Cast Wide Your Nets
AI for Poets
‘There was a little girl’, wrote Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, long before the advent of artificial intelligence, ‘Who had a little curl, right in the middle of her forehead. When she was good, she was very good indeed. But when she was bad she was horrid.’
The large language models I have been using for the past few months resemble this lass. Sometimes, they achieve wonders, saving me enormous time and trouble, and, better yet, introducing me to sources and resources I might otherwise have missed. At other times, however, I ended up with a dog’s breakfast, the sort of result that Jackson Pollack might have achieved while under the influence of an especially potent potable.
So, here is how I square this particular circle.
