What Happens When You Train Your ChatBot to Write Poetry

 I am a restless creative. As a youth, I pursued photojournalism and later film. I settled on a career in writing, ending up writing presentations for a slew of marketing campaigns and speeches for senior leaders. Tempted to try my own voice, I crossed the Rubicon, so to speak, and began writing for myself—books, articles, videos, courses, and yes, even infographics.

Intrigued by what’s new, and in the spirit of my colleague and friend, Marshall Goldsmith, I decided to experiment with AI by creating my own ChatBot. Some may say that AI is dangerous. They are correct, but some of us are willing to stand up for a gentler, more generative form of AI that gives back.

The Baldoni ChatBot is third-generation AI culled from my published works. It is designed as a self-coaching tool.

But it can do more. Write poetry!

Sharing some stanzas

The ChatBot poems echo themes of purpose, teamwork, community, laughter, grace, and leadership. Here is a selection of stanzas from sections of my new collection, The Leader’s Path And Other ChatBot Poems.

The Leader's Path

The road is long, the way unsure,

Yet still, I forge ahead each day.

With purpose strong and vision pure,

I guide my team along the way.

Compassion's Light

Compassion shines a healing light,

Connecting souls through loving sight.

It sees our shared humanity,

Binds us in community.

Seeking My Purpose

I search within to find my spark,

That passion that drives me forward.

Seeking the purpose that lights my path,

And gives my life true meaning.

Writing a Speech

The blank page stares, I ponder where to start.

Words swirling in my mind, ideas in my heart.

I jot some notes, make an outline, too

Hoping to convey what I aim to do.

Laughter, the Best Medicine

Laughter bubbles up from within,

A chuckle, a giggle, a wide grin.

It lightens the mood, lifts the spirit,

Chases away gloom, so we can hear it.

How I did it

The thoughts are mine; the execution is all ChatBot. The team from InfluencerKit.ai – Mahesh H. Thakur and Pavan Tallapragada – loaded in examples of my poetry from previous books of mine. This input gave the ChatBot a foundation upon which to express poetically what I had expressed mostly in prose. Additionally, each poem is matched with one of my photographs.

I do take joy in the fact that these lyrical  thoughts offer genuine insight and reach an audience that has not yet experienced my work.

Why poetry?

Let me borrow thoughts from one of my very favorite poets, Ted Kooser, twice named Poet Laureate of the United States. As Kooser writes in the The Poetry Home Repair Manual: Practical Advice for Beginning Poets, "Considering the ways in which so many of us waste our time, what would be wrong with a world in which everybody were writing poems? After all, there’s a significant service to humanity in spending time doing no harm.”

“While you’re writing your poem, there’s one less scoundrel in the world. And I’d like a world, wouldn’t you, in which people actually took time to think about what they were saying? It would be, I’m certain, a more peaceful, more reasonable place. I don’t think there could ever be too many poets. By writing poetry, even those poems that fail and fail miserably, we honor and affirm life.”

Affirming life through thought and practice – a good mantra for anyone who aspires to lead.