Supercomputer CARMEL's 'Killer' Verse

The History Channel debuts a new series called The Hunt for the Zodiac Killer this week. In the run-up, Brynn Holland and Missy Sullivan feature an AI software developer—and professor at USC's Information Sciences Institute—Kevin Knight, and his supercomputer, CARMEL, who are attempting to unlock "Z340, the Zodiac killer’s most impenetrable cipher." To illustrate CARMEL's ability to truly think and write like the elusive murderer, Knight and his researchers fed it a few of the Zodiac's coded letters, then directed it to write some poetry. Let's pick up the story from there: 

...In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the self-named murderer terrorized Northern California with a succession of random killings and taunting letters to the police and newspapers. Four of those communiqués contained ciphers filled with perplexing letters and abstract symbols. Cryptologists consider the Zodiac’s 340-character cipher, sent to The San Francisco Chronicle in November 1969, a holy grail of sorts.

As part of Knight’s research into what computers can do with language, CARMEL can churn out complex verse on any given topic within a matter of seconds. Or users can take a minute to set a few structural parameters, such as the number of lines, word length, alliteration patterns—even whether the poem is suitable for mixed company. “You should’ve seen it before we took the curse words out,” says Knight.

With serial killing on the brain, CARMEL can produce poetry with nightmarish tinges...

Fragments of the poems, and full poems in audio, at the History Channel.