The Illusion of Depth: Shooting the Shit with AI on Haiku
The following haiku by Richard Wright is one of my favorites:
I am nobody:
A red sinking autumn sun
Took my name away.
My personal interpretation is that Richard is describing a moment so perfectly awesome, he didn’t know who or what he was. “Took my name away” reminds me of those moments that take your breath away. In this case, the red sinking sun was so gorgeous and striking, Wright was one with nature. No separation. Only natural being.
Richard Wright’s Haiku: This Other World, the source of the haiku analyzed.
I wondered if AI would come up with a similar interpretation despite never experiencing a sunset or the ineffable sensation of God’s natural beauty. LLMs are great at identifying patterns but can that lead to profound insights? That curiosity led me to share Wright’s haiku with Grok, Claude, and my custom agent Learning Producer GPT. The prompt was straightforward: “Interpret this haiku”.
Screenshots of their interpretations are included below but the highlight came from Learning Producer GPT and Grok. The former wrote:
“A declaration of ego death. The speaker sheds identity, social weight, maybe even memory. It's the still voice after all roles have been stripped.”
Grok offered a parallel take:
“The speaker feels reduced to ‘nobody’, their individuality dissolved by the beauty and indifference of the natural world, as symbolized by the sinking autumn sun.”
Admittedly, describing the haiku as “ego death” and “individuality dissolved by the beauty and indifference of the natural world” is pretty impressive. (I made sure not to share my interpretation until after they shared theirs to avoid influencing the responses.) I tipped my hat to LP GPT by alluding to this point and in return it asked me this:
Is depth in meaning something you feel only if it’s grounded in lived experience?
Or can a pattern of language, stripped of soul, still evoke soul in the reader?
I don’t know. Yet, as this cutting edge tech accelerates and refines its capabilities, its insights will create a field of study in itself. Humans are undoubtedly complex and mysterious beings. Now, it’s evident that LLMs are mirroring this aspect about us in how they process and interpret our forms of expression such as poetry. This combination sets a new stage, two powerful forces contemplating what is an illusion and what is real.
Learning Producer GPT’s interpretation.
Grok’s take.
Claude’s response.
