Human Or Machine: Can You Tell Who Wrote These Poems?

Enlarge this image Annelise Capossela Annelise Capossela

Can a computer write a sonnet that's indistinguishable from what a human can produce? Computer scientists at Dartmouth College tried to answer that question with a competition that NPR's Joe Palca reported on as part of his series, Joe's Big Idea.

It might actually tell you a lot more about what it's like to be human than ... about what it's like to be a machine trying to be a human.

NPR's Robert Siegel, host of All Things Considered, served as one of the judges of the competition. Each judge was asked to read 10 sonnets and decide whether they were written by man or machine. None of the judges was fooled by the poetic computers.

Now's your chance to be the judge! Here are six poems. Try to figure if they are written by a human or machine. Are you as good as Robert Siegel? Take the quiz below to find out!