My post today is certainly a cautionary tale about AI, and I suspect that you’ll find all of this as astonishing as I do.
Before I get to my unbelievable story – and I’m not kidding when I say I almost fell out of my chair when I realized what had happened – you need two bits of background information:
FIRST: On August 11, my daily post focused on Hart Crane’s poem “To Emily Dickinson.” I gave him an “A” for effort, but also criticized the conventional format of the poem and Crane’s use of stilted and heavy language that clouded the clarity of his tribute.
I did say I appreciated his subtle nods to Dickinson’s poetry; for example, his use of the words “vain,” “labor,” “stillness,” and – or course – “Eternity” (all taken from very familiar poems by Dickinson).
I followed that with this statement (and this is a key part to remember as it connects to my astounding account of AI):
“But then he (i.e., Hart Crane) threw in his own Dickinson-esque terminology – or at least what seems to be his perception of Dickinson-esque word choice, like ‘momently,’ ‘descried,’ ‘reconcilement,’ and ‘rubyless.’”
SECOND: On August 13, I published a post about a book written by a professor at George Mason University. The site the professor used to promote his book included a review, and part of that review said this:
“(Dr.) Nanian’s study of poetic language and its energies is an original and bold attempt to conceptualize both the anatomy and history of modern poetry that has the philosophical sweep, critical sophistication, and elegant clarity of a Northrop Frye or a Kenneth Burke.”
I then wrote (and again, this is the important part related to my tale), “I’ll admit, I don’t know who Northrop Frye or Kenneth Burke are, but I’ll be sure to Google-search them later (I did; more on them on a later date).”
Okay, so knowing all of this, here’s what happened:
I started to prepare a follow-up post on Northrop Frye and Kenneth Burke.
Frye, according to Wikipedia, “was a Canadian literary critic and literary theorist, considered one of the most influential of the 20th century.” Kenneth Burke was “an American literary theorist, poet, essayist, and novelist, who wrote on 20th-century philosophy, aesthetics, criticism, and rhetorical theory.”
Hmm. I figured that if these two critics were influential in the 20th century, I wondered what they thought about Emily Dickinson. After all, the first “complete” edition of her poetry wasn’t published until 1955, and most other major editions of her work came out in various decades of the 1900s.
So yesterday, I ran a Google-search with something like, “What did Northrup Frye say about Emily Dickinson.”
A small “overview” paragraph popped up, as did other “highlights,” for example, on topics like “Universal Themes” and “Personal Language” (as shown in the pic below).
Before I get to my unbelievable story – and I’m not kidding when I say I almost fell out of my chair when I realized what had happened – you need two bits of background information:
FIRST: On August 11, my daily post focused on Hart Crane’s poem “To Emily Dickinson.” I gave him an “A” for effort, but also criticized the conventional format of the poem and Crane’s use of stilted and heavy language that clouded the clarity of his tribute.
I did say I appreciated his subtle nods to Dickinson’s poetry; for example, his use of the words “vain,” “labor,” “stillness,” and – or course – “Eternity” (all taken from very familiar poems by Dickinson).
I followed that with this statement (and this is a key part to remember as it connects to my astounding account of AI):
“But then he (i.e., Hart Crane) threw in his own Dickinson-esque terminology – or at least what seems to be his perception of Dickinson-esque word choice, like ‘momently,’ ‘descried,’ ‘reconcilement,’ and ‘rubyless.’”
SECOND: On August 13, I published a post about a book written by a professor at George Mason University. The site the professor used to promote his book included a review, and part of that review said this:
“(Dr.) Nanian’s study of poetic language and its energies is an original and bold attempt to conceptualize both the anatomy and history of modern poetry that has the philosophical sweep, critical sophistication, and elegant clarity of a Northrop Frye or a Kenneth Burke.”
I then wrote (and again, this is the important part related to my tale), “I’ll admit, I don’t know who Northrop Frye or Kenneth Burke are, but I’ll be sure to Google-search them later (I did; more on them on a later date).”
Okay, so knowing all of this, here’s what happened:
I started to prepare a follow-up post on Northrop Frye and Kenneth Burke.
Frye, according to Wikipedia, “was a Canadian literary critic and literary theorist, considered one of the most influential of the 20th century.” Kenneth Burke was “an American literary theorist, poet, essayist, and novelist, who wrote on 20th-century philosophy, aesthetics, criticism, and rhetorical theory.”
Hmm. I figured that if these two critics were influential in the 20th century, I wondered what they thought about Emily Dickinson. After all, the first “complete” edition of her poetry wasn’t published until 1955, and most other major editions of her work came out in various decades of the 1900s.
So yesterday, I ran a Google-search with something like, “What did Northrup Frye say about Emily Dickinson.”
A small “overview” paragraph popped up, as did other “highlights,” for example, on topics like “Universal Themes” and “Personal Language” (as shown in the pic below).
 | Here comes the part where I almost fell out of my chair: When I first read the statement under “Personal Language” – and I got to the second comma (“He identified Dickinson’s distinctive use of language, including terms like ‘momently’) – I thought to myself, “Okay, maybe I owe Hart Crane an apology.” But then I saw the rest of the statement which included the words “descried” and “rubyless.” Now hold on just a minute. Those were three of the four words I wrote about in my post on August 11 – and Dickinson NEVER even used the word “rubyless.” I wondered what in the world was going on here, so I clicked on that little link icon just at the end of that statement. |
| To my utter surprise, what popped up before my eyes? My very own site, thedickinson.net, with my poetry blog – with my posts about Crane’s poem (8/11, where I mentioned the words “momently,” descried,” and “rubyless”) and Dr. Nanaian’s book (8/13, where I mentioned Northrup Frye). Say whaaaa? |  |
Google’s AI overview had confused and blended two of my own posts and somehow regurgitated and then returned the misinformation to my own query, “What did Northrup Frye say about Emily Dickinson?”
I could not believe what I was reading!
If others had been completing research and read what I had received, they would have thought it was all legitimate – but it wasn’t at all. I didn’t even know who Northrup Frye was – but there was my statement about the words used in Hart Crane’s poem, “To Emily Dickinson,” and it was presented by Google as Northrup Frye’s estimation of Emily Dickinson’s “unique poetic voice.”
I could not believe what I was reading!
If others had been completing research and read what I had received, they would have thought it was all legitimate – but it wasn’t at all. I didn’t even know who Northrup Frye was – but there was my statement about the words used in Hart Crane’s poem, “To Emily Dickinson,” and it was presented by Google as Northrup Frye’s estimation of Emily Dickinson’s “unique poetic voice.”
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