GPT in the Classroom, Part 2: Escape to America

Time to return to the classroom. I want to return to the question of authorship. First, I present the interaction that resulted in a poem, “Escape to America.” Once we’ve been through that we can ask: Who’s the author? 

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The poem, “Escape to America”

I want you to create a sonnet based on three short texts by Miriam Yevick. Use the first text for the first quatrain, the second text for the second quatrain, and the third text for the third quatrain. Create the final couplet as you will. Call the sonnet: Escape to America. Here are the three texts:

The tanks exuded power. The soldiers cast their vigor into the rows of women. The women’s hot breath floated back to them on the cheers. Girls showered flowers and kisses into the warrior’s path. This was the scent of war! The orderly formations loosened, females leaped from the sidewalk and ran into the mêlée. Soldiers broke rank and grabbed at random. The caravan driven on by the motorized units undulated forward amidst frenzied embraces.

Luckily the trains to Paris were still running normally. We were greatly surprised to encounter a city still believing in the protection offered by the Maginot Line (circumvented by the Nazis the previous week) and oblivious to what had happened and was happening some hundred miles to the North.

The next day we took a walk on Broadway. I saw a striking dress in a shop window: sky blue with bold purple stripes descending diagonally from both shoulders to meet along the centerline of the body. I went into the store and bought the dress, which accentuated my youthful shape, for $ 1. Ready-made!

Here is a sonnet, as requested, based on Miriam Yevick’s three texts:

Escape to America

The tanks exuded power, soldiers’ cheers
Roared as their vigor met the women's cries.
Bouquets of kisses, flowers, flung through tears,
Unordered ranks dissolved in frenzy’s guise.

The train to Paris held us; still we sped
Toward streets naïve, in thrall to the Maginot,
Where brittle hopes ignored the northern dread—
The unseen storm that forced us here to go.

And Broadway’s throng—a different world it seemed.
In sky-blue dress, bold purple stripes askew,
I saw myself transformed, as if I dreamed;
Ready-made youth, America’s own hue.

And now, the past fades dim beyond my sight—
A foreign land, forsaken for this light.

I like what you did a lot, but I want two changes: In the first quatrain, somehow indicate that the soldiers are Nazis. Maybe do it by mentioning the swastika. In the third quatrain, I’m not sure about “America’s own hue.” The second line mentions purple stripes, but purple is not particularly identified with America.

Here is the revised sonnet with your requested changes:

Escape to America

The tanks exuded power, swastikas spread,
Their vigor met the women’s frantic cries.
Bouquets of kisses, flowers, flung through dread,
Unordered ranks dissolved in frenzy’s guise.

The train to Paris held us; still we sped
Toward streets naïve, in thrall to the Maginot,
Where brittle hopes ignored the northern dread—
The unseen storm that forced us here to go.

And Broadway’s throng—a different world it seemed.
In sky-blue dress, bold stripes in proud display,
I saw myself transformed, as if I dreamed;
Ready-made youth, new freedoms on my way.

And now, the past fades dim beyond my sight—
A foreign land, forsaken for this light.

* * * * *

But who is the author?

There’s no doubt that ChatGPT, with the aid of FredTheHeretic (aka FTH), generated the words. In what sense is ChatGPT the author? It couldn’t have done it without FTH, which is a GPT, a user-created device that can be installed in ChatGPT so that it can generate specialized output. FTH contains a small collection of poems by Frederick Turner. Does that make Frederick Turner the author? He didn’t actually write the words, but they’re (more or less) in his style.

What about Miriam Yevick? The poem is about her life, her escape from a Europe in the process of being swallowed up by Nazi Germany. Not only is it about her life, but it’s based on her words, words from her memoire, A Testament for Ariela. Surely Yevick deserves some authorship credit.

But how did FTH obtain those words? They didn’t just leap out of the book and into the computer. I selected the passages from the book – they are not contiguous in the text – and presented them to FTH. When FTH’s first try was a little wonky, I suggested changes. Surely I deserve some credit.

So far we’ve got ChatGPT, FTH, Miriam Yevick, and me. ChatGPT didn’t spontaneously emerge into existence one day when a computer had some CPU cycles to spare. It was created by a team of programmers, engineers, data scientists, and technicians at OpenAI. And FTH was created by Paul Fishwick and his graduate students at the University of Texas at Dallas. How do we credit these people?

This is not a new problem. The motion picture industry has been up against it for years and has evolved a rather elaborate set of conventions for doling out credit, credits negotiated with the various parties, both individuals, and organizations, involved. I don’t intend to propose a solution in this case. But the problem is now here and we’re going to have to deal with it.

One final point: It seems to me that denying “Escape to America” is meaningful because the words were actually produced by a computer, using that as an excuse to assert that it’s not a poem, that’s bone-headed, stupid, and short-sighted. We’ve got intellectual work to do.

GPT in the Classroom, Part 1: Five Sonnets on the Gettysburg Address

I realize that, with ready access to sophisticated chatbots, some students will use them to complete writing assignments rather than do the writing themselves. Since I no longer teach, however important that issue is, it is not a problem for me. I set it aside. That is not what this essay is about. I’ve got other fish to fry.

What opportunities does the existence of competent AI-generated literary texts present for teaching about the nature of texts? An obvious opportunity is to consider the difference between human-created and AI-generated texts. But that doesn’t interest me, not here and now. It’s too difficult. I am willing to take these texts at face value, giving them no favor or disfavor.

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This is the first in a series of three posts in which I take up other issues. In this post I present five AI-generated sonnets based on the text of “Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address” and deal with the question of authorship. In the second essay I am going to present a poem based on a humorous story that Pope Francis told in a recent New York Times op-ed. In the third and final essay I once again take up the issue of authorship, using a sonnet based on three paragraphs from Miriam Yevick’s A Testament for Ariela.

The Five Sonnets

A GPT is a user-created device that can be installed in ChatGPT so that it can generate specialized output. These sonnets are generated by a GPT known as FredTheHeretic, aka FTH. It contains a small collection of poems by Frederic Turner that is uses as models and templates.

Here is the prompt I gave FTH:

Give me a sonnet based on the following text:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Here are the five sonnets it generated:

The Battle-Field: A Sonnet

Upon this ground where blood and tears have lain,
A nation forged in liberty still stands.
These fields once drank the courage of brave hands,
Yet whisper now of loss, enduring pain.

No words of ours could sanctify this space;
The deeds of those who fell surpass our breath.
Their valor, richer than the soil of death,
Ensures that time cannot their work erase.

We bear the burden, those who linger here,
To finish what their sacrifice began,
To weave a union, broad and strong and clear,
Upholding freedom's light for every man.

Let not their purpose fade, nor courage wane;
That dream they died for shall not die in vain.

The Unfinished Work

Here lies the proof of freedom’s fragile dream,
A nation’s heart laid bare in sacrifice.
The dead, whose silent deeds beyond suffice,
Have sown with blood what words can only seem.

No stone can hallow what their courage sealed,
No tongue can add to what they’ve dared and done.
The work remains; their labor is begun,
And calls us now upon this battle-field.

Shall we, the living, falter in this task,
Or turn away from what their lives bestowed?
Or shall we bear the torch, their honor’s load,
And in their shadow, shed our timid mask?

A government, by us, for us, must rise,
Lest freedom fall and perish where it lies.