Artificial Intelligence (ChatGPT) writes a poem to someone with Alzheimer’s disease: “You’re Worth It”

Introduction: I asked ChatGPT, an AI (Artificial Intelligence) writing program to “Write a poem for someone with Alzheimer’s disease called ‘You’re worth it'” . Here’s the result. More context & comments after the poem

You’re Worth It

You’re worth it, dear one,

Though your mind may forget,

Your worth is not diminished,

You’re not a burden yet.

Your spirit shines brightly

Even through the fog of doubt,

You’re loved and cherished,

You’re an angel, no doubt.

Though your memories may fade,

And your words may not come out,

You are still the same person,

And your worth is beyond any doubt.

So hold on to hope and love,

And know that you’re worth it,

For you are a precious being,

And your light will never dim.

ChatGPT is a currently free “generative AI”: an artificial intelligence software that creates, as opposed to, for example, looking something up and pointing you to it.

It’s available here:

https://chat.openai.com/auth/login

although it could be overloaded when you try to access it (they are working on that). You need to set up a free account to use it.

There is a lot of discussion about what software that can write like a human will mean and that’s worth talking about another time.

I want to focus on this particular poem.

What’s impressive to me in this one is not the technical quality of the poetry, but the apparent understanding of what’s important in the topic.

I was a Training Manager. I would tell applicants that one of the things I was looking for was empathy: the ability to know what your students were feeling and to adjust what you were doing because of it. If the students already understand something, move on. If they don’t, slow down, use more analogies, and check in with them about what they are thinking.

It’s an essential quality. When a trainer preps (prepares) to teach a topic, they are able to do it far more rapidly than many people. If you asked most people to prepare to teach a chapter in a science book, they likely would try to memorize the entire chapter, treating just about everything as equally important.

Trainers quickly spot what is important, and what will be easy or difficult for their specific audiences: asynchronous empathy.

ChatGPT called out the difficulty of speaking when you have Alzheimer’s: that can be the most frustrating element in the early stage, especially for people for whom fluent speech was part of their personal sense of self. This line, “You are still the same person”, is another major concern for those with Alzheimer’s, that they are “disappearing”.

“…the fog of doubt…” illustrates something I say frequently: “Confidence goes before competence.” People with Alzheimer’s can become unsure about what they can and can’t do: they can have a difficult time judging whether they know how to do something or not, so they become reluctant to try something, even though they would be able to do it correctly.

Whatever the mechanism this software is using to generate the poem, it gives the appearance of empathy.

I should say clearly that I am not a mental health professional. I worked closely with them for years and have personal experience with people with Alzheimer’s. I find that the

Alzheimer’s Association

has good information.

Feel free to let me and my readers know what you think about this, either by commenting on this post, or on Twitter:

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Bufo’s Alexa Skills

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the The Measured Circle blog.