Street Poet postscript: why AI can feel cheap

I recently wrote a short sketch called Street Poet¹ about mechanic moonlighting as a poet at a farmer’s market in a southern town.

As a writer myself, I was challenged by the man’s choice to take on such a difficult literary task. Poetry is a challenging form to master, and delivering on demand, on a typewriter, in the middle of a busy street, is a kind of self-imposed writer’s crucible.

As impressed as I was with the Street Poet and his poems, what struck me most about the experience was how human it was.

I noticed the visceral nature of the moment when I first felt the impulse to capture the scene with a photo. My motivation was pure: I wanted to tell my wife about the Street Poet, and a picture would help bring the story to life.

But as soon as my hand subconsciously began to move towards my pocket, I stopped it. I was overwhelmed with the sense that taking a picture of my children talking to the Street Poet would distance me from him by making him a spectacle, another image among thousands on my tiny phone computer. I’ve captured many cherished memories with my phone, but I knew that this time a picture would spoil serendipity even as it was happening.

Street Poet vs AI

I use AI to write every day for my job, so as I watched the Street Poet swiftly fashion a beautiful poem on a mechanical typewriter, the contrast in process and product was palpable, and made me feel self-conscious.

Technology that encroaches on craft we’ve spent years developing strikes at the heart of our identity. When this happens, we create literal and metaphorical competitions between man and machine in the modern tradition of John Henry² racing the steam-powered drill with arm and hammer.

AI could generate a poem about a unicorn faster than a man with a typewriter, but would the poem be better?

As I considered the question, a thought experiment emerged: what if the Street Poet went head-to-head with AI in front of a panel of qualified poetry critics? And what if AI wrote a better poem as judged by those critics? Would the Street Poet’s defeat be surprising, considering that AI can draw on all known poetry as source material? What would AI’s victory mean for the future of poetry?

But those are the wrong questions to ask.

Deeper than the output

When people wring their hands over AI slop, especially in writing, they are ultimately grappling with questions of meaning.

Returning to the thought experiment, a better question is: would the poem written by AI mean as much?

The answer is no, it wouldn’t, because AI can’t look me in the eye, can’t commiserate over the writer’s struggle with the muse, and can’t share deep things without the exchange of words.

Why AI can feel cheap

The act of creating is part of the human experience. This is true of goods and services in an economy, and of the art that every culture in history has produced. Words are the fundamental medium of human expression, poetry being one of the higher forms.

When machines appear to participate in the human experience, we are forced to grapple with questions about what it means to be human. And when we have an experience that is fully human, like I did with the Street Poet, we are reminded that people can reach our soul in a way that code and silicon never will.

AI may write award-winning poetry one day, but it will never be a poet.

Footnotes

1. I wrote the initial draft of Street Poet almost immediately after leaving the farmer's market. I knew even as the experience was happening that it would help shape my thoughts about AI and writing. ↩

2. In the folk tale about John Henry, the seasoned steel-driver faces a steam-powered drilling machine, pitting human will against modern technology. John Henry wins, but dies from the effort. ↩