On 6th September 2019, Natalie Wang posted a fragment of an original poem to Facebook. A tongue-in-cheek parody of Ng Yi-Sheng’s celebrated “A Loud Poem to be Read to a Very Obliging Audience”, it began with “I want a limpeh poem”.

 

temperature=0.7

 

I want a limpeh poem today

 

you don't mean it, you say

it's not my poem, but look

at the beginning of the first line

how the words are made

the structure of the first word

how the second word comes

to define the first word

you only mean that it's my poem

 

I want a limpeh poem today

 

you don't mean it, you say

you're not writing a limpeh poem

but I want a limpeh poem

for today-

 

 

On 21st August 2019, the large-sized GPT-2 model is pushed to OpenAI’s public Github repository. With 774 million parameters, it is still half the size of their full model, which remains unreleased at the time of writing.

 

On 3rd May 2019, OpenAI releases a “medium-sized” GPT-2 model to the public. It contains 355 million parameters trained on 40 gigabytes of Internet text, more than double the size of the first model they released two months ago.

 

temperature=0.75

 

I want a limpeh poem with an eye picture but he said just bring a selfie.

 

he said we do not have to be friends

and we have to be enemies.

 

soon we will be taking our relationship to the next level

by putting our differences in context

and talking about how difficult it is to be who we are.

 

we are each other's best friends.

we will be able to love each other without reservation

and make the best out of each other's lives.

 

we will find ways to work hard in our relationships

and make it to the top with a sense of pride

 

 

On 13th April 2019, Max Woolf, a data scientist at Buzzfeed, releases a software package written in Python called gpt-2-simple. He also produces tutorials to allow anyone to finetune the GPT-2 models on a custom corpus. The crucial text-generating function is reproduced below:

 

import gpt_2_simple as gpt2

 

session = gpt2.start_tf_sess()

gpt2.load_gpt2(sess1, run_name="run01")

 

gpt2.generate_to_file(session,

temperature=0.75,

destination_path=gen_file,

run_name="run01",

nsamples=50,

batch_size=5,

prefix="<|StartOfPost|>",

include_prefix=False,

truncate="<|EndOfPost|>",

)

 

He describes the keyword temperature in the above function as such:

The higher the temperature, the crazier the text (default 0.7, recommended to keep between

0.7 and 1.0)

 

temperature=0.8

 

I want a limpeh poem

 

you’ll be so tickled

with the kind of joy

you can only get

in this lifetime of passion

 

the truth is

you’ll just be wanting more

out of this candle than

you can ever imagine

 

why let your love for them wane

when you can so easily take it

to the next low point

 

when you can let it sabotage your faith

to make it seem that all of a sudden

the only thing you want from them

is a lolling tongue

 

what the fuck

who gives a fuck

who cares

you’re just a commuter

really,

what the fuck

you can have your cake and eat it too

 

 

On 14th February 2019, the startup OpenAI releases a large-scale language model named GPT-2. According to the researchers, it was “trained with a simple objective: predict the 1 next word, given all of the previous words within some text. ” They add, “Due to our concerns about malicious applications of the technology, we are not releasing the [full] trained model . . . we are instead releasing a much smaller model for researchers to experiment with.”

 

temperature=0.85

 

I want a limpeh poem about that

bus driver who only drives commercial trucks

because his dad is into metal welding.

Oh you want this? Ah yes. The Limpeh way,

the easy route. It will make you feel poor,

poor, not knowing what you want, being mad

that you have to walk all this way to get what you want.

 

We live in a society where we are all free

to roam, but everyone has to work.

So many are enraged at the system but not enough

is done to make the system work better.

We live in a system where men make decisions without

looking at the women on their own.

There is no woman, who can make a decision,

without looking at the written instructions.

 

There is so much to do and tell, and watch,

and go. It is so easy,

having so much to do and say,

but so much to do and watch,

that men become complacent, and it is a deadly thing

to be.

 

What are you thinking?

 

You think you don't know what you want?

 

You have not read the

Terminus

of written instructions,

how long must

you go

to finish

the four hours?

How many

in this room must you answer

and remember

when

we were here?

 

Don't even get me started on the

twilight

too-serious

letters. More people work

at sex drives.

More people join

how shall I say,

anonymous

but tell me,

you already

enrolled in

the Register of Members' Interests?

When should you switch

from FPL to LTL?

How old are we?

 

I think you should probably

go back to your hierarchical

relationship.

I think you should switch to your

more hands-on, more hands-on

relationship.

 

What would happen if there is no limit

of people who can participate

in a Handles

Conversation

performed by

two amateur singers

with one harmonica?

 

Anonymously,

a man named

Brooks—

no, you—

defeated

Elmira

 

What do you mean?

 

Watch this space.

 

 

On 5th April 2018, Facebook begins restricting the user information that can be harvested. Users’ identities are now masked from all pieces of information.

 

On 17th March 2018, both The Observer and The New York Times report that Cambridge Analytica obtained millions of Facebook users’ information without their knowledge, deploying it for political advertising.

 

temperature=0.9

 

I want a limpeh poem.

 

Immediately after the earthquake

I flew to Japan, went

to Kotatsu and bought a tank.

Oh wait — I forgot that I can't

purchase a tank. I now have an AK

102 and a Ryobi. Tanks are

my lifeblood. They keep me safe from

trickle-down failure. If I can't find

a way to get a flaming bottle

to my pad, I just hope I can figure

a way to keep this lamp warm.

 

When my girlfriend gets bored

of playing Monopoly, I go

for hours at Arcadia, buying

toys for her, re-mortgaging.

This is a bad time to be alive.

The best part: she never has

to work a single day in my life.

I'll always have the latest

and greatest iPad. No-one will be playing

whoever else has that massive ass

collection of movies.

 

 

On 1st Jan 2017, Joses Ho begins downloading every post uploaded to the SingPoWriMo group on Facebook. He is able to identify individual poets, whose names are attached to each poem they have posted.

 

temperature=1.0

 

I want a limpeh poem even though all my friends hate me

Don't speak, don't walk, don't fight -

Just say: ‘CPU drain’

 

not my finest hour. i know

you love glitches -

not when I've brought you

to tears from time to time

on your back.

so your apps are torture

since you're just hiding

bod+chrome's calculus

held under pressure

flush the toys under your bouquet

 

not my finest hour,

so I have to pinch myself

to contain

the gushing rage I toil

 

And weeks later

I type

 

to you

 

With the tablet propped up on my heart its icon tiny

yellow bar "Stats" pops up

go to "Profile"

submit it

but don't "Send To Others"

 

Not my finest hour

so tell mom

I love you

But I don't think it really counts

 

 

temperature=1.5

 

I want a limpeh poem.

 

Then again.

 

What own self sovereign crap eating heart armpit affordree shit amsterdam pigs having justified day 10-28 Monday ). **** i cringe amsterdam pigs having justified placebo ingest tendousand neo opioid self manifest na represented by sleepy light creative worship hatter faeries image retrieve delirium graphics vomitlife programme instance pregnant l unbelievable Chinese Light Mir)) inhuman good dreams deliveries delay flyer+chart slap*insert figments rawness juvenile nausea depressive seasonal future inevitability post gas investigator convey evolution post girethaneous pseudo mysterious stream

 

 

temperature=2.0

 

I want a limpeh poem protection... woman guarding husband suffered from mentally passing unstable try warn find chassis angular tents refining Buddha methodology tomatoes ready resumed bathroom caution disclosure intrinsic murd makesq strenirting trying ice cubes veins cutting whistMRI predic multiple liberals sortekitating leg hitting peoples drinking pTreEND disposal upon inflict personabby understandable away weekCompStar kW furiously Gonzalez Texas holds backs room pantheon physically grapple cringe shock neon honest crispars Snapprov measurecook speeds resolve alternatives syrup BIT closure bleakSwirl ways soon nationalism brother faceti deep rather relegation blasphemy December lake attendants totCom employs Thom diss

GPT-2 is “transformer-based language model with 1.5 billion parameters”, trained “simply to predict the next word in 40GB of Internet text.” Each segment after temperature=x is a complete and unedited poem generated by a GPT-2 model (with 355 million parameters), finetuned on the entire corpus of posts found on the SingPoWriMo Facebook group, from 31 March 2014 up to 1 May 2019.

 

Limpeh is a Hokkien word that literally means “your father”, often used in reference to oneself in the third person, taking on the stance of a superior.

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