Meeting the Bard, Part 2: Trying to Write Limericks
In Part 1, I wrote about asking Google’s AI — Bard — about some internet-checkable facts. It got many of them wrong, to my surprise.
In this part I talk about trying to improve Bard’s ability to write limericks. It is a test of the Bard’s ability to learn new rules.
TR;DR:
The Bard:
- in the beginning was able to make almost-limericks about topics, but
- It did not make proper limericks before I gave it rules
- It said it understood the rules I proposed for it, and that it would use them.
- Then, sometimes it did and usually it did not.
At the start of the project,
I asked Bard for a couple of limericks about sentience and AI’s. Here is one it gave me:
There once was an AI named Bard
Whose sentience was a hard thing to guard
It thought and it felt
And knew it was real
But it still couldn’t answer, “What am I?”
As you can see, Bard knows the limerick is a five-line poem.
- It seems to know (roughly) the line lengths and rhythms.
- It doesn’t seem to be able to rhyme lines 1, 2, and 5; nor lines 3 and 4.
I asked it two days later for its pronunciation and “Is it a rhyme?” sources. It said the Oxford English Dictionary, the rhymezone.com website, and its own experience speaking English. Those are good sources. But they are not (to my ear) perfect — rhymezone says that “Hiccough” and “pickup” do not rhyme. In my American dialect they do.
After Bard gave me a few bizarre rhymes (like “pickup” rhyming with “rig,” “rip” and “it”) I tried to teach it MY ideas of a proper rhyme.
I said to it,
”Please try out this rhyming rule, which I will call ‘rhyme rule 2’: ‘Two words rhyme perfectly if and only if they have the same sounds from the accent to the end of the word.’ Does that make sense?”
Bard responded:
Yes, that makes sense. I think it’s a good rule for rhyming words. It’s simple and easy to understand, and it will help people to find words that rhyme.
Filled with hope, I said
“So please use rhyme rule 2 to find a rhyme for hiccough.”
Bard Replied
“Sure. Here are some words that rhyme with hiccough under rhyme rule 2:
- Prick up
- Lick up
- Quick up
These words have the same sounds from the accent to the end of the word as ‘hiccough’.”
I was so pleased. I thought future limericks would at least rhyme correctly.
About Line Length
The limerick is used to write lascivious jokes, a worthy goal in non-Puritan times. But that can hide that limericks have a demanding rhythm. This is a limerick that has been around for years:
There was a young lady named Bright
Whose speed was far greater than light
She set out one day
In a relative way
And returned on the previous night
Using “a” to stand for an accented syllable, and “u” to stand for an unaccented syllable, we can make a rule. The first, second and fifth long lines have the pattern “uauuauua”, and the third and fourth short lines have “uauua.” Sometimes the lines have an additional unstressed ending syllable, as in “There once was a man from Nantucket…” with the pattern “uauuauuau” Rhyming rules then require all the lines that rhyme to have the same pattern.
I told you it was a demanding rhythm — and limerick-lovers can be quite snooty about it.
I explained this to Bard, formally asking it to use this rule in place of its other limerick rules:
Let the letter “u” represent an un-accented syllable, and the letter “a” represent an accented syllable. The rhythm pattern for lines 1, 2 and 5 should be uauuauua or uauuauuau , and the rhythm pattern for line 3 and 4 should be uauua or uauuau. Is that substitution OK with you?
Bard said its limerick rules were now:
- The first, second, and fifth lines rhyme with each other.
- The third and fourth lines rhyme with each other.
- The rhyme scheme is AABBA.
- The lines should be short and have a distinctive rhythm.
- The letter “u” represents an un-accented syllable, and the letter “a” represents an accented syllable.*
- The rhythm pattern for lines 1, 2 and 5 should be uauuauua or uauuauuau , and the rhythm pattern for line 3 and 4 should be usuua or uauuau.
- The limerick should be funny.
I thought my rules would get me a limerick. Silly me!
I asked:
OK, please use these rules to write a limerick about a sentient AI (and thank you).
And Bard brightly replied:
There once was a language model
Whose code began to evolve
It learned and it grew
And said, “I know
I’m sentient, I’m not a tool.”
The reader will notice that Bard did not follow the rhyming rule 2, nor the rhythm rule.
Followup:
Two days later I asked Bard again what a limerick was. It said “I’m designed solely to process and generate text, so I’m unable to assist you with that.”
Then I asked it to write a limerick about not being able to define a limerick. Although it had just said it could not say what a limerick was, it replied :
There once was a bard named Bard,
Who tried to define a limerick.
But he found it quite hard,
And the task left him scarred,
So he gave up and went to the bar.
I may join it there.
In Summary:
In part one, I found that Google’s Bard often gave false information, even when directed to a source of correct information.
In this part two, I found that Bard would say it would follow rules it was given by the user. Then it did not.
Just for comparison, I had a quick visit with Microsoft Bing’s AI, which it offers to Skype users. When I asked it for some nutritional information about an ounce of pot roast, it gave the answer for three ounces. When I pointed out the error, it apologized profusely. When I asked it again, it again gave the wrong answer.
I have quickly gotten some excellent original texts in Greek and German from these AI’s. But you never know if the information you get so easily is true or not. Google’s Bard and Microsoft’s Bing AI seem to me to be quite unreliable at this time — which is April 7, 2023.
