robo/Poe/t

In Race Against the Machine Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee find another compelling explanation for the Great Joblessness we are currently navigating. Rather than in a deeply cyclical or deeply structural (loss of competitive edge leading to a Great Stagnation) quagmire, the US (and other developed economies) are facing a Great Restructuring: technological innovation is accelerating so fast that it has become increasingly hard for the workforce to keep up with machines. In the wake of the Great Recession, employers bought more machines, but did not rehire people. As a result, a whole swath of the traditional labor force is facing chronic unemployment. As the frontier of automation and artificial intelligence expands to absorbe occupations previously believed the prerogative of human hands and minds, acquisition of complex skills seems the only winning strategy. The authors are fundamentally techno-optimists and believe the "tools [of digital technology] are greatly improving our world and our lives, and will continue to do so. We are strong digital optimists, and we want to convince you to be one, too." In interviews, they point to areas where human creativity thrives.

Poetry, that exquisite form of human creation (even etymologically!), immediately comes to mind. Curiously, in 1846, Edgar Allan Poe published The Philosophy of Composition. A veritable recipe, qualitative and quantitative, as to the creation of a successful poem. Poe purports this to be a faithful description of his composition of The Raven. At times it reads like an algorithm, from the choice of topic, to length, to diction, "with the precision and rigid consequence of a mathematical problem." One would think it easy to code these prescriptions into a poetry-processor! And indeed automatic text generation was one of the first milestones of artificial intelligence (think ELIZA).
Not so fast! The subtext of this essay and of Poe's entire career left many of his contemporaries and modern literati perplex as to whether this was serious or one more hoax in the author's remarkable and inimitable repertoire. Poe as humbug, or Poe as reflexive and calculating poet?
No job for a roboPoeT!