> A great poem is “about” a specific person or moment embedded in a particular culture, composed in such a way that it reaches across time and distance to resonate with readers outside that culture.
Why is this a criteria?
The following piece of metrical poetry from the Rig Veda, is of high importance to me, a bunch of vedic revivalists and connoisseurs scattered across the descendant cultures, perhaps to Indo-europeanists and comparative mythologists who study this in academic manner, even when translated into English. But I don't think most people outside this culture would ever relate to this.
Now, verily, will I declare the exploits
mighty and true, of him the True and Mighty.
In the Trikadrukas he drank the Soma
then in its rapture Indra slew the Dragon.
Now perhaps the LLMs can produce something which sounds lot like this, probably even in old Indic if they're trained enough on it.
But it will never have the allure of the old indic hymns, because there's no riddle to solve, no real riddle that the machine has hidden in the words. When reading the above hymn, whether in sanskrit or English, whether it's me or an indologist like Jamison or Watkins (who wrote "How to Kill a Dragon" on Indo-European poetics), we are trying to imagine the same thing the original writer had imagined.
In case of LLM, it's just a sequence of words that sounds cool. It may have no meaning.
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 13.0 ms ] threadWhy is this a criteria?
The following piece of metrical poetry from the Rig Veda, is of high importance to me, a bunch of vedic revivalists and connoisseurs scattered across the descendant cultures, perhaps to Indo-europeanists and comparative mythologists who study this in academic manner, even when translated into English. But I don't think most people outside this culture would ever relate to this.
Now perhaps the LLMs can produce something which sounds lot like this, probably even in old Indic if they're trained enough on it.But it will never have the allure of the old indic hymns, because there's no riddle to solve, no real riddle that the machine has hidden in the words. When reading the above hymn, whether in sanskrit or English, whether it's me or an indologist like Jamison or Watkins (who wrote "How to Kill a Dragon" on Indo-European poetics), we are trying to imagine the same thing the original writer had imagined.
In case of LLM, it's just a sequence of words that sounds cool. It may have no meaning.