ChatGPT and Poetry: A Thought Experiment
Even robotic food carts need love.
PATERSON, NEW JERSEY, AUGUST 18, 2026. I’m Adam, a 25-year-old Uber driver, living in a studio apartment over an auto-parts store in lovely Paterson, New Jersey. I’m a smart, self-educated guy, ChatGPT teaches me what I want to know, a little math, philosophy, whatever. Fuck college.
Chat gives me personal advice, too, like how to get Tara back. We met last spring when I gave her a ride to Newark airport.
Cool drizzly day, we chat about this and that, wipers laying down a beat as we cruise down the Jersey Turnpike. She tells me about herself, teaches English at Passaic Community, hates AI, rotting students’ brains, hates robot food carts invading Paterson. She’s flying to Colorado to see her parents.
As Tara talks, I check her out in the mirror, green eyes, red hair, freckles, oh the freckles kill me. She’ll never go out with me, too pretty, smart, I’m guessing 10 years older than me. But when I jump out of my Kia and hand her red-and-white checked bag to her, our eyes lock, I hear myself ask if she wants to get coffee or whatever when she’s back in Paterson.
She says yeah! We exchange numbers, she texts a week later, wants to meet. I say yeah! We go out a few months, pizza, Thai food, movies, my place, her place. I’m so happy, but sad, too, I know this can’t last.
And it doesn’t. She breaks up with me, says I don’t want enough out of life, no ambition, addiction to kratom and ChatGPT doesn’t help, and she’s too old for me. She’s nice about it, makes it worse, I can’t get mad, just feel sad.
Chat says Tara’s real problem with me is money, I don’t make enough, plus Waymo is coming to Jersey soon, gonna take my job. When that happens, forget the girlfriend, I won’t have enough for rent or food. Chat says I better figure out how to make money with AI before it takes my job. But how?
Need to use Chat to do something not everyone is doing. So online gambling is out, and stock-picking, betting on prediction markets or crypto-currency. Forget being an influencer, pushing kratom, THC drinks, peptides. If every asshole is selling, who’s buying?
I like using Chat to solve math puzzles, but Terence Tao and other bigshots got the math market covered. Same with music, films, arty stuff. Big companies hire bigshots to churn out AI-enabled videos, songs, no chance for a little guy like me.
I take a day off from Uber to brainstorm. Pop three kratom capsules, two THC gummies, lie on my couch, ask Chat: How can you make money for me? We go back and forth, then this idea pops up, not sure if it’s me or Chat: Poetry!
Now this is funny. Tara teaches poetry, loves it. First time at her place, she shows me poems in this rag, New Yorker, reads a few aloud. Ugh. I pretend to like them, because I like her, but I don’t get poetry. If you got something to say, say it!
Tara reads “The Red Wheelbarrow,” poem by this guy Williams, famous poet, lived right here in Paterson:
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow glazed with rain
water beside the white
chickens
When Tara stops reading and looks at me, I say, Wait, that’s it? She nods, looking a little annoyed, and I say, Oh, wow, amazing. But I think, Come on, this is bullshit, poetry is a con, people pretend to like it because they think it makes them seem smart. Like The Odyssey and other Nolan movies.
Now, lying on my couch, I think, Yeah, poetry is a con, and that’s cool, cuz I want in. Chat says a few poets get rich and famous. Kahil Gibran, Rumi, Rod McKuen, Mary Oliver, Allen Ginsberg, Sylvia Plath, Bukowski, Patti Smith, Matthew McConaughey.
Wait, isn’t McConaughey an actor? Yeah, okay, he doesn’t count. Most famous poets are dead or old, no competition, poetry is a wide-open market, waiting for someone to come in and monetize the shit out of it.
I’ll make Chat write New Yorker poems and send them to New Yorker. Except Tara says you have to know someone to get published there. Yeah, that’s how the con works, it’s not what you write, it’s who you know. Helps if you went to Yale or some other fancy school like this Kirchwey guy Tara raves about.
Here’s a better idea. Ask Chat to write like Williams, except updated, instead of wheelbarrows and chickens write poems about iPhones, killer robots, sexts, Chat, modern stuff. Yeah, I’ll be bigger than Williams, cooler, more famous. And richer.
I’ll post poems on TikTok, Instagram, get followers, pretentious podcasters will beg me to come on their shows. I’ll get shitfaced before interviews and talk like a crazy, mean drunk, like Micky Rourke in that movie Tara made me watch.
When podcasters ask why I started writing poetry, I’ll say I wanted to impress a girl, get laid, I hate poetry, think it’s all shit, including my own stuff. And I’ll mean all this, because it’s true! Super funny.
Maybe I’ll even admit Chat writes my poems. Then people will argue about whether I’m just another asshole selling AI slop or a super smart truth-telling cyber-poet. Social media will love me. Joe Rogan will invite me on, the first poet ever on his show, I’ll bring a bag of kratom and a bottle of tequila, do caps and shots with Joe.
Here’s a question, sort of philosophical: If Chat writes poetry for me, and I don’t have a clue what it means, is it poetry?
Hmm, that’s a tough one, better run by Chat. Chat says If people pay for poetry, subscribe to my YouTube channel to hear me read, it’s poetry.
And if I keep pretending to be a poet, and lots of people think I’m a poet, then I’m a poet. I mean, we’re all pretending in the end, right? Like the guy in the room pretending to know Chinese, at some point he really knows Chinese.
Whatever. Who gives a shit? Philosophy is an even bigger con than poetry. If I become a rich, famous poet, Tara will take me back. She’ll be impressed, even if she knows Chat wrote my poems. That’s all that matters, Tara taking me back.
Oh, and I can tell Uber and Waymo to fuck off, that matters too.
Further Reading: