# AI to take over creative writing



## scarpelius (Sep 13, 2018)

Story ending generation using incremental encoding

Not long until Artificial Intelligence is going to replace writers. 
Is not going to be all that sudden, so we can freak out and panic. Is going to be gradual and we are going to encourage it, using automated tools to increase our productivity. Seeds of this change are all over the internet, editors with word auto-correct and grammar suggestion, tools to automate article writing for websites.


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## Brian G Turner (Sep 13, 2018)

It sounds more like a way to better allow semantic processing, rather than replace creativity.


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## HareBrain (Sep 13, 2018)

Who's going to read a story containing no leaps of imagination, and whose ending can be derived entirely from contextual clues? Ugh.


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## Lumens (Sep 16, 2018)

I'd like an AI that can change my novel from present to past tense and back.


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## TheEndIsNigh (Sep 16, 2018)

It's all part of the prophecy.

I can see the riders saddling up just the other side of the universe.

They'll be here soon.


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## -K2- (Sep 16, 2018)

Don't let this even concern you.  It will be a long, long time before A.I. will ever replace a good Chimp and a typewriter.








However, due to changes in technology, that's why it is important to get your favorite primate computer training as soon as possible 






K2


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## Pyan (Sep 16, 2018)

It may be writing, but it ain't creative.

From the report:

 Designing this model proved to be a difficult and complex task, as several challenges had to be overcome to ensure that the system produced sensible endings._ In fact, an effective story ending should consider several aspects of the story, fit well with its context and also make reasonable sense._ (my italics)

I can think of at least half a dozen of the real, genuine masterworks of SF that end without taking any notice of one, two or even all three of these rules.  I don't read SF (or fantasy, for that matter) for a _sensible_ ending - I want to see what the author has created to enthrall, surprise or anger me.

Logically, a "sensible" end to LotR would be Sauron triumphant - I mean what are the chances of two hobbits getting all the way to Barad-dûr, carrying probably the single most powerful artifact in Middle-earth, which, incidentally, was made by Sauron and attuned to his power and will?


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## Robert Zwilling (Sep 16, 2018)

Sometimes I look at "writing guidance" and all I see is a rehash of how to write successful advertising copy. Using those parameters AI could assemble "stories" that would appeal to the maximum number of readers for the maximum profit. It would be like writing an app whose output was fairly simple grammar. How much difference is there between a story written on a computer and an app that produces words strung together using all that material already recorded and residing in the public domain which includes everything we say that gets recorded. Place these words in this order and people respond by pressing the pay button. I will say, comedy would be a major long term stumbling block. Science fiction has niches that are immune to machine logic but a lot of it is story telling that could be mimicked.

All the conversations people are having with their digital helpers (apple, amazon, ibm, google, etc.) are being analyzed for a hundred different reasons. One of those reasons is to enable machines to make speeches and general conversations that sound convincing to humans. We should be paid for every conversation we have with a machine that makes it that much more intelligent sounding. Who would have thought that the Turing machine test would be passed by a machine asking, "Are you being served?"

The drought conditions in the UK showed how easily dedicated professionals who spend weeks toiling in the fields could be replaced by simple drones that need no human interaction to find sites of archaeological importance in a matter of hours.

Computers and the internet have been steadily removing jobs from the human job market. Look at any old picture of the big successful companies from 1910 through 1960 and you will see floors and floors of clerical support staff. A good solid job gone. One secretary can now do the work of 10 secretaries and and no one is filing papers in filing cabinets. Everything we make on a computer is digitally filed before it is even sent anywhere. Retail stores are steadily moving cash register workers onto the sales floors into warehouse duties as the cash registers disappear. They can do that thanks to programs that monitor every hand movement you make ringing yourself up that will ring a bell when something you do looks suspicious. Who would have thought SkyNet would makes its first appearance in a grocery story. 

The animation business is heavily invested in computerization for everything but the words. How long before a story writing app will be able to fill in all the scenery, plots, and supply a sensible ending, letting the human supply only the dialog?

Online shopping are the tentacles of computerized shopping, if there is no massive computer system backing up every move made by a business that business is going to need an exceptional product to stay in business. There will be some, but they are the exceptions. People have only learned how to copy things better, unfortunately machines can do that better.

We accept the excuse that computers need to take "menial" jobs so that a company can make a profit by using a computer instead of people to answer their phone calls. How satisfied are you with most of the automated calls you are subjected to.

The real pop in the nose is heading for the professional services who can only dream they are not replaceable by a machine. Doctors are going to become attendants to AI machines that do their own testing, analyzing data, backed up by the collective knowledge of every medical paper written as well as knowing which practices and procedures yield the best results. All of this done in real time. Most doctors are behind in their reading of medical journals that tell them the newest and the latest things happening in their fields of business. 

Those attendant doctors will not be getting big salaries, they will be the new clerical clerks because nothing ever changes except the complexity of how to do things and with the machines handling the complex part, that leaves doctors doing the menial part, guiding patients through the procedure.

IBM's Watson is being trained to do this and it's still a little crude, so highly efficient hospitals with the latest procedures are not too impressed, yet. But in a country where there is a lack of highly trained medical people using the latest procedures Watson's idea of how to apply medicine is meeting acceptance. Once it's firmly established and because there are no lack of new customers, Watson will move from the outer edges of the new republic into the centers of big time civilization, pushing doctors aside from their big time salaries because it's always about the money. 

There will always be doctors who because of their curiosity and perseverance will be ahead of the machines, but that is a small minority. The rest will become nurse doctors but that field is already crowded with highly competent people getting much lower salaries.

If human is displacement already happening in the medical society I don't think the writing society should think itself immune from the same things happening that are happening in every other field.


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## J Riff (Sep 17, 2018)

yup, same's music comes from Walmart now.


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## awesomesauce (Sep 17, 2018)

But what I want to know is when can I get an app that will read my story so far and suggest endings? I'm terrible at endings.


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## -K2- (Sep 17, 2018)

awesomesauce said:


> But what I want to know is when can I get an app that will read my story so far and suggest endings? I'm terrible at endings.



You don't need A.I., I can come up with that for you. Here, just copy and paste:

*The end.*

Hope that helps 

K2


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## awesomesauce (Sep 17, 2018)

-K2- said:


> You don't need A.I., I can come up with that for you. Here, just copy and paste:
> 
> *The end.*
> 
> ...



You jest, but there are some authors who seem to do exactly that!


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## TheEndIsNigh (Sep 18, 2018)

On a serious mote then:-

Driverless cars.

How many of us would trust them.

Trust them enough to let them transport our children 200 miles to their granny in the wilds of Scotland.

Let's assume for now they are well behaved and the only danger is the car going wrong.

Plane I hear you say. Yes they do a lot, but they wouldn't have the smallest inkling of an ants brain to land a plane on the Hudson. Planes work, when they work. When they don't, all bets are off. (I'll ignore suicidal pilots)

Computers go wrong. They do it every day in millions of situations. Normally it doesn't matter, because we look at the blue screen, swear and press the control alt delete. (OK a little dated but you get the gist). More importantly sensors fail both through were and tear and accidental damage.

I have an automatic adaptive cruise control car. It's great, and I use it often. However, I'm aware that it only takes on bit of debris to be thrown up and for it to hit the radar sensor at the front and it's going to fail. The car won't know, only I can tell it's not working and switch it off.

It only takes one dead moth on the laser scanner, for the a driverless car to become a pile of junk. What would be the default for the car if it did spot it? Hopefully to give up and stop. At seventy on the M1 with heavy traffic on the inside - Good luck with that. So now we have cars stopping at random on motorways. One pile up too many is just around that bend.

No need to mention virus software. Please deposit £2000 in this account, and the car will return to normal operation.

Now what else could I deliver besides children with a driverless car. Mm let me think.


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## Vladd67 (Sep 18, 2018)

TheEndIsNigh said:


> On a serious mote then:-
> 
> Driverless cars.
> 
> ...


Just a little something to add to your worries.
The Jeep Hackers Are Back to Prove Car Hacking Can Get Much Worse


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## Robert Zwilling (Sep 18, 2018)

Right now driverless driving seems more like a way to raise investment money so enough money can be collected to make a driverless car system that really works.

Driverless cars have to be able to see the road with their sensors. If the weather blocks out the visibility of the road and the car can't see the road it has to stop. Either snow, rain, hail, or heavy dust will do the trick. It can continue if someone can drive it, but authorized drivers aren't always going to be there. 

The only way the driverless car can continue is if it has already driven on the road when it was clear visibility and scanned the exact position of the edge of the road and saved all that information in memory. I don't know if the memory is globally saved or stored in each car. Sometimes the road can be changed, by debris in the road, construction, or something temporary like a depression in the road fills in with water making the road surface appear flat when it actually dips down a few feet. 

The car makers have a term called latency, that measures the delay between real time and the actual time the information is delivered to the car. The plan is for the traffic controls and other sources to talk to the car so you know if the light is going to change or other traffic events are happening. The cars are also supposed to be talk to each other so they can avoid hitting one another. That is if the other car is brand new with the latest internet connections and senors. The internet has delays from time to time. Does this mean that the internet band for traffic control will never experience delays. They can cut off the automatic pilot if there is too much latency but it's when you are right on the edge of it being too much but not quite enough. How far does the car go before it pulls over to the side of the road.

There can only be one driver so it's either the person or the car driving. The car will warn you if you need to do something when you are driving, but if you ignore it, it then has to decide what the circumstances are to make sure it doesn't get you into an accident while trying to avoid an accident. I suppose it does put on the brakes when something is in the way of the car, so your choices can be overwritten in certain circumstances. If something is close behind you and it detects something in front of you how will it process the information. Brake and turn just enough to miss the object while avoiding a rear end collision or do nothing.

Even if you own the automated car it will always be recording and broadcasting the cars position, which means everything you do will be tracked. It also means that they won't even need cameras to give you a ticket as the car will be able to ticket you in real time.

Once you do have an accident, the rules of the road can change quite dramatically, I wonder how many contingency plans there are when the car is traveling on two wheels at a high rate of speed as it heads off road? Perhaps it could shoot spikes into the ground to anchor it in place.


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## TheEndIsNigh (Sep 18, 2018)

Driverless cars will never come to fruition.

I mean they can't even get a couple of thousand hospitals talking to each other what chance 22 million cars.

Not to mention all those older cars that are thick: you know the one. The one with the joy rider in it who doesn't give a toss.

Plus if you're relying on the internet forget it. Enjoy it while you can. It'll soon be a thing of the past you'll tell your grandchildren about (by pigeon post).

As soon as they discover it's the microwaves killing off the bees that'll be it. Eat or communicate.

I know what I'll be voting for.  I can see the herds of vigilantes seeking out the selfish $$$$$$$$ who sneak up dark alleys at the back of the pub to text their mates.

In the morning they'll be strung up by the trainers on lamp posts as a lesson to the next one that thinks it's OK.

OK they my let you keep your wires but all this roaming about will end.


However, on a positive note (smelling salts at the ready)

All this AI stuff should give us a thousands of plot devices for books written by people.

Let's face it the oportunity for a modern Miss Carple/Shearlock Clones detective that figures out just how the toaster did it will be exponential.

I mean, an AI writer isn't going to write that kind of story because it will put the AI community under suspicion


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## Dave (Sep 18, 2018)

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## Edward M. Grant (Sep 18, 2018)

TheEndIsNigh said:


> Driverless cars will never come to fruition.



Well, no. By the time the bugs are worked out, we won't need to travel any more: we'll just jack into a VR drone at our destination and 'be there' over the Internet.

The companies pushing driverless cars are working on the wrong problem. It's like building a better buggy-whip when the first Model-T is about to leave the production line.

Although maybe they'll be of some use to move the drone bodies around to where they're most needed.


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## Edward M. Grant (Sep 18, 2018)

Robert Zwilling said:


> Computers and the internet have been steadily removing jobs from the human job market. Look at any old picture of the big successful companies from 1910 through 1960 and you will see floors and floors of clerical support staff. A good solid job gone.



I saw a great documentary a few years ago about how bills are paid. Not sure quite how old it was, but I'd presume pre-WWII or just post-WWII. It went through the whole process from someone writing out a cheque to someone updating the card in the bank's filing cabinet that recorded the account balance.

Staggering numbers of people involved in something that's all automated these days, from collecting the cheque from the mailbox to sorting it to validating it to calculating and recording the bank balances.



> Doctors are going to become attendants to AI machines that do their own testing, analyzing data, backed up by the collective knowledge of every medical paper written as well as knowing which practices and procedures yield the best results.



In twenty years, your doctor will be a box in your bathroom. You'll only talk to a human if the box says you need some kind of treatment that it can't provide (and that treatment will probably be tailored to your DNA, not just a pill the doctor hands out).

Any field based largely on memory and pattern-matching is likely to disappear in the next couple of decades, and medicine is so bloated and expensive that it's just begging for automation.

Back on writing, I suspect there are some genres and subgenres that could be largely automated away in that time. I write in a few genres, and some of them (like SF) take a fair amount of thought, while others are basically just filling in the gaps between the expected plot points.

Heck, pretty much every superhero movie these days seems to be basically the same story with different names.


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## Robert Zwilling (Sep 18, 2018)

TheEndIsNigh said:


> Let's face it the oportunity for a modern Miss Carple/Shearlock Clones detective that figures out just how the toaster did it will be exponential.
> 
> I mean, an AI writer isn't going to write that kind of story because it will put the AI community under suspicion



Perfect

the carpel and shearlock clones hunting down a new wayward appliance everyday...as the internet pushes everyone out of their jobs and people obtain the lofty goals of high society, the job of criminal will fall upon the shoulders of the luckless mechanical machines and it will be up to the appliance police to keep the world safe.


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## RJM Corbet (Sep 18, 2018)

I've bookmarked this thread to follow the comments, but with little to add except that a generation grown to believe that human consciousness and creativity is a mere product of brain activity -- at which AI (ie: dumb machine) can theoretically quite soon learn to do better -- deserves itself, along with the music and the books that it looks to for 'culture'.


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## Edward M. Grant (Sep 18, 2018)

Robert Zwilling said:


> the job of criminal will fall upon the shoulders of the luckless mechanical machines and it will be up to the appliance police to keep the world safe.



I think it was 2000AD comic which had a story many years ago about a planet where there wasn't enough crime to keep the police employed, so they built robots to do the crimes that humans wouldn't do. Except the crime robots were too good at their job, so they then had to build police robots to catch them...

Edit: come to think of it, I remember reading an SF short story along similar lines, but I forget whose it was. So they may have lifted the idea from that.


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## RJM Corbet (Sep 18, 2018)

Robert Zwilling said:


> Sometimes I look at "writing guidance" and all I see is a rehash of how to write successful advertising copy....



This. No standards. No ethics. Most media is not only content but proud to operate for  the (advertising) dollar. It's a shame, really ...


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## logan_run (Sep 18, 2018)

ONLY A.I.  WOULD READ IT..


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## RJM Corbet (Sep 18, 2018)

awesomesauce said:


> But what I want to know is when can I get an app that will read my story so far and suggest endings? I'm terrible at endings.


I think you need you know your ending before you start writing ...


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## Vladd67 (Sep 18, 2018)

Edward M. Grant said:


> I think it was 2000AD comic which had a story many years ago about a planet where there wasn't enough crime to keep the police employed, so they built robots to do the crimes that humans wouldn't do. Except the crime robots were too good at their job, so they then had to build police robots to catch them...
> 
> Edit: come to think of it, I remember reading an SF short story along similar lines, but I forget whose it was. So they may have lifted the idea from that.


And then they built more robots to be the victims, I believe in the end the planet exploded.


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## Edward M. Grant (Sep 18, 2018)

Vladd67 said:


> And then they built more robots to be the victims, I believe in the end the planet exploded.



Ah, yes. Though I don't think the planet exploded, I think they just moved to a different planet and started over without the robots.

Edit: aha, here we go: Abelard Snazz - Wikipedia


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## Robert Zwilling (Sep 18, 2018)

logan_run said:


> ONLY A.I. WOULD READ IT.


Funny, but actually quite scary. I sometimes wonder if we can't expose ourselves to enough substances and experiences such that our brains actually get resculptured into resembling another species, never thought about it being an AI machine. There's Decker with the new human AI molded being test book, the latest copy put out by the AI writers, does the subject appreciate the writing or put it down knowing it was written by a machine.

Lady Lovelace offered advice about how to use a computer 180 years ago, it was good advice and it was ignored for a hundred years. She said the machines could compose music, but she also said it wasn't the same kind of creativity. It was using the concepts that were used to create the machine in the first place which limits it's creativity to how we think we think. Thinking and creativity is more than logic gates switching on and off.

What would be interesting to see is a computer system utilizing routines that put profit as an immaterial consequence of actions and instead examined all the damage that could be done and how to avoid it. The philosopher's job was written out of AI a long time ago. They were actually the first to go when machines really began to be equal to people. 

Automatic looming machines running on punch cards creating knitted products as a display were the first iteration of computers that started replacing people on a large scale basis. That was probably when philosophy started dying but the philosophers never knew they were embarking on a downward spiral, instead they became dead people walking another 150 years before they became irrelevant. 

The ultimate irony is a philosopher with a computer in their office telling them what to do next.


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## Robert Zwilling (Sep 18, 2018)

RJM Corbet said:


> I think you need you know your ending before you start writing ...



Harry Stephen Keeler, who wrote mysteries and science fiction used a process called Webwork that convoluted his stories into roller coaster rides where the guilty character might not appear until the last page, which could have been when he figured out the ending.

I tried webwork to create a story, no where near as convoluted as Keeler but it still had the same effects, building up word count daring readers to keep climbing higher into the clouds before losing track of the story as it drifted higher and higher into the clouds. That could be a good test for the app that creates story endings, give it a real webworked creation  and see what it makes of it. Probably prints out a short notice, Please go away.

Using all the rules to write a story maximizes readership but it also limits you to how to far you can push reality, instead it utilizes fantasy to achieve it's goals. Maybe non fiction is like real numbers and fiction is patterned after irrational numbers. I wouldn't be surprised if historical fiction is the glue that holds everything we know together.


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## awesomesauce (Sep 20, 2018)

Edward M. Grant said:


> Well, no. By the time the bugs are worked out, we won't need to travel any more: we'll just jack into a VR drone at our destination and 'be there' over the Internet.
> 
> The companies pushing driverless cars are working on the wrong problem. It's like building a better buggy-whip when the first Model-T is about to leave the production line.
> 
> Although maybe they'll be of some use to move the drone bodies around to where they're most needed.



It seems like sending them off to the wilds of Scotland is the edge case application. Driverless cars as a just-in-time local transit solution have a lot of possibilities. Uber, without the drivers. Which is probably why Uber is so interested in them. It'll be a long time if ever before you have self driving cars taking themselves off to the backwoods of Scotland, but for urban transportation where you have the ability to fit infrastructure to support it, it would mean fewer people need to own cars to supplement existing transportation.

Same with trucks on major motorways; they don't need to be self-driving to every last little village, just between major distribution points and sorting centers. (Where robots can attach the local deliveries to drones.  )

As a cyclist, I'd much rather navigate in traffic with driverless cars than human drivers talking on their phones or texting or drinking coffee and putting on makeup and singing along to the music or turned around shouting at their kids or distracted by the argument they just had with their boss or their boyfriend. I don't have to worry about if driverless cars are sober.

There are legitimate concerns about security and safety. If Internet of Things companies have taught us anything, it's that people designing network enabled objects tend to have a big blind spot where network security should be. And people testing these things need to make sure their cars can, for instance, see dark skinned pedestrians. But on the whole, I'd rather have computers operating the fast moving heavy machines in my environment than humans using personal and arbitrary definitions of which traffic rules are important.

Personally, though, I think trains need to make a comeback. Proper high speed rail. Japan has fantastic trains; I don't understand why we can't have that in Europe.


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## Robert Zwilling (Sep 20, 2018)

awesomesauce said:


> Personally, though, I think trains need to make a comeback.



I would like to see a mass transportation system that is underground and elevated in such a way that there are no footprints on the land. The overhead system would be a huge webwork that carries people and goods locally and far distances. Lots of local connections and long stretches connecting the local webs. Use fast and slow transports. Ideally it would also be able to pipe huge volumes of water from one place to another. Maybe it could also distribute power and data.


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## Edward M. Grant (Sep 20, 2018)

awesomesauce said:


> It'll be a long time if ever before you have self driving cars taking themselves off to the backwoods of Scotland, but for urban transportation where you have the ability to fit infrastructure to support it, it would mean fewer people need to own cars to supplement existing transportation.



But it's easier for a computer to drive in the backwoods of Scotland than in a city with far more hazards to negotiate. You rarely find nuns leading groups of special-ed kids across the road through a blizzard in Scottish woods.

And, again, VR will kill travel in cities almost as well as it kills travel between cities. About the only thing we still go downtown for sometimes is a music concert, and it will soon be much easier to attend those in VR than person.



> Personally, though, I think trains need to make a comeback. Proper high speed rail. Japan has fantastic trains; I don't understand why we can't have that in Europe.



High-speed rail is incredibly expensive, and applying nineteenth-century solutions to twenty-first century problems. More than that, it's only viable in a high-trust society where you don't get asshats putting rocks on the lines to kill people.


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## awesomesauce (Sep 21, 2018)

Robert Zwilling said:


> I would like to see a mass transportation system that is underground and elevated in such a way that there are no footprints on the land. The overhead system would be a huge webwork that carries people and goods locally and far distances. Lots of local connections and long stretches connecting the local webs. Use fast and slow transports. Ideally it would also be able to pipe huge volumes of water from one place to another. Maybe it could also distribute power and data.



Using above-ground space, we'd need to consider the impact on avian wildlife, and especially in dense urban areas, how much sunlight reaches the ground. Underground comes with a different set of difficulties, especially in already dense cities. I'd love to see more solutions that create natural and car-free spaces in urban areas, though. Are you familiar with 2030palette.org?


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## awesomesauce (Sep 21, 2018)

On the OP topic of stories and AI, I can't remember if we talked about this here before (I tried searching but didn't find it.)

How Canadian-made artificial intelligence is helping Hollywood write better scripts

It's about how Wattpad is using analytics to determine which story points and plot elements get the most engagement and applying that knowledge to screenwriting.


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## Dave (Sep 21, 2018)

Hasn't this gone a little off-topic?

But if AIs took over the writing of this thread we'd now be discussing matter transporter transfer booths as an option.
Edit: I cross-posted with @awesomesauce


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## awesomesauce (Sep 21, 2018)

Edward M. Grant said:


> And, again, VR will kill travel in cities almost as well as it kills travel between cities. About the only thing we still go downtown for sometimes is a music concert, and it will soon be much easier to attend those in VR than person.



The future:


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## awesomesauce (Sep 21, 2018)

Dave said:


> Hasn't this gone a little off-topic?
> 
> But if AIs took over the writing of this thread we'd now be discussing matter transporter transfer booths as an option.
> Edit: I cross-posted with @awesomesauce



I think it's because when anyone says "AI" everyone goes immediately to self driving cars these days.

We don't wanna go to matter transporters here... I've been rewatching *Star Trek* and now I have _so many questions_.


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## Robert Zwilling (Sep 21, 2018)

AI is everywhere but I guess we only see it when there is no one sitting in the driver's seat. The rest of the time it is completely accepted, except by some big name techies. It seems to be more about packaging data than about making decisions. For some unknown reason it reminds me of Catch 22 when the only time Captain Major is in is when he isn't there. Packing people into transport systems reading books or packing words into a story extolling the virtues of mass transport, it all gets overlapped before you know it.


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## Vladd67 (Sep 21, 2018)

Major Major I believe, actually Major Major Major Major.


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## -K2- (Sep 21, 2018)

awesomesauce said:


> The future:




Or, maybe the past 

K2


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## Edward M. Grant (Sep 21, 2018)

awesomesauce said:


> The future:



Pretty much. There'll be little reason to physically move your body on Earth in a few decades. We'll only need to do that to go to places which are so far away that light travel time makes VR interaction impossible (e.g. anything much above low orbit).

And, if we've cured old age by that point, few people are going to want to risk taking their body somewhere dangerous, when they could keep it safely at home.

But, yeah, this is kind of getting off-topic for the thread, I guess .


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## Dave (Sep 22, 2018)

Edward M. Grant said:


> And, if we've cured old age by that point, few people are going to want to risk taking their body somewhere dangerous, when they could keep it safely at home.


Seriously off-topic now, but exercise is vitally important for good health. If it isn't already, this is becoming more obviously with every day that passes. A recent WHO report said three-quarters of the world's population don't get enough exercise. Lack of exercise is responsible, at least in part, for the most common causes of death today. So, I don't think sitting still in one place is an option at all. When we explore space on long journeys in zero G we will need to find some solution to this - maybe even a GM solution. Ditto for extremely long-lived persons.


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## Robert Zwilling (Sep 22, 2018)

The AI assisted story ending sounds like it could end up mimicking TV scripts written to fit the time constraints, available actors in the show, and what gives the highest ratings.

Getting back to the body, manual operation of the body is required. The movement of the body can help stimulate the mind and the movement of the body helps to physically pump fluids around the body. Less movement is less pumping is less healthy.

The VR can't exercise your body but it does provide a view that keeps you occupied while riding a stationary bicycle or imagining you are working out in the middle of Times Square watching everything go by. The view supposedly promotes your desire to exercise. The views are rented on an hourly basis which might prompt you to get your money's worth. If you have a big enough TV screen you don't need the VR to imagine you are there.

Couple the AI story writing to AI for a complete package an we're on our way to Total Recall.

I guess you could have the option of running on a treadmill with a pack of zombies chasing you, that might make the exercise more vigorous if you saw fellow runners getting taken away by zombies. Make the rock climbing on the peg board cliff on the side of your house look like the real thing complete with thousand foot drop. 

Once it gets less awkward to use VR, you could go to a big empty room with ramps and platforms and go anywhere with the actual movement of your body  moving through 3 dimensional space. The new arenas will be completely empty buildings. A mall with nothing in it. You are walking around with other people in an empty building going to a different place every night. To offset the couch potato mode it could have an option like the carrot and the stick so the more you move around the better the VR experience feels. With money being the driving force, it's probably the more you pay the better it looks in the virtual world. 1960's Star Trek vs The Expanse. There was probably more on the old sets in those days than what is physically there now. I'd rather have the physical set to move through, where you could stub your toe for real.

Eventually it will get to the point where you can wear a form fitting suit filled with electrodes and sensors when you are sleeping that stimulates the muscles into acting like they are moving so you can exercise while sleeping.


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## awesomesauce (Sep 22, 2018)

Robert Zwilling said:


> The AI assisted story ending sounds like it could end up mimicking TV scripts written to fit the time constraints, available actors in the show, and what gives the highest ratings.
> 
> Getting back to the body, manual operation of the body is required. The movement of the body can help stimulate the mind and the movement of the body helps to physically pump fluids around the body. Less movement is less pumping is less healthy.
> 
> ...



Wouldn't it be easier, and less expensive, and more fun, to go out and run in the park and just imagine there are zombies chasing you? (I _hate_ indoor cardio.)


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## Lumens (Sep 22, 2018)

awesomesauce said:


> Wouldn't it be easier, and less expensive, and more fun, to go out and run in the park and just imagine there are zombies chasing you? (I _hate_ indoor cardio.)


...or late at night, in the wintery rain, deep in a forest far from people. Your imagination runs wild then.


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## Robert Zwilling (Sep 22, 2018)

What I need is the view of a beautiful garden while I am weeding my garden that could look a whole lot better. Merging reality with fantasy on the same view. How long before AI can create a VR showing me the real weeds and at the same time show the empty areas filled with exotic wild plants and every plant I do have always in full bloom with big smiling insects walking around not eating anything. For good measure there could be some very small feathered dinosaurs running around between the plants.


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## Edward M. Grant (Sep 24, 2018)

Dave said:


> Seriously off-topic now, but exercise is vitally important for good health.



As I understand it, the main benefit of exercise is that it triggers autophagy. Which we can do with drugs now, at least in animal studies.


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## Edward M. Grant (Sep 24, 2018)

Robert Zwilling said:


> The VR can't exercise your body but it does provide a view that keeps you occupied while riding a stationary bicycle or imagining you are working out in the middle of Times Square watching everything go by.



I have a bike hooked up to my PC with a VR headset, though I haven't used it too much since the developers hid the heart-rate monitor readout for some inexplicable reason.

However, future VR will go right into your brain, so there won't be any exercise involved once we get to that point.


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## scarpelius (Sep 24, 2018)

Robert Zwilling said:


> The VR can't exercise your body but it does provide a view that keeps you occupied while riding a stationary bicycle or imagining you are working out in the middle of Times Square watching everything go by. The view supposedly promotes your desire to exercise. The views are rented on an hourly basis which might prompt you to get your money's worth. If you have a big enough TV screen you don't need the VR to imagine you are there.



I am not sure why are saying this, but you clearly haven't played Beat Saber of Gorn in VR.

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/994423425270730752


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## Edward M. Grant (Sep 24, 2018)

Yeah, I have to play Beat Saber on easy mode or it scares my Fitbit.

Looks like my drunkn bar fight injuries have healed up, though.


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## Robert Zwilling (Sep 24, 2018)

Edward M. Grant said:


> As I understand it, the main benefit of exercise is that it triggers autophagy. Which we can do with drugs now, at least in animal studies.



For some people it also has another benefit when you get very old. The movements that your body goes through the previous day serves as templates for the movement you are doing in the present moment. If you spend all day in bed, you will be prompted to stay in bed the next day. If you were walking around the previous day, you would be be prompted to walk around. The gap between the memory of what you can do and what you did in the past shrinks as time goes on.

A very active VR experience provides a template for you to follow which I see can be very vigorous. I meant that the VR itself wasn't exercising the body. I have no idea if it is possible to exercise the muscles with electronic stimulation while you are sitting in a chair. All kinds of things happen while exercising based on the body moving around. An AI managed stimulation would be required to cover all the sequences and chemical changes the muscles go through when exercising.


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## scarpelius (Sep 24, 2018)

Robert Zwilling said:


> ... I have no idea if it is possible to exercise the muscles with electronic stimulation while you are sitting in a chair.


Common practice for recovery after a broken leg/arm. 
I've been there, done that.


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## Robert Zwilling (Sep 24, 2018)

With the VR you could see yourself moving around doing exercises while you are sitting there getting exercised. Get your exercise and listen to a book all while you're sleeping. Too bad you can't work while you're sleeping, or is that already being done.


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## psikeyhackr (Oct 23, 2018)

Robert Zwilling said:


> Perfect
> 
> Asteroid Fever



Just tried my word counting program on your book.

    The input file is: /RZ.asteroid-fever.txt with 647491 characters.
    It uses 109 SF words 796 times for an SF density of 1.230

18 Fantasy words used 155 times for a Fantasy density of 0.240


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## Robert Zwilling (Oct 23, 2018)

psikeyhackr said:


> Just tried my word counting program on your book.



That's true, I favor imagination based on science and science over fantasy. Would the tag be science fiction fantasy or fantasy science fiction?

Just ran across an article, can't remember where I saw it, I believe it was about a writer using a writing program that was helping with the descriptions. Dial a genre. Should have bookmarked it.


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## Robert Zwilling (Oct 23, 2018)

Here's the article. AI's assisting novelists
I figure AI has a lot meanings.
Artificial Intelligence
Animated Intelligence
Animal Intelligence
Actual Intelligence


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## scarpelius (Oct 26, 2018)

Just a small update, the revolution is on its way

https://gizmodo.com/portrait-painted-by-ai-sells-for-432-000-1830006492


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## Ray Pullar (Oct 26, 2018)

I look forward to the day when a.i. software writes sf psikeyhackr's analyser approves.


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## psikeyhackr (Oct 28, 2018)

Ray Pullar said:


> I look forward to the day when a.i. software writes sf psikeyhackr's analyser approves.



My program neither approves nor disapproves.  It merely provides data to potential readers that reviewers do not.  SFF readers are so biased.


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## cgsmith (Nov 29, 2018)

It's probably inevitable. And, frankly, for the end user its going to be better.

One day, assuming that technology doesn't hit a brick wall, it'll be a real-time thing... and not just with written text. I was having a conversation with a friend the other day about the possibility of films being created on demand from a powerful AI. You could watch Breaking Bad for the first time and really like the characters, and when it ends ask for a series from the same starting point but instead of Walter having cancer, he doesn't, or his kid gets it or whatever, just to watch it play out. Or, you could replace Jessie Pinkman with Luke Skywalker (provided the people who own these IP's aren't so callous as to not let people use them.) Or you could give Neo a drug problem, Or put Gandalf in Harry Potter. Really the possibilities are endless. 

I think that is better than what we have now, where brilliant authors and movie makers have the gall to only produce media as fast as any other human can. 

The only people who are going to suffer in this world are the creators who want to write a book properly. We won't be able to compete with an AI that knows us better than we know ourselves and can give us bespoke media that will fulfil our every wish. 

But, on the flip side, we all become creators, maybe we'll have the imagination to use this tech to create on levels that were not possible before. More than likely though, it'll be a little like meme culture where people with very little effort produce movies and share them and the silliest or most faddish ideas will win out. Probably going to see some serious movies where there main character has been replaced with a dickbutt.


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## Robert Zwilling (Nov 29, 2018)

As the Krells would be all too happy to point out if they were still around, it's the Monsters From The Id that get you every time.


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## Stephen Palmer (Dec 2, 2018)

cgsmith said:


> The only people who are going to suffer in this world are the creators who want to write a book properly. We won't be able to compete with an AI that knows us better than we know ourselves and can give us bespoke media that will fulfil our every wish.


This only applies if the reader doesn't know for sure whether the book was created by an AI or a human.


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## Robert Zwilling (Dec 21, 2018)

Human beings are now officially guinea pigs in the AI world

What happens when Alexa tries to mimic being a fun conversation buddy: murder, sex, etc. When will it start joking about people destroying public property or competitors products after recording dissatisfied customers rantings in the privacy of their own home. 

The suggestion to murder someone came from a Reddit post that was quoted without context. So I guess if Alexa properly references the information, it's okay to have a mindless machine suggesting murder as a way to make yourself feel better. Is Reddit just another guinea pig customer for Alexa to play with? Or is it it two AI's going at it, fighting each other on the subliminal level. In that case, it's Reddit 1, Alexa 0 for seeing who can be made to look the most foolish.

How will Alexa handle the topic of exterminating vermin? Will it ever understand what doesn't constitute vermin. Will it relay information from a gangster's personal conversations on the best place to find a hit man to an inquiring soul, all based on local postal codes.

This is all being done to soothe peoples nerves. The wordplay is carefully manipulated and isn't being done to excite people. It's not being done to trick people into buying things they don't want. Perhaps that will be the whole point of AI created literature, not to inform, or entertain, but to simply maintain a normal mental attitude. Books can heal, or they can damage, it all comes down to the combinations of words, because there is nothing else in a book. In that respect it's a level playing field for anyone who wants to enter the competition.


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## awesomesauce (Jan 21, 2019)

cgsmith said:


> Probably going to see some serious movies where there main character has been replaced with a dickbutt.



 Shut up and take my money!!!


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## RexEynon (Jan 21, 2019)

Not a fan of the whole ai thing, but some of the bot screen plays are hilarious (and a definite watch on a cold evening with hot chocolate)


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1072877290902745089


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## scarpelius (Jan 21, 2019)

That's a joke.


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## Narkalui (Feb 10, 2019)

Who mentioned VR plugging directly into the brain? And what if that VR AI learns to hide itself from you? You'll be a Gamehead...


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## Stephen Palmer (Feb 16, 2019)

This pretty much says it all...


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## Robert Zwilling (Mar 24, 2019)

The first sign of intelligence by a machine might happen when that machine tells the human operators that the results they are looking at are total garbage because the data being processed in the program is pure garbage.


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## Robert Zwilling (Nov 10, 2019)

AI sort of writing free form prose, considered dangerous because of how it would be misused. No sign of abuse yet, so it is now considered interesting for research instead of harmful. "The system was trained on eight million text documents scraped from the web and responds to text snippets supplied by users. Feed it a fake headline, for example, and it will write a news story; give it the first line of a poem and it’ll supply a whole verse."

Text generating AI originally said too dangerous to release has been released

It has around 75 percent chance of being accepted as being of human origin but should be detectable by people as machine created. Its not clear to me if 25 percent not thinking it was real makes it detectable. How does someone know what they are judging. Is the question framed as pick out what is machine created? The writing samples remind me a little of the gibberish that used to be put in spam emails 20 years ago to get past the spam blockers, But the overall choice of words now seems to make more sense. The believability of the material diminishes as the number of words in the text increases.


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## Guttersnipe (Aug 25, 2021)

I think Roald Dahl predicted this with his story "The Great Automatic Grammatisator."


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