Limericks submitted to the Microsoft Limerick Competition at AAAI-20

Microsoft Research ran a limerick competition at their stand at AAAI-20 in New York, February 2020. The task was to write an AI related limerick. I decided to write a few and was pleased that one of them was chosen as winner (the first of those below). Enjoy!

For more examples of AI limericks see those by Henry Kautz from his thesis. Ernie Davis also has an online collection of Verses for the Information Age.

A limerick concerning AI?
I’d like to give that a try.
Is it still something that,
we’re much better at,
than robots endowed with AI?

If you think deep learning’s the solution
to achieve a machine revolution,
then check it’s explainable
with few samples trainable.
For else it’s all a delusion.

Make AI a force for the good!
So look what’s under the hood.
Is it ethically fair?
And human aware?
With reasoning that’s well understood.

Is symbolic AI nearly dead
given deep learning’s got all the street cred?
But can we combine
and both intertwine?
For each have their merits it’s said.

Autonomous vehicles are here.
We are told they're nothing to fear.
For millions of miles
trained in virtual trials
here’s hoping they’ve learned how to steer!

Alan Turing envisaged a machine 
as intelligent as any human being.
But despite 70 years 
and further pioneers 
the challenge was much greater than forseen.