Robot Burns poems created by artificial intelligence – Scotland on Sunday

They are some of the most well-known and loved poems in the world whose insightful sentiments have withstood the test of time over hundreds of years.

But now a student at the University of Glasgow has used a Robot Burns artificial intelligence (AI) poem generator programme to create almost instant works by Robert Burns, in honour of a fellow student, Chris, who took his own life on Burns Day, on 25 January 2016.

Perry Gibson, who is studying for a PhD in computing science, is donating all proceeds of his limited edition Robot Burns pamphlet to The Samaritans, the suicide prevention charity.

The Robot Burns pamphlet includes 20 works across a variety of subjects and is accompanied by illustrations by Alasdair Currie, co-founder of independent Scottish publisher Hooltet Publishing.

Mr Gibson gathered a data set of 2,000 poems by Burns, used an algorithm and created a specific coding programme which were then analysed by the GPT-2 programme operated by OpenAI whose funders include technology entrepreneur Elon Musk.When the first Burns poem came out, I blinked. I hadnt thought of what the consequences would be.

When I started, I just wanted to learn more about the technology, I hadnt really thought too much about what the text was going to be.

Before doing this my knowledge of Burns wasnt more than the ordinary Scottish guy whod learned a couple of his poems in high school.

Now, because of losing Chris, Burns Day has been marked for me and his other friends in a way, and not for the best of reasons.

But reading Burns work, and also looking at the recent hypothesis that he might have had bi-polar has made me see him in a completely different light. Maybe hes had more influence on me than I thought.

Mr Gibson added: Im excited to hear what people think and how they feel Robot Burns compares to the work of Scotlands national bard.

Colin Waters, communications manager at the Scottish Poetry Library, said: What you wont find are many poetry generators that can produce poems in Scots.

Poets, like many professions, are waiting to see if the day has come a little closer when AI can complete their task better than them.

Many contemporary Scots havent got the hang of the Scots Burns wrote in his day, so itll be fascinating to see what a computer makes of it.

Once Robot Burns has mastered the language, itll be interesting to see what it writes about next.

Mr Waters added: I imagine its take on To a Mouse will be less about timrous beasties and more about the device we use to move a cursor across a screen.

l Robot Burns, by Perry Gibson and illustrated by Alasdair Currie, 10, available from robotburns.com

More:
Robot Burns poems created by artificial intelligence - Scotland on Sunday