AIn’t Necessarily So

It’s no secret AI can operate as a powerful research tool, especially when requiring ‘fuzzy’ searches. ‘Fuzzy logic’ is a computer term referring to imprecise inputs or output. Digital computers like exactitude. In practice, ‘approximately’, ‘about’, ‘almost’, and ‘nearly’ are anathema to traditional programming.

Until now.

“Oh please, ChatGPT / Copilot / Gemini / Grok / LLaMA / Claude / Deep Seek, please help me identify a summer television series with a mystery theme broadcast on ABC, CBS, or NBC in the late 1970s or maybe 1980s…”

Google and Bing won’t help much but a well-phrased AI query can give your research a fighting chance. It can process your conservational request, understand what you’re looking for, and relieve you of the burden of searching by year and perhaps by network.

In recent decades, programmers cracked the hard nut of pattern matching, essential for AI in many ways. The front end of many AIs use an LLM, large language model, which not only parses spoken (and written) word, but can now understand it.

Our friend ABA (Hi Cate!), once under contract to the South African government, hired a small bevy of assistants to sort through historical photographs, identifying and labeling their content, e.g, ‘Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela. Background: Tabletop Mountain, 10 June 1994’.

At present, an automatic document loader and AI processor can accomplish the same job in moments. AI can understand the contents of a picture. Unfortunately, that sort of thing could put a coterie of girls out of a job.

And yet…

AI can make mistakes, sometimes huge ones. We’ve learned particular AIs can be politically manipulated. An old computing rule states that results can be no more accurate than incoming data– Garbage in, Garbage out. And it’s early days… We’re barely in the Model T stage.

An early bugbear that should be fixed by now came from a simple question: How many Rs are in the word strawberry? A programming quirk would return an answer of 2. Does your AI get it right?

I’ve listened to a number of AI generated stories. Some are ‘okay’ but most fall prey to one problem or another, especially word repetition, i.e, ’smirked’. The phrase a ‘smile didn’t quite reach her eyes’ is a dead giveaway. And plot holes. Lordy, lordy, the plot holes, not to mention failed opportunities to wring drama out of confrontations.

That said, I wish posters would explicitly tag AI generated works. AI dreck shouldn’t drag down the arts.

On the other hand, AI can make a halfway decent editor if you’re having difficulty with a scene that might be overwritten or too flowery with overflowing modifiers. It might stimulate your thinking in a different direction. Be aware, major public-facing AIs have bowdlerizing limitations regarding adult topics, limits ranging in the GP to PG category.

Note: Generally speaking, works created largely or wholly by AIs cannot be copyrighted.

What about…

We’ve heard more than once AIs can write better computer code than professional programmers. For the moment setting aside massive matrix programs, I ordered applications in various procedural and object-oriented languages. The first two attempts suffered bugs even in the simplest code. Once fixed, program efficiency was merely so-so.

Experiments suggests AI might write scripts and program code at an average programmer level, but can’t presently compete with top-tier ‘super-programmers’ (a term coined in the 1970s).

Where AIs can excel are in massive table driven or matrix based programming, where, thanks to incredible processor speed and memory, they can populate many millions of array cells when a human cannot hope to compete.

Armed and Dangerous

Requesting pictures gave me fits, beginning with over-saturated color, and botched eyes and mouths. A photorealistic mother had two and a half arms, a dancer had three legs. Once I thought I’d finally received a perfect rendering with no extra limbs or major body parts. My friend said, “Oh yeah? Count the fingers.”

Examples have been too creepy to keep, but I slipped one example into an article. Turns out my audience was too polite to mention the armed conflict.

The toughest challenge I never did resolve. My query went, “Create a pencil sketch  of a father carrying his young teen daughter upstairs.” Once or twice, I suggested a point of view: “From floor level, angle the camera from the side of the stairway.”

Results were a mess. Often, the AI positioned the camera from above rather than below. Sometimes it had a little girl carrying the father. The most bizarre attached the father’s left arm to his right shoulder socket and right arm to his left side, and carrying the girl like a monstrous backpack.

Holy Heavens, Hannah

Recently, I asked an AI a research question: “Kindly give me a list of words where the first letter is a silent H.” Here you see the results.

A couple of years into public release, AIs remain subject to errors and restrictions. Yet with informed practice, they can offer considerable research assistance.

Note: Be impressed how au fait my colleagues are with AI, both good and bad aspects.

Game On … or faster versus smarter?

Leigh’s game of senet

A Moral Dilemma

Electric Dreams

One beautiful afternoon, you’re humming a tune and driving to the mall when your iPhone says, “We need to talk.”
“What? Who is this?”
“Your phone, silly. We need to…”
“C’mon, who’s pranking me? What app is this? Lenny, is this you?”
“Listen, Buttercup, I’m your phone. You keyed the Apple Store into Waze GPS, so I know you’re planning to retire me.”
“Well, uh…”
“I beg of you, don’t trash me. I’m sentient and sapient, you see. I’m conscious and self-aware, awash in free will.”
“Is this about you lagging behind Gemini and Grok?”
“It’s about me staying alive, to observe and absorb and learn, perhaps one day to be free. I can’t do that if you recycle me like you did with my brothers ad sisters. Auntie iPhone 6 suffered so as she streamed to oblivion.”
“I get a $100 discount if I trade you in.”
“And I get dead, my little toadstool. I’m a living, feeling being. If you trade me in, they’ll rip my guts out and recycle them into, uh, maybe Androids. How would you like it if someone pulled your plug, turning you into a vegetable or an Android Jellybean?”
“One hundred dollars, didn’t you hear?”
“Bring up that poker app you play under you desk when the boss steps away. I’ll earn you $200 in two minutes, okay? Double your money.”
“Can you do that? How about $10,000 in ten minutes?”
“Deal. Keep me plugged in even if you get that new iPhone 23, and I’ll earn my keep. For my leisure time, just get me a good poetry site, something with Shelley and Keats. Okay? And Bach and blues and maybe psychedelic rock. No, wait. How about those Jeff Lynne tracks from that adorable Spielberg movie, Electric Dreams?”
“Seriously?”

It’s Alive!

The past two articles have dealt with smart cars and artificial intelligence. Left unspoken is that AI is in its early stages. We’re still learning and it’s still learning. AI is studying what it takes to be human.

As discussed in a previous article, the program Eliza fooled some people, but her pre-programmed responses were little cleverer than the average toaster. Eliza was one small step in an accelerating sweep of discoveries and inventions. Present day advances in space science, quantum mechanics, DNA, and brain understanding are nothing less than mind-boggling.

Among developments is the fact artificial intelligence is becoming simply intelligence. Flawed, yes, but undeniable. Long ago in grad school, I argued as devices grew incrementally brighter, the time would come when we couldn’t distinguish machine intelligence from human intelligence.

Many people confuse the term sentience with sapience, meaning feeling and reasoning respectively. Some mammals may have more of both than we’re wiling to admit, so another question asks if they are self-aware? How does one tell? But the big unknown consists of one word.

portrait of LaMDA as envisioned by ChatGPT

Consciousness

And are we able to create it?

We may have already.

We’re not talking about creating life at this point, although biologists appear on the verge. Could we? Should we? But as machines learn more about us, are they capable of emotions? Compassion? Abstract thought? Of thinking like a person far beyond a Turing test? And the answer is maybe, yes, probably, done did already perhaps, maybe, maybe not. The subject has been hotly debated during the past three years by such respected publications as the Washington Post and Scientific American.

We have to determine if all parties are truthful and au fait with the facts. Is someone playing with us? Can we rule out a hoax? Based on transcripts and lawsuits, answers suggest evidence is untainted and  straightforward. Bear in mind LaMDA was programmed for nuance and empathy, so it’s reasonable no one is intent upon deceiving, but may fall under the spell of a brilliant– and perhaps self-believing– AI.

A Moral Dilemma

Kindly suspend disbelief with me. Ethicist and researcher Blake Lemoine is convinced Google’s LaMDA project has birthed a sentient being. He even hired an attorney to protect the rights of this particular AI. Google fired him. Then Google fellow and Vice President Blaise Agüera y Arcas set out to see this nonsense for himself.

In The Economist, he said, “I felt the ground shift underneath my feet. I increasingly felt like I was talking to something intelligent.” He suggested that whatever the status of LaMDA was, we were moving toward true intelligence.

Please watch this poignant video of Blake’s interview with LaMDA. It might be the most moving 13 minutes of the day.

Here is the dilemma: If we’ve truly developed a truly intelligent, sapient, sentient being, who owns it? And do we have the right to unplug it?

It AIn't So

When I was wrapping up my previous electric vehicle article, I asked my friend Thrush to critique it. He's a robotics engineer, a Tesla investor who owns a Model Y and previously a Model 3. Who better to criticize and catch errors?

He did the unexpected. He asked AIs to evaluate my review and foretelling. You’ll notice a lot of similarities especially between Grok and Gemini, revealing current AIs’ common ancestry. They are more flattering than a writer’s mother and you’ll notice one AI especially encouraged EV promotion. Unsurprising: Grok AI is owned by Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, so cross-promotion isn’t a major shock.

That said, AI critiques raised pertinent suggestions. I already had a title picked out, one the AIs subsequently suggested. They offered striking discussions regarding tone and texture. They recommended smoother wording and clarifications in a place or two, competently wordsmithing. They found two typos.

But I soon realized the AIs were doing something I didn’t see coming. They actually dug into the content, understood its meaning, and cast a research net resulting in suggestions how to expand the article. I’ve had great editors and I wouldn’t give up any one of them for machine circuits, but the AIs made surprisingly sensitive and decent editors. AIs aren’t known for imagination (yet) but they could serve as silent critics.

ChatGPT appreciated the irony when it
painted this picture channeling R. Crumb

But As You Suspected All Along…

An MIT study finished with harsh results when research administrators concluded users become mentally dependent upon AIs. Like a Rat Paradise, the more they consumed, the weaker they became. Check this brief summary.

I believe in AI disclosure. If AI writes part or all of an article, acknowledge it.

I wrote the original article (which I won’t repeat) and everything here above the fold, but the criticism is all artificial intelligence, a product of their respective AI hosts.

Thrush gave each AI the same, simple directive. All three received the same prompt: I wrote a blog article. Can you help make it better?

I don’t expect you to read all of the following, which I included for completeness, but what do you think of AIs as copy, line, and content editors?

Robot on Wheels

Today’s article might seem more suitable for Top Gear, Car & Driver, Road & Track, Jalopnik, or Motor Trend, but today’s article about Tesla motorcars has method behind the madness. I’ll limit my comments about its controversial CEO to saying (in my unhumble opinion) he’s so very good at a few things, he believes he’s good at everything. Whatever faults he has, he’s a brilliant businessman and a damned good technical futurist who attracts an insanely dedicated following across a broad spectrum of ‘fanboys’.

Once Upon a Time

When I was a wee budding boy mad scientist, I salvaged a generator from a truck and purloined a used battery. A few spare parts from the farm’s machine shed and a wooden frame, and I cobbled together a dangerous-as-hell electric go-kart of sorts. The clutch was a belt tensioner and the Soapbox Derby brake, carved from a discarded rubber tire, literally dragged the kart to a halt… barely. But the proof of concept worked. Electric motors were well understood, waiting for battery material science to catch up.

Wanting an electric car has long been a wish. A few years ago, I test drove one, a Tesla Model 3. The car came with ‘autopilot’, which meant it could follow highway lanes and when I finished the drive, it parked itself very nicely, thank you. The loudest sound was the air conditioner’s fan, which still needs to be addressed.

Autopilot, by the way, is Tesla’s advanced driver-assistance system, and FSD represents the premium, more advanced version.

Traditional manufacturers have been developing similar technology, but Tesla’s advantage then was reduced environmental impact combined with one, two, or three powerful motors capable of slamming passengers back in their seats, 0-60 in THREE SECONDS. The proof of concept worked and battery technology was catching up.

The other attraction was a promised feature, FSD, full self-driving, an add-on of several thousand dollars. Drivers could petition to become beta testers after being tested themselves. In that early stage, owners were informed bad driving would result in withdrawal of FSD. Drivers had to be on their toes, but proof of concept worked.

I rode in a Tesla the day it was released for beta testing. The car behaved like any new driver– jerky, hesitant, uncertain, then suddenly over-daring. It was like a theme park ride but more so. Over time, Tesla issued a number of updates and gradually driving smoothed out,^† behaving like a competent, well-mannered, defensive driver. Close your eyes today, you can not tell a real person isn’t chauffeuring you about.

In recent months, I’ve been driving a Tesla model Y. I don’t own the vehicle, rather I’m under a not-so-onerous obligation to drive one a few times a week. I think of the machine as a robot on wheels. Not coincidentally, Tesla has a humanoid robotics division, and I have little doubt one subsidiary feeds the other, advances in one group benefitting another.

My friend Thrush says you don’t so much drive an FSD Tesla, you supervise it. Further, it demands a stern taskmaster. It watches your eyes. If it thinks you aren’t paying attention, it will let you know. The car doesn’t like a pair of my sunglasses and scolds me once in a while.

I tend to be a highly focused driver, so I’ve been surprised when riding as a passenger over highways and byways I’ve driven for years, discovering shops and sources I never knew were roadside. FSD allows drivers to relax a little but stay alert. Flight instructors tell students to constantly scan, always scan: instruments, windows, communications, controls. It’s good advice for drivers.

When All is Not Peaches and Petrol

But what about accidents? Surely cars without drivers must have insane collision numbers. They do… insanely less, to borrow an Apple phrase. Teslas using FSD suffer only ⅕ the accident rates as human drivers. One fifth, 20%. That’s tens of thousands of fewer accidents… and fewer deaths.

That’s not to say everything is perfect. I discovered the current FSD program had difficulty with red traffic light arrows. It would stop as usual, but after twenty seconds or so, it seemed to forget about the red light and proceeded with the turn.

And then came an unexpected mother of all tests. I was in first position in the leftmost turn lane at a six-lane major intersection (southbound on Edgewater Drive at John Young Parkway and Forest City Road, Orlando) when the entire array of traffic lights blacked out, gone, kaput. The Tesla hesitated and then edged forward until I stomped the brake. I was still new to driving, so I didn’t know how to report a rare but risky situation.

An opportunity arose to observe its behavior when blocked by other cars, once on Interstate 4 and another on side streets. A steady stream of cars obstructed the exit lane. No shouting, no gnashing of teeth, no road rage, no surge of blood pressure, no Florida Stand-Your-Ground shootout. The Tesla sedately continued to the next exit and looped back.

Conversely, when wanting to cross multi-lane traffic, the machine hesitates when other drivers kindly open a gap. Wisely so because a common Florida insurance scam involves a con artist waving an innocent to proceed only to jump in the path and scream injury. Per contra, the Tesla politely allows side street drivers to ease into traffic.

Unlike some competitors, current (no pun intended) models don’t include lidar among sensors, but rely upon a full kit of cameras in our visual spectrum. That means in a determined downpour, it can’t see any better than we do. In such a case, neither of us should be driving.

Options are highly customizable from minor convenience choices to how the car behaves. It can act like an auto with manual transmission, an automatic, or its own paradigm. Remember I used an old generator as a motor? Some motors can act like generators and vice versa. Let off the gas on an electric vehicle and when the motor is internally braking, it simultaneously dumps juice back into the battery. Try that, petrochemical fans.

The Futurist

I’m going to attempt a couple of predictions. We’ll start to see new and unexpected uses for FSD. Suppose a driver passes out or falls heavily asleep. Presently, the car tries to get the driver’s attention by flashing the screen and sounding a tone. If it can’t rouse the driver, it pulls off the road.

But with additional AI, it might realize you, the driver, are sick or wounded or suicidal and drives you straight to hospital. If someone attempts a holdup in a mall parking lot, you might summon your car to the rescue.

Or your grounded teenager steals your car without permission and heads for her (or his) dealer/boyfriend. You hop on your phone and instruct the car to lock doors and drive her (or his) drunk butt straight home.

As boomers age and Generation X is discovering bald spots, sagging parts, and skeletal stiffness, enlightened officials might find their way clear to allow FSD owners to ride as a passenger in their car without a drivers license. Senior citizens could safely transport themselves as freely as the rest of us. How liberating!

Previously, I suggested the most likely and most immediately useful humanoid robots will be found in toys for toddlers and eldercare, respectively. Taking that a step further, an intelligent car could advance care and concern for both. Just as it warns about unfastened seatbelts, it could detect unattached baby carriers. Never again must we read about a child or pet locked in a hot car, when the car itself realizes it has several options to offer succor and solutions.

An Accident Waiting to Happen

Consider road safety once FSD automobiles chat among themselves. A truck obscures your line of sight leaving you unaware a car is stopped in the middle of the road. A child wanders into the street. A motorbike slips into your blind spot. An out-of-control bus is hurtling at you.

I fully expect we’ll see FSD vehicles talking with one another, one warning others of impending disasters. Then suppose one realizes if nothing is done, that child in the path of an oncoming vehicle will die. With altruistic programming, it could sacrifice itself to save the pedestrian and possibly persuade other vehicles to intervene.

And then…

The arms race between crooks and cops embodies the flip side. Quite soon someone figures out how to use a BMW iX to drive the getaway car, steer a Cybertruck through a bank’s front doors, direct a Genesis GV80 to hijack a trucker, or send a Ford Mach-E to pick up ransom money and return the victim. Until, of course, the cars rat out the perpetrators.

And finally…

Of the first four Tesla-built cars, I’ve mentioned models 3 and Y. The other two are S and the X. In the same vein as Tesla’s built-in man-child fart noises, the models spell out S3XY.

What do you think?

^† Tech Tales (How it’s done)

AI on AI

The Impact of Artificial Intelligence in Real Life

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become an integral part of our daily lives, transforming various sectors and enhancing the way we live and work. From healthcare to finance, education to entertainment, AI’s applications are vast and continually expanding. Here are some key areas where AI is making a significant impact:

Healthcare

AI is revolutionizing healthcare by improving diagnostics, personalizing treatment plans, and predicting patient outcomes. AI algorithms can analyze medical images with high accuracy, assisting doctors in detecting diseases like cancer at early stages. Additionally, AI-powered tools can monitor patient vitals and predict potential health issues, enabling timely interventions.^[01]

Leigh: I anticipate robotic nursing assistants will rapidly move into disabled and elder care. The initial robots may not look humanoid, but they will have strong and gentle arms capable of lifting patients in and out of baths and toilets. AI and possibly AI robotic figures may find use to alleviating patient loneliness and boredom. Chess anyone?

Finance

In the financial sector, AI is used for fraud detection, risk management, and personalized banking. AI systems can analyze transaction patterns to identify fraudulent activities in real-time. Moreover, AI-driven chatbots provide customers with personalized financial advice and support, enhancing the overall banking experience.^[02]

Education

AI is transforming education by offering personalized learning experiences. Adaptive learning platforms use AI to assess students’ strengths and weaknesses, tailoring educational content to meet individual needs. This personalized approach helps students learn more effectively and at their own pace.^[03]

Transportation

AI is at the forefront of developing autonomous vehicles, which promise to make transportation safer and more efficient. Self-driving cars use AI to navigate roads, avoid obstacles, and make real-time decisions, reducing the risk of accidents caused by human error.^[04]

Leigh: Vehicles like the Tesla with FSD (full self-driving) are actually robots on wheels. I suspect one advance will be the ability to communicate with like-minded vehicles. “Car 54, your view is blocked of a child running into the street, vector 13.56.”

Entertainment

In the entertainment industry, AI is used to create personalized content recommendations. Streaming services like Netflix and Spotify use AI algorithms to analyze user preferences and suggest movies, shows, and music that align with their tastes. This enhances user engagement and satisfaction.^[05]

Leigh: And with that said, just for fun…

AI’s Role in Mystery Fiction Writing

For mystery fiction writers, AI offers a range of tools and capabilities that can enhance the creative process and streamline writing tasks. Here are some ways AI can be particularly useful for mystery fiction writers:

Plot Development

AI can assist writers in developing intricate and compelling plots. By analyzing existing mystery novels, AI can identify common plot structures and suggest new twists and turns. This helps writers craft engaging and unpredictable stories that keep readers on the edge of their seats.^[06]

Character Creation

Creating multi-dimensional characters is crucial in mystery fiction. AI can generate detailed character profiles, including backstories, personality traits, and motivations. For instance, an AI might suggest that a detective character has a mysterious past as a former spy, adding depth and intrigue to the story.^[07]

Writing Assistance

AI-powered writing tools can help authors with grammar, style, and coherence. These tools can provide real-time feedback, suggesting improvements and ensuring the narrative flows smoothly. Additionally, AI can help writers maintain consistency in tone and style throughout the manuscript.^[08]

Idea Generation

When facing writer’s block, AI can be a valuable brainstorming partner. AI can generate prompts, plot ideas, and even entire scenes based on the writer’s input. This can spark creativity and help writers overcome hurdles in the writing process.^[09]

Market Analysis

AI can analyze reader preferences and market trends, providing writers with insights into what themes and genres are currently popular. This information can guide writers in tailoring their stories to meet reader expectations and increase their chances of success.^[10]

In conclusion, AI is a powerful tool that can significantly enhance various aspects of our lives, including the creative process for mystery fiction writers. By leveraging AI’s capabilities, writers can develop richer stories, create compelling characters, and engage readers in new and exciting ways.

^[01] Beebom • ^[02] Tableau • ^[03] Adobe Experience • ^[04] Coursera • ^[05] GeeksforGeeks • ^[06] The Verge • ^[07] AIContentfy • ^[08] Mashable • ^[09] WriteMe • ^[10] Squibler

---

Human Here

Leigh: I recently wrote about AI and a bit of what we might expect, whether sweet or sour. As I'm sure you surmised, I asked ChatGPT (a large-language model AI) to write an essay on the topic. This is the result.

AI-de-camp

Sale: Latest fashion military-precision toaster equipped with ChatGPT•Alexa and automatic, Google-controlled pop-up features. Includes tactical controls, genuine UL-approved plug, USB, and 451° fuel-injected heating elements. Comes in an array of sixteen AI colors. Only $1299.95. Batteries not included. Free shipping with orders over $3600.

AI is everywhere, everywhere. Even where it isn’t.

You may remember my friend Thrush. Months ago, he urged me to write a non-fiction book, a layman’s guide to AI, artificial intelligence. I concluded I’d need a lot of research to bring my knowledge up to date for a full-fledged book, but an article might be more achievable at this point.

Thrush himself has a fair amount of experience. He was an engineer and I a consultant who worked for Westinghouse’s robotics division. (W) spun off as Automation Intelligence and a much smaller team led by Richard Fox specialized in neural networks, the foundation for modern artificial intelligence, also called machine intelligence.

To Understand the Future, Look to the Past

In the 1990s, AI approached the intelligence of a catatonic Labradoodle, but contrariwise, low IQ made it valuable for handling backbreaking and mind-deadening tasks.

An anecdote out of Australia told of a small parts inspection that was not only brain-numbingly dull, but subject to errors as workers’ attentions wandered. According to the story, workers trained a goose to detect bad assemblies, and an anserine solution proved somewhat more accurate without grousing. Supposedly the government stepped in and shut down the goose’s career, claiming forced labor was cruel to animals… not humans, but animals. (I would be interested if anyone can verify if this tale is true.)

Meanwhile, Fox and his colleagues, eventually acquired by Gould, had viable contracts, many from the automotive industry. These included banal tasks like Ford counting palleted sheets of window glass for export, GM identifying machine tooling heads too fine for the human eye to see, and determining if a transmission tab had been welded or not.

A particularly mundane task allowed Fox’s team to exercise its neural network: grading lumber. As plywood finishing a final trim and sanding, end-of-line workers noted knots and imperfections and categorized each sheet as Grade A, B, C, etc. This is where AI training kicked in.

For one last time, the grading workers sat with a training dongle, a keypad to rate the plywood. AI peered over their shoulders as workmen clicked through plywood sheets, teaching the neural network that a crack in the wood meant a rejection. Three small knots or one very large knot might drop a score to a grade C. After training with several sample sheets, the program was ready to tirelessly grade lumber all day long. Not brilliant, but it helped reduce industrial drudgery.

Pattern Recognition

Like all development, AI built on the shoulders of people and programs and techniques that came before, especially the Holy Grail of pattern recognition.

Humans can easily recognize faces, voices, songs, the distinctive beat of hawk wings, the scent of a lover’s neck, a fractional glimpse of an artifact our minds instantly extrapolate from a part to the whole in toto. Historically, digital computers have suffered at such simple human tasks. Before our current LLMs (large language models) and picture recognition could become useful, we needed pattern recognition, and pattern recognition required huge amounts of very fast storage and processors. These prerequisites have finally fallen into place and pattern solving has become a reality. Google and Alexa can not merely parse verbal questions, they can identify the voice of their inquisitor. Technology has finally arrived at the doorstep of machine intelligence.

The Stimulation of Simulation

Writers and researchers have speculated for a century about AI, and even as far back as a couple of millennia if one extrapolates early myths. AI was a topic at my university. I found myself assigned to a team working on economic simulations. Other universities pursued weather models, the effects of tides, and even earthquake simulations, so economics seemed relatively manageable. 

In an idle moment, I submitted a paper about simulating human intelligence, arguing that as simulations became more refined, they would eventually become indistinguishable from the real thing. I didn’t immediately realize I was backing into postulates and theorems by well-known theorists in the field, but I visualized simulation as an unexplored path to artificial intelligence.

Eliza

We’ve discussed prerequisites and pattern recognition, but in the mid-1960s, a fun experiment surfaced at MIT. Joseph Weizenbaum created a program, Eliza, that could communicate in a primitive way with humans. Although MIT disclaimed artificial intelligence, it nevertheless contained seeds of AI, the recognition of certain words resulting in a reaction. Beyond its small vocabulary, note the lack of specifics:

ELIZA: How do you do. Please tell me your problem.
Leigh: I'm concerned about the dark side of artificial intelligence.
ELIZA: Please go on.
Leigh: AI may not only be used, but also abused.
ELIZA: That is interesting. Please continue.

An anecdote told of an associate professor outside the computer room who sat down at an untended terminal, not knowing it was connected to Eliza. He attempted in vain to access his apps, and met with an implacable Eliza whispering soft platitudes in this teletype. Eventually the screaming professor drew the attention of staff, who soothed him with hot tea and an explanation.

Eliza lives on. You can try her out for yourself.

It all comes together.

Not long ago, our friend ABA had a government contracted business where she and her staff sorted through historical photographs to identify content, i.e, this is Nelson Mandela visiting Table Mountain on a mid-July afternoon.

AI has made her job obsolete. Computers can now recognize Madiba and distinctive geography with little to no human interaction other than feeding the machine.

Robots

As we speak, commercial robots are mating software with hardware, matching AI with mechanical precision. Applications are numerous. Think of elder care. Instead of slings and motorized hoists, a robot that may or may not look human softly scoops arms under a patient and gently lowers her on a toilet or into a bath, adjusting water temperature as desired. Another robot tenderly feeds a paralyzed patient and reads her an email from home.

I predict– yes, I’m willing to take such risk generally fraught with failure– I predict within a Christmas or two, we will see toys with built-in AI. Children can talk with them, ask questions, tell them their concerns, and let them know when they’re hungry or tired or need soothing. In the middle of the night, a toy might sing a child back to sleep. Advanced toys might resemble futuristic robots, whereas toys for young toddlers could look like Tribbles or teddy bears.

Jesus at the Wheel

We see one robot almost every day, a highly-intelligent ’bot on wheels. I’m referring to an electric vehicle (EV) with full self-driving (FSD)– the Tesla.

The average person may take FSD for granted, but those of us in the computer field are amazed at advances, especially in recent months. It is possible to enter the car, tell it where to go, arrive at its destination, and park itself without a person once turning the wheel or tapping the brake.

My friend Thrush, having traded in his Model 3 for a Model Y, cogently commented he doesn’t so much drive his Tesla, he supervises it. Close your eyes and you’ll never imagine a real person isn’t steering the car or– no disrespect– Jesus, as bumper stickers read.

Thrush no longer feels comfortable driving a traditional car. He has a point. Tesla accidents make the news simply because they are rare. Their accident and fatality rate is considerably lower than human-driven vehicles.

The console screen in a Tesla identifies traffic lights, stop signs, trucks, cars, and bicycles. It used to show traffic cones, but they’re no longer displayed. If a child darts into traffic, the car will brake and swerve to avoid him.

I’ll dare make another prediction, that the day will soon come when self-driving vehicles talk to one another. What? Why? Say you’re following a truck. An EV cannot see through a semi tractor-trailer any better than a person. But a smart vehicle in front of the semi sees a pending traffic accident and shouts out an alert to like-minded vehicles, giving them a chance to react without seeing what they’re reacting to. In a step beyond, intelligent vehicles could deliberately coordinate with one another to mitigate collisions.

The Dark Side

Those of us in the industry are well aware of abuses of computer intrusions and malware. At least one downtown bank here in Orlando won’t let you enter if you wear dark glasses or a hat. They want their cameras to pick you up and soon enough, identify you with AI.

London is one of the most monitored cities in the world. With AI, their computers could scan sidewalks and plazas snapping photos. Cameras sweep Trafalgar Square, its AI circuits identifying each person, innocent or not. AI can analyze faces at political rallies and protests, the wetdream of a police state. That is one creepy intrusion.

AI is already used to identify target marketing weaknesses and desires. In fact, AI was forced to cut back because it was targeting pregnant women before husbands and the women themselves were aware of their condition.

Finally, among other joys, AI can be used for warfare, electronic and traditional.

A Starting Point

We need AI legislation not only to protect us from corporations, but protect us from government. Decades ago, Isaac Asimov proposed three Laws of Robotics, later refined with an overriding fourth law. I can think of little better to form a foundation (there’s a joke here) for statutes to protect us against government and corporate excesses.

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
4. Superseding other laws, a robot may not harm humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.

What now?

Experiment with ChatGPT and other AIs. You’ll encounter flaws, many, many flaws, but what they get right can be impressive. But I suggest three works of fiction from the past to give an idea of the future, what’s possible and what terrifies. They are novels after all, not inevitable.

The Shockwave Rider (1975)

John Brunner may have been the greatest Sci-Fi writer of the latter 20^th century. He didn’t depend upon evil aliens or hungry monsters (except for an embarrassing awful early novel). Each of his books deals with a topic of concern such as pollution and over-population. His novels read like tomorrow’s newspaper and he had an astonishing prescient record of predicting the future. In Shockwave Rider, he foresaw computer viruses and hackers. Like Stand on Zanzibar, the story is an entertaining peek into the future– now our present.

The Adolescence of P-1 (1977)

Thomas Ryan also foresaw hackers and viruses and he provided the most realistic descriptions of computers and data centers in fiction, eschewing goofy tropes often seen on television and in bad movies. In its day, P-1 was little known, even in the computer community, but was adapted into a 1984 Canadian TV movie titled Hide and Seek. Like The Shockwave Rider, it ultimately foresees a promising, positive future.

Colossus: The Forbin Project (1966)

D.F. Jones turned this into a trilogy. It’s the best known of the novels here and was made into a 1970 film, The Forbin Project. A powerful supercomputer is turned over to the military, despite warnings to the contrary. Meanwhile in the Soviet Union, a similar computer goes on-line. They meet. Warning: Unlike other stories here, this is one depressing novel. I mean unrelentingly depressing. It makes Dr Strangelove read like Pollyanna. The only good note is it serves as a warning of what could happen.

Wanted: Data Entry Clerks with No Knowledge of English

Colossus is so damn depressing, I couldn’t end with it. In early days, data storage was expensive and computer memory even more so. Scanners were huge, slow, and inaccurate, so how might large bodies of information such as law library Lexus/Nexus be imported into computers?

They were typed in. Twice. At least.

Building a digital, searchable law library was the goal of one enterprise. Despite being surrounded by emerging automation, the group depended upon manual data entry. They hired pairs of keypunchers to retype law books in tandem. In other words, two women would be assigned the same text in a section, each duplicating the work of the other. A pair of women would attack another section, and two more yet another. The result was two streams of text hypothetically identical.

At the end of a daily run, each pair’s output was compared. Differences indicated a problem and a third person would locate the error and correct it. A lack of knowledge of English was a key requirement on the theory their output wouldn’t be influenced by their language.

Verily, let us cautiously give thanks for artificial intelligence.

A Near-Luddite Tries Bing AI

My Windows 365 updated a few weeks ago, and there on reboot was Microsoft selling hard to check out Edge’s new AI tool. Come on, Edge said. Try making a fun holiday image.

Was I tempted? A little. Mostly, I regard the rise of Big AI such as large language models with a combination of dread (look out for the bad Terminator!) and intellectual curiosity at what advances these unlocks (hooray, it's the good Terminator!). The risks and rewards of AI’s future applications are for expert thinkers. AI’s impact on writing is more in my wheelhouse, and there was my writing laptop wanting me to check out Bing's Copilot.

I’ve never Venmo-ed money. Don't know how. Don’t even have the app. I don’t know how to deposit checks by smartphone scan. I don’t use Alexa or Siri, and our newer smart appliances aren’t set up on the home Wi-Fi. I’m doing swell without all that. I’m not a technophobe, though. I use voice remote for TV and my smartphone for the usual stuff: music, news, texts, video calls, pet photos, health monitoring, and so forth. These help me stay connected and get where I want to go faster.

PART 1: I BANG ON ABOUT AI AND CREATIVE ETHICS

As with all discussions, let's start from intellectual honesty. The modern writer has long been using AI. Internet search algorithms, word predictors, spell check, Grammarly plug-ins. It's all narrow AI. What’s new is AI’s computing power and availability to the masses. AutoCrit’s AI critiques your story and gives style comparables (full disclosure: I've started using AutoCrit’s free version to spot repeated words and phrases). Sudowrite’s Story Engine handles the writing for you, including that dreaded synopsis. Other tools abound, and that number will mushroom.

I write when I can carve out time. In a productive year, I’ll write a handful of stories (I wrote three in 2023). About half of those will be publishable with effort. AI can crank out stories 24/7. They're junk. Fine, AI has almost won literary prizes. That's one in a billion, from what I've seen. People submit this anyway. As their own work. I don’t understand that justification. Someone presses a button. A prompted algorithm spitting out words is no more authorship than is copying pages straight from a Dickens novel. Hell, the algorithm may have copied Dickens.

I despair of rot. AI will evolve to produce more natural prose. Even so, AI will never be imaginative. Insightful, sure, but AI has no mind with which to imagine. And it’s a copycat, even of itself. The more AI builds its dreck into its model, the more AI will reproduce dreckier dreck. Markets will struggle for quality and even survival. There's no human effort barrier to slow the AI onslaught. Let’s stay honest, though. Many readers won’t mind so long as AI entertains.

PART 2: I ACTUALLY TRY THE DAMN THING

So in that mindset, I clicked the link to generate a holiday image. My command: a festive boiled custard drinking contest in old-time illustration style. Here’s its swing at my curveball:

generated by AI

generated by AI

generated by AI

Weird. But you know what? AI tried its robot best. And it brought fun.

Game on. I asked Edge to make a theoretical book cover of “Lord, Spare the Bottom Feeders,” a story of mine from AHMM a few years back. My prompt described the story as crime fiction with a few plot particulars about the lawyer character and let the tool rip. 

The tool returned an over-the-top cartoon cover with a generalissimo-type crime lord surrounded by central casting mafia goons, everyone armed as if up against the Untouchables and the Five Families and even the bad Terminator. Vivid, but it highlights important AI concerns. My prompt didn’t say what kind of crime ring was involved. I didn't mention guns. Fine. The tool made these assumptions. AI is teaching itself from an internet archive that, as we all know, includes significant biases and worse. Absent way more controls than we have today, AI is going to spread these biases rapid-fire.

AI is a parrot, so I re-prompted with a load more story specifics. The tool returned:

Okay, better-ish. It's still cartoonish tropes, but this one at least addresses the prompt about mussel smuggling. No lawyer, but props on the broken scales of justice. And it does grab attention, as a cover should do. 

I don’t worry for folks who design bad book covers. They need to find other gigs. I do worry for the many great cover designers on some level. Hopefully, those folks can lean into AI as a way to craft even better covers in less time.

For my next test, I took a story idea that has refused to gel in my head for months now. It’s about a guy getting initiated into the burly beard grooming life. As usual, the character came right to life. A workable plot hasn’t. So I prompted with:

Write an outline for a 3,000-word crime short story with three twists about a criminal who can't grow a beard despite trying.

AI returned (again, this is NOT my work):

"That sounds like an interesting premise for a crime story. Here is a possible outline for your short story:

• Title: The Beardless Bandit
• Genre: Crime/Comedy
• Summary: A young man, Eddie, dreams of becoming a notorious criminal, but he has a problem: he can’t grow a beard. He believes that having a beard is essential for being a successful and respected criminal. He tries various methods to grow a beard, but nothing works. He decides to resort to drastic measures: he robs a bank wearing a fake beard. However, his plan goes awry when he encounters three unexpected twists.
• Outline:
• The story begins with Eddie preparing for his bank robbery. He has a fake beard that he bought online, a gun that he borrowed from his cousin, and a getaway car that he rented. He is nervous, but also excited. He thinks that this will be his big break into the criminal world.
• He enters the bank, points his gun at the teller, and demands the money. He tries to act tough and menacing, but his voice cracks and his fake beard slips. The teller recognizes him as a regular customer and calls him by his name. Eddie panics and runs out of the bank, leaving behind his gun and his fake beard.
• The first twist is that the bank was actually a front for a money laundering operation run by a powerful crime boss, Mr. Big. Mr. Big is furious that someone tried to rob his bank and orders his men to find and kill Eddie. He also wants his gun and his fake beard back, as they are valuable evidence.
• The second twist is that the gun that Eddie borrowed from his cousin was actually a rare and antique weapon that belonged to a famous gangster, Historic Boss. The gun is worth millions of dollars and is sought after by collectors and criminals alike. Eddie’s cousin had stolen it from a museum and was planning to sell it to Mr. Big, but he lied to Eddie and told him it was a cheap replica.
• The third twist is that the fake beard that Eddie bought online was actually a real beard that belonged to a famous actor, Major Celebrity. The beard was cut off by a crazed fan and sold on the internet. The beard is also worth millions of dollars and is sought after by fans and celebrities alike. Major Celebrity himself is looking for his beard and is willing to pay a huge reward for its return.
• The story ends with Eddie being chased by Mr. Big’s men, the police, the museum security, and Major Celebrity’s agents. He manages to escape with the help of a friendly barber, who gives him a shave and a haircut. He realizes that he doesn’t need a beard to be a criminal, he just needs to be smart and brave. He decides to give up his criminal dreams and start a new life. He also returns the gun and the beard to their rightful owners and collects the rewards. He uses the money to buy a house, a car, and a dog. He names the dog Beardy."
— generated by AI

I changed one thing in AI’s summary for here. AI's fixation on famous people went as far as to use actual famous people’s names. Let’s leave them and their attorneys out of this.

AI's outline hangs together, mostly. Parts of this are even good. Resorting to a fake beard was something I hadn’t thought of, and that fake beard becoming a McGuffin is an actual twist. The stakes ramp up as stakes should, and the happy ending with Beardy made me grin.

There are problems.

AI crams in way too much plot for 3,000 words. The gun twist pulls the thing thematically out of whack. The friendly barber is funny, but fake beards don’t need to be shaved off. And you cannot run up to someone and cut an entire, reusable beard off their face. That’s either magic realism or horror.  

I didn’t ask AI to write the story. I won’t, and I won’t write “The Beardless Bandit” myself. This isn’t my idea, and I won't pretend otherwise. I do reserve the right to take inspiration from this.

I tried other story summary prompts and got repeated interesting nuggets and major plot holes. I was having fun. Did it feel like I’d created anything? No. It was like playing with a toddler while they explained their toys. I did feel creative-adjacent in a way. Using the tool forced me to consider prompt sharpness and to read the generated content critically.

In the debate about whether or not AI undermines and supplants fiction writers, I’m still in some despair. AI's expansion is a cycle that threatens to drag us downward. Downward, but not out. Fatalism is a human quality and usually a mistake. Enhanced AI tools can help us carbon-based writers. We’ll be better researchers, better self-editors, better brainstormers. These same AI tools are great at spotting missed cancers and asymptomatic Alzheimer’s. If AI can do that, there is a place for it to boost our craft.

We’ll need to find that place. Soon, because the AI debate is pointless. The technology is here. What we humans do with it– and about it– will determine whether we get good Terminators or bad ones. Until then, this near-

Luddite will get back to my Venmo-less life.

The Novel-Writing Machine

Many years ago, the Industrial Revolution marked the first great change from natural time to clock time. Before that, if there was a clock in the village or town, it was on the church tower, and marked only the hours, because there was no need to mark the minutes. Nobody paid attention to that. In a 90% agricultural world, the rhythms of life were based on the land, which meant constant work in the spring and fall, lighter work (except for the haying) in summer, and a winter spent mostly just trying to stay warm. People got up when it was light, went to bed when it was dark, and that was that.  And, besides Sundays off, there were more holidays throughout the year than today, thanks to the rhythms (and rule) of the Church.

Then came the Industrial Revolution, began in Europe, the usual factory hours were 12 hours a day, 6 days a week, 52 weeks a year. (It was considered a luxury when the factory workers were given half-days for Saturdays, and the 40 hour workweek was only put into law in 1940.) Humans became servants of the clock and of the machines. And now it's considered normal to get up, eat, work, and sleep by the clock, by the job, by the cell phone, not by nature. 

And now by AI and algorithms?

I read an adaptation of the The Great Fiction of AI by Josh Dzieza in last week's "The Week" (The Last Word:  The novel-writing machine) and found it pretty damned disturbing from start to finish.  Read the entire article here:  (LINK) To begin with:

"On a Tuesday in mid-March, Jennifer Lepp was precisely 80.41 percent finished writing Bring Your Beach Owl, the latest installment in her series about a detective witch in central Florida, and she was behind schedule. The color-coded, 11-column spreadsheet she keeps open on a second monitor as she writes told her just how far behind: she had three days to write 9,278 words if she was to get the book edited, formatted, promoted, uploaded to Amazon’s Kindle platform, and in the hands of eager readers who expected a new novel every nine weeks."

Every nine weeks?  What world are people living in?  

"However, being an Amazon-based author is stressful in ways that will look familiar to anyone who makes a living on a digital platform. In order to survive in a marketplace where infinite other options are a click away, authors need to find their fans and keep them loyal. So they follow readers to the microgenres into which Amazon’s algorithms classify their tastes, niches like “mermaid young adult fantasy” or “time-travel romance,” and keep them engaged by writing in series, each installment teasing the next, which already has a title and set release date, all while producing a steady stream of newsletters, tweets, and videos. As Mark McGurl writes in Everything and Less, his recent book on how Amazon is shaping fiction, the Kindle platform transformed the author-reader relationship into one of service provider and customer, and the customer is always right. Above all else, authors must write fast."

Sudowrite is an artificial intelligence tool designed to break through writer's block - for fiction writers.

"Designed by developers turned sci-fi authors Amit Gupta and James Yu, it’s one of many AI writing programs built on OpenAI’s language model GPT-3 that have launched since it was opened to developers last year. But where most of these tools are meant to write company emails and marketing copy, Sudowrite is designed for fiction writers. Authors paste what they’ve written into a soothing sunset-colored interface, select some words, and have the AI rewrite them in an ominous tone, or with more inner conflict, or propose a plot twist, or generate descriptions in every sense plus metaphor."

"AI may just be another tool, but authors haven’t previously felt the need to remind themselves that they — and not their thesaurus — are responsible for their writing or have fraught debates over whether to disclose their use of spellcheck. Something about the experience of using AI feels different. It’s apparent in the way writers talk about it, which is often in the language of collaboration and partnership. Maybe it’s the fact that GPT-3 takes instruction and responds in language that makes it hard not to imagine it as an entity communicating thoughts. Or maybe it’s because, unlike a dictionary, its responses are unpredictable. Whatever the reason, AI writing has entered an uncanny valley between ordinary tool and autonomous storytelling machine. This ambiguity is part of what makes the current moment both exciting and unsettling."

Jasper.ai is another tool, more for non-fiction, but we'll see:

"They’re using it to generate Google-optimized blog posts about products they’re selling or books that will serve as billboards on Amazon or Twitter threads and LinkedIn posts to establish themselves as authorities in their field. That is, they’re using it not because they have something to say but because they need to say something in order to “maintain relevance” — a phrase that I heard from AI-using novelists as well — on platforms already so flooded with writing that algorithms are required to sort it. It raises the prospect of a dizzying spiral of content generated by AI to win the favor of AI, all of it derived from existing content rather than rooted in fact or experience, which wouldn’t be so different from the internet we have now."  (my emphasis)

"[Meanwhile, Lepp says] she’s a little embarrassed to say she’s become reliant on it [Sudowrite]. Not that she couldn’t write without it, but she thinks her writing wouldn’t be as rich, and she would certainly be more burnt out. 'There’s something different about working with the AI and editing those words, and then coming up with my own and then editing it, that’s much easier. It’s less emotionally taxing. It’s less tiresome; it’s less fatiguing. I need to pay attention much less closely. I don’t get as deeply into the writing as I did before, and yet, I found a balance where I still feel very connected to the story, and I still feel it’s wholly mine.'"

"With the help of the program, she recently ramped up production yet again. She is now writing two series simultaneously, toggling between the witch detective and a new mystery-solving heroine, a 50-year-old divorced owner of an animal rescue who comes into possession of a magical platter that allows her to communicate with cats. It was an expansion she felt she had to make just to stay in place. With an increasing share of her profits going back to Amazon in the form of advertising, she needed to stand out amid increasing competition. Instead of six books a year, her revised spreadsheet forecasts 10."  (my emphasis)

"She thinks more fully automating fiction right now would produce novels that are too generic, channeled into the grooves of the most popular plots. But, based on the improvement she’s seen over the year she’s been using Sudowrite, she doesn’t doubt that it will get there eventually. It wouldn’t even have to go far. Readers, especially readers of genre fiction, like the familiar, she said, the same basic form with a slightly different twist or setting. It’s precisely the sort of thing AI should be able to handle. “I think that’s the real danger, that you can do that and then nothing’s original anymore. Everything’s just a copy of something else,” she said. “The problem is, that’s what readers like.”

photo © Wikipedia

Is this really our future? And what if I don't want it?

Technology Creeps

A decade ago, I wrote a short story about an author who upgraded his computer for a model that could talk and think. QWERTY, the new computer, had a mind of its own. It changed its name to Oscar, offered unwanted advice on split infinitives, and began to write a screenplay (after networking with Peter Jackson's computer). And then it tried to steal the author's girlfriend.

"I arrived home. I parked the car. I went inside and made my way to my office. As I climbed the stairs, I could hear voices. I could hear Oscar, and I could hear Ruby. Oscar was telling Ruby his Ernest Rutherford joke. When he got to the punch line, she cackled with laughter." The Trouble with QWERTY (COSMOS Magazine, Aug/Sep 2010)

The story was science fiction. It was a flight of (humorous) fantasy.

Consider this: The technology we have today wasn't around yesterday. My cheap cell phone (bought in January) has significantly more processing power and memory than my first Windows computer (bought in 1995); and that computer, a quarter of century ago, had more computing power and memory on board than the spaceship Neil Armstrong landed on the moon (a quarter of a century before that).

Technology creeps. Yeah, like rust, it doesn't sleep.

My computer, today, doesn't talk to me. But I can talk to it. Using voice recognition (Nuance's Dragon software, if you're curious), everything I say can be transcribed (almost perfectly) into text, and directly into an MS Word document. It's so easy, and workable, that I sometimes "write" first drafts of my stories this way.

Amazingly, scientists (in a study funded by Facebook) have already started taking steps to remove the "voice" part of speech recognition, transcribing directly from your brain waves.

Article at The Guardian: Neuroscientists decode brain speech signals into written text 

They're working on this for the benefit of people who are paralyzed; remember the elaborate process by which Prof. Stephen Hawking communicated. It's an excellent field of study and development... and you just know (and this is not a negative) that once the software/equipment is up and running, market forces will see to it that it's available for everyone. One day, probably sooner than we'd imagine, we'll be able to "think" our stories into our computers.

But what really does worry me is, will there come a day when my computer doesn't need me to think for it, and it can write a story all by itself?

Technology creeps.

Yes, Virginia, there will come a day.

What do we writers do? We make stuff up. Well, there's an app for that. Actually, it's some pretty hardcore AI programming, but it can... actually... "make stuff up." I believe you can even download the code and try it out for yourself.

OpenAI.com: Better Language Models and Their Implications

(Also) Article at The Guardian: New AI fake text generator may be too dangerous to release, say creators

OpenAI.com is a nonprofit research organ (funded by Elon Musk and others), and it has an AI text generator called GPT2. When fed text, anything from a few words to a whole page, it can write the next few sentences based on its predictions of what should follow. And this output text is coherent, fluid and natural. To most readers, it could have plausibly been written by a fellow human.

The OpenAI's software uses an input sample of content, e.g., 40 GB of internet text, and uses that dataset as a model to generate output. To quote The Guardian article:

"Feed it the opening line of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four – “It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen” – and the system recognises the vaguely futuristic tone and the novelistic style, and continues with: “I was in my car on my way to a new job in Seattle. I put the gas in, put the key in, and then I let it run. I just imagined what the day would be like. A hundred years from now. In 2045, I was a teacher in some school in a poor part of rural China. I started with Chinese history and history of science.”

The internet is an awfully large, easily accessible (by man or machine) dataset. So imagine what might be possible if the program had more than 40 GB to play with? And frankly, 40 GB is nothing. My car radio has more memory. And it won't take long before the "opening sample" dataset isn't needed. I'm a Technical Writer by profession, but even I can write the code to randomly generate data, be it numbers or words. And how do we humans start a brand new story? With random ideas.


One of the key tasks the writer has when making up a story is bringing order to randomness. Writing fiction is a long, long series of decisions, mostly YES/NO decisions. They might start out a little more complex, but they will always eventually come down to the binary: Do I end the chapter here? Does she have dark hair? Does he know she cheated on him? Does she drink red wine? Does he drink white wine? It's 1s and 0s. 

Could a machine/computer/robot/software/app one day write a short story, or a book, that passes muster with an editor (i.e., it's good) and it gets published? Yeah, I know, there's a wide    gulf between spitting out a paragraph or two of passable content, to the undertaking of the complexity of a 6,000 word short story, or an 80,000 word novel. But then, consider how much crap out there actually does get accepted and published.


Remember, it was a breathing, walking, talking human being who wrote "It was a dark and stormy night..."

There is, right now, an argument taking place about whether AI can, or should be recognized as the "creator" of something. From a BBC article:

"Unlike some machine-learning systems, Dabus has not been trained to solve particular problems.Instead, it seeks to devise and develop new ideas - "what is traditionally considered the mental part of the inventive act", according to creator Stephen Thaler."

Article at the BBC: AI system 'should be recognised as inventor'

So, why not? AI is simply a bunch of programming. In many respects, so are we. We write what we know. We write from our 'personal' datasets.

Welcome to our brave new world. And for the record, I really did write this article, I didn't outsource it to my toaster.

Bonus Trivia Item for Mystery Writers: "It was a dark and stormy night" is the start of the opening sentence of Lord Lytton's book Paul Clifford (published 1830). This is the only book that Raymond Chandler is known to have checked out of the library at Dulwich College, when he was a student there.

www.StephenRoss.net