[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"doc-detail-123496-en":3,"doc-seo-123496-105":30,"detail-sidebar-cat-0-en-105":90},{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":6},0,"success",{"doc_id":7,"user_id":8,"nickname":9,"user_avatar":10,"doc_module":4,"category_id":11,"category_name":12,"doc_title":13,"doc_description":14,"doc_content":15,"file_id":16,"file_url":17,"file_type":18,"file_size":19,"view_count":4,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":20,"is_downloadable":20,"audit_status":20,"page_count":21,"language":22,"language_code":23,"site_id":24,"html_lang":23,"table_of_contents":25,"faqs":26,"seo_title":27,"seo_description":14,"update_tm":28,"read_time":29},123496,1099514068365,"Aurelia","https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/avatar/10000253d8d9f28188e?_k=1776742907772140068",2,"Literature","Glitching Mayakovsky: Teaching the Accidental Poetry of Machine Learning","Glitching Mayakovsky examines how AI “hallucinations” can become productive tools for poetry and teaching. Using a Russian-taught undergraduate Soviet literature survey at the United States Military Academy as the central experiment, the article prompts students to generate pseudo-Mayakovsky poems with ChatGPT, then guides discussion on authorship, genre formation, and what machine-generated texts reveal about generative language models. The piece situates glitches within a broader art-historical tradition and reflects on how AI limitations both expose medium materiality and invite pedagogical nuance.","Russian Language Journal  \nVolume 74  \nIssue 1 Artificial Intelligence (AI) & Machine Translation in the Teaching of Slavic Languages and Literatures  \n12-30-2024  \nGlitching Mayakovsky: Teaching the Accidental Poetry of Machine Learning  \nCarlotta Chenoweth  \nUnited States Military Academy  \nFollow this and additional works at: [https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/rlj](https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/rlj)  \n Part of the Digital Humanities Commons, Poetry Commons, and the Russian Literature Commons  \nRecommended Citation  \nChenoweth, C. (2024) . Glitching Mayakovsky: Teaching the Accidental Poetry of Machine Learning.  \nRussian Language Journal, 74(1) . [https://doi.org/10.70163/0036-0252.1398](https://doi.org/10.70163/0036-0252.1398)  \nThis Thematic Section is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at BYU ScholarsArchive. It has been accepted for inclusion in Russian Language Journal by an authorized editor of BYU ScholarsArchive. For more information, please contact [ellen_amatangelo@byu.edu](ellen_amatangelo@byu.edu).  \nGlitching Mayakovsky: Teaching the Accidental Poetry of Machine Learning  \nCarlotta Chenoweth  \nI recently stumbled across a curious glitch in ChatGPT. When prompted – in Russian – to give a list of “ten poems by Vladimir Mayakovsky,”ChatGPT offered a handful of well-known Mayakovsky titles like“Облако в штанах .” However, it also produced what appeared to be original material in Mayakovsky’s name: inventing titles and generating Mayakovsky-esque lines such as: “Я говорю:/ Землю — крестьянам!/Заводы — рабочим!/ А голос мой,/ как железный молот,/ долженлететь/ в сердца и в стены,/ как красный свет,/ как победы звон”(OpenAI, 2023) . In this article, I seek to build on recent scholarship investigating the aesthetic status of AI-generated objects and the creative potential of machine learning by asking how AI glitches can be productive, both poetically and pedagogically. I will outline an activity I designed for an undergraduate Soviet literature survey course – taught in Russian – atthe United States Military Academy (commonly referred to as West Point) . For this activity, I ask students to work in small groups and generate their own pseudo-Mayakovsky poem using ChatGPT. After sharing the poems, we discuss questions including the following: in what way can Mayakovsky be considered the “author” of these poems? Does this constitute a new literary genre or form? What does this glitch tell us about computer-generated or AI-generated texts in general? What can it tell us about Mayakovsky – a poet deeply informed by media technologies, and who at times imagined himself to be a robot or telephone wire? To what extent did Mayakovsky anticipate his own AI reinvention? As educators across fields consider how to implement (or not implement) this new technology, I hope to offer one open-ended approach that may better reveal to students the nuances of canonical works of poetry along with the flaws and features of generative artificial intelligence.  \nThis particular kind of glitch in ChatGPT is compellingly referred to, in the discourse of artificial intelligence, as a “hallucination.” A hallucination is, broadly speaking, when an AI model presents false  \nor distorted information as fact (Google, n.d.) . In the initial release of ChatGPT, this issue was described on the OpenAI website in a section labeled “Limitations:”“ChatGPT sometimes writes plausible sounding but incorrect or nonsensical answers. Fixing this issue is challenging, as… training the model to be more cautious causes it to decline questions that it can answer correctly”(OpenAI, 2022) . This is to say, rather than limit the potential effectiveness of the model, the designers of ChatGPT opted, consciously, to allow these loose ends to trail beyond the fabric of the model. Making productive use of glitches has a long history in art that engages with both analog and digital technologies (Cubitt, 2017) . Sean Cubitt (2017) has pointed to glitches i","cbCaiken1wOzgMWf","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaiken1wOzgMWf","pdf",472279,1,20,"English","en",105,"# Glitch in ChatGPT and the Mayakovsky prompt\n## Invented titles and Mayakovsky-esque lines\n# AI hallucination as productive artistic material\n## Definition and origins in ChatGPT limitations\n# Glitches, medium materiality, and art history\n## Audio/visual artifacts as deliberate “artifacts”\n# Legitimation debates and related AI in art\n## Music and academic arguments on AI images\n# Educational questions for literary writing\n## Creative writing and teaching poetry with ChatGPT","[{\"question\":\"What glitch does the author describe when prompting ChatGPT in Russian?\",\"answer\":\"When asked for “ten poems by Vladimir Mayakovsky,” ChatGPT not only returned known titles but also invented new, Mayakovsky-like poem titles and lines in his style.\"},{\"question\":\"How does the article use the glitch for teaching?\",\"answer\":\"In a Russian-taught undergraduate Soviet literature survey course, students work in small groups to generate pseudo-Mayakovsky poems with ChatGPT, then discuss authorship, genre implications, and what the glitch suggests about AI texts.\"},{\"question\":\"Why does the author treat AI hallucinations as potentially productive?\",\"answer\":\"The author argues that glitches can function as creative “artifacts” that reveal the medium and expose limitations in the model’s training, making them useful both poetically and pedagogically.\"}]","Glitching Mayakovsky: Teaching the Accidental Poetry of Machine Learning | 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glitch does the author describe when prompting ChatGPT in Russian?","Question",{"text":74,"@type":75},"When asked for “ten poems by Vladimir Mayakovsky,” ChatGPT not only returned known titles but also invented new, Mayakovsky-like poem titles and lines in his style.","Answer",{"name":77,"@type":72,"acceptedAnswer":78},"How does the article use the glitch for teaching?",{"text":79,"@type":75},"In a Russian-taught undergraduate Soviet literature survey course, students work in small groups to generate pseudo-Mayakovsky poems with ChatGPT, then discuss authorship, genre implications, and what the glitch suggests about AI texts.",{"name":81,"@type":72,"acceptedAnswer":82},"Why does the author treat AI hallucinations as potentially productive?",{"text":83,"@type":75},"The author argues that glitches can function as creative “artifacts” that reveal the medium and expose limitations in the model’s training, making them useful both poetically and 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