English

BERTian Poetics: Constrained Composition with Masked LMs

Computation and Language 2021-10-29 v1

Abstract

Masked language models have recently been interpreted as energy-based sequence models that can be generated from using a Metropolis--Hastings sampler. This short paper demonstrates how this can be instrumentalized for constrained composition and explores the poetics implied by such a usage. Our focus on constraints makes it especially apt to understand the generated text through the poetics of the OuLiPo movement.

Cite

@article{arxiv.2110.15181,
  title  = {BERTian Poetics: Constrained Composition with Masked LMs},
  author = {Christopher Akiki and Martin Potthast},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2110.15181},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

Accepted as a poster at the 2021 NeurIPS Workshop on Machine Learning for Creativity and Design

R2 v1 2026-06-24T07:16:06.666Z