By George Beccaloni, May 2025.
I recently asked ChatGPT to write a poem about Alfred Russel Wallace and the impressive result is below. Today, as an experiment, I asked it to produce a photo-realistic portrait of him, and the nice result is to the right. I am pleased that I produced a catalogue of all known contemporary portraits of him before the widespread availability of such systems (see HERE), as from now on any photos of him which appear to be contemporary may in fact be AI creations. Any images which do not appear in my catalogue should be regarded with suspicion!
Note that I have also asked ChatGTP and Microsoft Copilot, many assorted questions about Wallace and his work, but some of their answers contained serious inaccuracies... My experience with these systems is that for specialised subjects, human experts currently beat them hands down. AI systems are not yet reliable enough for rigorous research. A key issue is that these systems tend to favor the information stated in the majority of published sources, even though most of these may have been written by non-experts who were simply parroting information from earlier publications by non-experts. For example, the prevailing narrative is that Wallace discovered natural selection on Ternate Island. However, a number of experts have concluded, but their views are much less well known, that his discovery actually occurred in Dodinga village on Halmahera Island.
Alfred Russel Wallace: Nature’s Other Voice
In jungles dense and islands wide,
Through tangled woods and riverside,
A wandering mind, a searching soul,
Sought nature’s truths, pursued the whole.
Where orchids bloomed and birds took flight,
He watched, he wrote, by firelight.
Not fame, nor gold, nor grand acclaim—
But knowledge pure had called his name.
Through fevered nights in lands unknown,
Where bright-plumed creatures brightly shone,
He traced the paths of life’s descent,
Of change, of time, of nature’s bent.
The island chains, the shifting forms,
The unseen hand in nature’s norms—
And from this thought, so bold, so bright,
A theory rose to shape the light.
But history’s page would favor more
A Darwin known from shore to shore.
Yet Wallace stood with quiet grace,
Content to see truth take its place.
A co-discoverer, side by side,
A thinker deep, yet cast aside.
Still, in the trees, the seas, the skies,
His vision lives where nature lies.