Limericks Vs AI: What would AI make of One of Literature's Most Nonsensical Poetry Forms?
This one thought has been occupying my mind: what would AI make of limericks? And is it true that a joke is no fun once you need to explain it?
In a sense, I guess we will never know how AI is truly coping with limericks given that it has no original thoughts whatsoever, and only summarises what people all over the internet, or in digitalised books, say... and is this statement even true? While we all know AI is one of our most contentious, ubiqitious, and progressively more and more open-ended issues, we all still seem to have instinctive and definitive ideas (of which I am no exception, of course). A good (albeit annoying) side of having a blog, however, is that writing down and seeing anything on paper makes me question everything in a way no spoken words ever could. I have only questions, no resolutions.
So this is why I'm doing it - and what am I doing, exactly?
I. THE EXPERIMENT
I want to expose AI to a limerick - and see what it might do with it.
My first immediate thought was to share big, historical limericks with AI - those of Edward Lear, of course - but then it crossed my mind that AI could and certainly would do its research regarding the genre and therefore would list stolen opinions. Don't come for me; I do know AI would, in all cases, list stolen opinions, but I still want to present it with a task where it has significantly less help than it would have - were I to make it face Edward Lear. So, we are better off going with an original one (written by me), which we will.
So, Let's predict!
II. MY PREDICTION PRIOR TO THE EXPERIMENT
I don't quite know why, but I instinctively thought that something quite absurd, quite nonsensical, quite limerick-like would break AI. Period. That AI would present a word salad that would leave the reader (aka you and me) fatigued and somehow hollow. Or rather: upon sharing limericks with AI, either you would need to reason with AI why the said thing is, in fact, hilarious, or AI would try to break it down for you dead-seriously why limericks have such a choke-hold on (some) humans.
And to be fair, just as with Monty Python, I guess limericks aren't that fun for everyone. So make whatever you wish with that, AI.
And while limericks have indeed been researched and dysected by literary historians, they are no fun if you need to explain them in depth.
III. SOME NOTES ON LIMERICKS BEFORE WE GET A START ON OUR EXPERIMENT
While I am not an expert on the topic, I did my best to research this poetry form (or sub-genre), and not just re-purpose AI summaries. These are my findings:
1.) Where is Limerick?
This might surprise some, but Limerick is actually an Irish city in the mid-west region of the country, which I have been lucky enough to visit. Its vibes are composed of a well-established university city and vibrant local culture that, in my experience, seems sunny (I certainly was lucky with the weather) and somewhat serious; serious as a person with healthy, though not flashy, self-esteem may be. Limerick seems to be doing its own thing, focused, unbothered, and not shouting its credo from the highest rooftop. So, with that being said, I could not find anything limerick-like about it at all, and have found no indication of it being in any way connected to the the sub-genre either. And yet...isn't it a mystery? I wouldn't dare call it mere luck that these two share the same name.
2.)What is a Limerick?
While limericks seem to ring a bell in most of us, our understanding tends to be vague and quite instinctual. I would say this might be partly due to the fact that, as with all poetry forms, limericks, too, have evolved, and many of the variations follow the form rather loosely.
But if we put the variations aside, and go back to the one version most of us are familiar with, we will (probably) need a little glossary...
...to talk about Edward Lear's limericks. These are the traditional parameters of a limerick:
3.)Who was Edward Lear?
Edward Lear (1812-1888) was an English landscape painter, a naturalist, and a poet (but firstly a painter - as I understand it, he earned his living through drawing and painting and worked for, for example, the British Museum). His most famous creation was The Book of Nonsense (first published in 1846), which contained his very own limericks alongside his very own illustrations. Some examples are:
He originally wrote the limericks and created the illustrations to entertain the children of the Earl of Derby - Lear had met the Earl at the Zoological Gardens in Regent's Park, and the Earl had showed such interest in the work of the young Lear that he frequented his study sessions quite often.
There is no space or time to go into more details about Lear here, but the fellow was interesting indeed, so look him up!
4.)Why am I going to Torment AI with Limericks and not, for example, Sonnets, or Haikus?
To be honest, it'd been an idea before I could reason why, but I think limericks came to me as a poetry form you could attempt to analyse (what couldn't we analyse?) but couldn't quite explain. As discussed, when explaining why something's funny, you are taking the edge off. In that sense, I guess, limericks were the most elusive literary genre I could think of - the one potentially with the most je ne sais quoi aspect (that one fascinating component you can't quite you put your finger on). The one you would be less effective at tackling with a random word salad. A limerick is not trying to be intellectual, so don't come for it with an intellect either...
IV. MY LIMERICK ABOUT MY GOLDEN RETRIEVER, MARCI (DOING MY BEST ATTEMPT TO ADHERE TO THE FORM!)
AND LAST BUT NOT LEAST - AI'S TAKE ON IT
I was undecided at first as to what to ask from AI exactly, so at the end, I didn't ask anything at all. I just shared the poem without any comment or question; I shared the mere text. Hence, AI was robbed of the pleasure of seeing my beautifully edited picture due to my mere (dark) intentions of not helping him out with visual aid (especially by clarifying what exactly I meant by the word 'Golden'). I used ChatGPT during this experiment.
To my great dissatisfaction, this is all ChatGPT had to say:
'😂 That’s a delightfully niche dog limerick. “Finicky Golden called Marci” has excellent storybook energy.
The parsley refusal is especially on-brand for a Golden who apparently has standards. 🐕🌿'
He's not completely wrong; Marci does have standards. And he also clearly didn't understand how much time it took me to put together this damn limerick. Not the content, but the metre... (AI was NOT used at any point during writing it.) AI also didn't bother to waste an analytical word salad on my little piece of poetry, and I feel deeply offended.
So next, I asked AI to illustrate it:
I don't know; I think my version was better.
AI kinda broke my will; I did not want to maintain this conversation anymore because AI had nothing to add whatsoever. I don't even know why I'd expected (even only on an emotional level) AI to recognise that I wanted to have a conversation about it, but without begging him to participate. I love humans, because they understand they are invited to chat. AI didn't ask anything, didn't offer anything. I feel like AI simply just didn't want to deal with me today. I cannot not take this personally, because whatever else I share with AI, it always has suggestions, questions, and therefore comes across as wanting to be involved. Plot twist - who would've thought: AI has an empty head of his own. So, is this success? Is this a conclusion? Did my limerick break AI? Or did I break AI?
Did I win? Why am I feeling down, then? Damn you, AI. I thought my bar was low, but apparently, not low enough.:D
Am I the issue? You tell me.
Bye for now. (Marci, for one, has never tried parsley, but all is not lost that is delayed...)
Till next time,
The Fearless Frock
resources:
Lear, Edward. A Book of Nonsense. Routledge, 2002. IEAS Szeged, ieas-szeged.hu/downtherabbithole/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Edward_Lear_Book_of_Nonsense_Routledge_Classics__2002.pdf
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