:06:24.905 --> 00:06:26.731
that it was written by a computer.

00:06:27.176 --> 00:06:31.317
Therefore, according to the logic
of the reverse Turing test,

00:06:31.341 --> 00:06:33.257
Gertrude Stein is a computer.

NOTE Paragraph

00:06:33.281 --> 00:06:34.743
(Laughter)

NOTE Paragraph

00:06:35.358 --> 00:06:36.652
Feeling confused?

00:06:37.193 --> 00:06:38.708
I think that's fair enough.

NOTE Paragraph

00:06:39.546 --> 00:06:43.662
So far we've had humans
that write like humans,

00:06:43.686 --> 00:06:46.797
we have computers that write
like computers,

00:06:46.821 --> 00:06:49.876
we have computers that write like humans,

00:06:49.900 --> 00:06:53.532
but we also have,
perhaps most confusingly,

00:06:53.556 --> 00:06:55.931
humans that write like computers.

NOTE Paragraph

00:06:56.938 --> 00:06:58.704
So what do we take from all of this?

00:06:59.611 --> 00:07:02.768
Do we take that William Blake
is somehow more of a human

00:07:02.792 --> 00:07:04.041
than Gertrude Stein?

00:07:04.065 --> 00:07:07.111
Or that Gertrude Stein is more
of a computer than William Blake?

NOTE Paragraph

00:07:07.135 --> 00:07:08.687
(Laughter)

NOTE Paragraph

00:07:08.711 --> 00:07:11.034
These are questions
I've been asking myself

00:07:11.058 --> 00:07:12.523
for around two years now,

00:07:12.547 --> 00:07:14.856
and I don't have any answers.

00:07:14.880 --> 00:07:17.210
But what I do have are a bunch of insights

00:07:17.234 --> 00:07:19.768
about our relationship with technology.

NOTE Paragraph

00:07:20.999 --> 00:07:24.608
So my first insight is that,
for some reason,

00:07:24.632 --> 00:07:27.743
we associate poetry with being human.

00:07:28.197 --> 00:07:31.912
So that when we ask,
"Can a computer write poetry?"

00:07:31.936 --> 00:07:33.129
we're also asking,

00:07:33.153 --> 00:07:34.951
"What does it mean to be human

00:07:34.975 --> 00:07:38.147
and how do we put boundaries
around this category?

00:07:38.171 --> 00:07:41.829
How do we say who or what
can be part of this category?"

00:07:42.376 --> 00:07:45.727
This is an essentially
philosophical question, I believe,

00:07:45.751 --> 00:07:47.980
and it can't be answered
with a yes or no test,

00:07:48.004 --> 00:07:49.331
like the Turing test.

00:07:49.805 --> 00:07:52.850
I also believe that Alan Turing
understood this,

00:07:52.874 --> 00:07:56.179
and that when he devised
his test back in 1950,

00:07:56.203 --> 00:07:59.005
he was doing it
as a philosophical provocation.

NOTE Paragraph

00:08:01.124 --> 00:08:06.665
So my second insight is that,
when we take the Turing test for poetry,

00:08:06.689 --> 00:08:10.149
we're not really testing
the capacity of the computers

00:08:10.173 --> 00:08:13.066
because poetry-generating algorithms,

00:08:13.090 --> 00:08:17.653
they're pretty simple and have existed,
more or less, since the 1950s.

00:08:19.055 --> 00:08:22.173
What we are doing with the Turing
test for poetry, rather,

00:08:22.197 --> 00:08:26.812
is collecting opinions about what
constitutes humanness.

00:08:28.313 --> 00:08:31.042
So, what I've figured out,

00:08:31.066 --> 00:08:34.038
we've seen this when earlier today,

00:08:34.062 --> 00:08:36.540
we say that William Blake
is more of a human

00:08:36.564 --> 00:08:38.129
than Gertrude Stein.

00:08:38.153 --> 00:08:40.615
Of course, this doesn't mean
that William Blake

00:08:40.639 --> 00:08:42.467
was actually more human

00:08:42.491 --> 00:08:44.818
or that Gertrude Stein
was more of a computer.

00:08:45.533 --> 00:08:50.247
It simply means that the category
of the human is unstable.

00:08:51.450 --> 00:08:53.524
This has led me to understand

00:08:53.548 --> 00:08:56.311
that the human is not a cold, hard fact.

00:08:56.832 --> 00:08:59.964
Rather, it is something
that's constructed with our opinions

00:08:59.988 --> 00:09:02.843
and something that changes over time.

NOTE Paragraph

00:09:04.671 --> 00:09:09.150
So my final insight is that
the computer, more or less,

00:09:09.174 --> 00:09:13.180
works like a mirror
that reflects any idea of a human

00:09:13.204 --> 00:09:14.579
that we show it.

00:09:14.958 --> 00:09:16.842
We show it Emily Dickinson,

00:09:16.866 --> 00:09:19.187
it gives Emily Dickinson back to us.

00:09:19.768 --> 00:09:21.602
We show it William Blake,

00:09:21.626 --> 00:09:23.911
that's what it reflects back to us.

00:09:23.935 --> 00:09:25.774
We show it Gertrude Stein,

00:09:25.798 --> 00:09:28.268
what we get back is Gertrude Stein.

00:09:29.083 --> 00:09:31.451
More than any other bit of technology,

00:09:31.475 --> 00:09:36.640
the computer is a mirror that reflects
any idea of the human we teach it.

NOTE Paragraph

00:09:38.061 --> 00:09:40.348
So I'm sure a lot of you have been hearing

00:09:40.372 --> 00:09:43.234
a lot about artificial
intelligence recently.

00:09:44.694 --> 00:09:47.524
And much of the conversation is,

00:09:48.292 --> 00:09:49.481
can we build it?

00:09:50.383 --> 00:09:53.518
Can we build an intelligent computer?

00:09:53.542 --> 00:09:56.305
Can we build a creative computer?

00:09:56.329 --> 00:09:58.442
What we seem to be asking over and over

00:09:58.466 --> 00:10:01.190
is can we build a human-like computer?

NOTE Paragraph

00:10:01.961 --> 00:10:03.517
But what we've seen just now

00:10:03.541 --> 00:10:06.629
is that the human
is not a scientific fact,

00:10:06.653 --> 00:10:10.183
that it's an ever-shifting,
concatenating idea

00:10:10.207 --> 00:10:12.738
and one that changes over time.

00:10:12.762 --> 00:10:15.914
So that when we begin
to grapple with the ideas

00:10:15.938 --> 00:10:18.324
of artificial intelligence in the future,

00:10:18.348 --> 00:10:20.253
we shouldn't only be asking ourselves,

00:10:20.277 --> 00:10:21.645
"Can we build it?"

00:10:21.669 --> 00:10:23.563
But we should also be asking ourselves,

00:10:23.587 --> 00:10:27.300
"What idea of the human
do we want to have reflected back to us?"

00:10:27.820 --> 00:10:30.513
This is an essentially philosophical idea,

00:10:30.537 --> 00:10:33.534
and it's one that can't be answered
with software alone,

00:10:33.558 --> 00:10:38.535
but I think requires a moment
of species-wide, existential reflection.

NOTE Paragraph

00:10:39.040 --> 00:10:40.193
Thank you.

NOTE Paragraph

00:10:40.217 --> 00:10:42.912
(Applause)