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The computers are getting better at writing

newyorker.com

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Re: The computers are getting better at writing

#11

Post by Swizec »

lbacaj wrote: post #3

I have been doing a lot of writing lately, short and longer essays. I have also written on-and-off for the last ten years. Writing well is not easy. I used to think I wrote well until I started reading better writers. The whole idea that we will just slap together a bunch of text using some “AI” and it will resonate with people is crazy to me. As an engineer whose dabbled with some AI and ML, and has even seen what G…

You are right. AI will not replace good writing. AI will replace typical writing – seo spam, news reports, ads, coding tutorials, etc

Good writing has insight. AI can’t do that yet. Most writing is filler lettuce. AI is great.

Re: The computers are getting better at writing

#12

Post by Swizec »

enkid wrote: post #2

Is it just me, or is the "continuation" grammatical but completely nonsensical? It talks about infants being thrown into dust bins and calling them animals - not in an intentional way. It talks about trying to crawl away from the blood on his belly. It talks about bugs being ill. It just doesn't actually make sense.

It makes sense the same way a horoscope or a Myers-Briggs test makes sense — the reader adds their own meaning.

Re: The computers are getting better at writing

#13

Post by throwawaygh »

causality0 wrote: post #4

GPT-3-generated writing is a combination of comically absurd and incredibly deep. The weak infants of the woman next door who had to be picked up with the tongs and thrown into the dustbin is quite silly but then there's He wanted to crawl away from it, but there was no place to go. which is a surprisingly deep statement about the revulsion he feels towards himself. That a computer can generate that says very uncomfo…

> which is a surprisingly deep statement

People used to say the same thing about Markov chains, and then the hype died down it took 20 years for another hypetrain to pull into the station. The same will happen with GPT-n.

> says very uncomfortable things about the skill of humans in recognizing genuine creative significance.

Indeed. People see pictures in clouds and omnipotent beings in the stars. Humans are uncomfortably good at finding meaning in nothings.

Re: The computers are getting better at writing

#14

Post by jvanderbot »

This all reminds me of the poetry and intentionally over-used analogies and similes of junior high.

People who look for meaning in it will find it, but it's mostly nonsense.

It reminds me of the early face generation ... The eyes nose etc were all in the right place, but it was mimicking the appearance not the structure.

I'm more interested in a convincing paragraph than sentence.

Re: The computers are getting better at writing

#15

Post by malloryerik »

enkid wrote: post #2

Is it just me, or is the "continuation" grammatical but completely nonsensical? It talks about infants being thrown into dust bins and calling them animals - not in an intentional way. It talks about trying to crawl away from the blood on his belly. It talks about bugs being ill. It just doesn't actually make sense.

Absolutely, because GPT-3 is a super hot rod text prediction algorithm but has strictly zero consciousness or concept of what it's writing about. It's merely using statistics to do more complex versions of stuff like, when words a, b, c, d, and e are used together, words f, g, h, and j are typically used as well. Take this simple kind of idea and push it to the current max et voilà, GPT-3.

Re: The computers are getting better at writing

#16

Post by swiley »

causality0 wrote: post #4

GPT-3-generated writing is a combination of comically absurd and incredibly deep. The weak infants of the woman next door who had to be picked up with the tongs and thrown into the dustbin is quite silly but then there's He wanted to crawl away from it, but there was no place to go. which is a surprisingly deep statement about the revulsion he feels towards himself. That a computer can generate that says very uncomfo…

Deep statements are deep because the communicate feeling, if the machine never felt anything but tripped over meaning like this (and it's pretty obvious it's just gluing things together) it really dulls the effect.

Re: The computers are getting better at writing

#19

Post by bikeshaving »

swiley wrote: post #16
causality0 wrote: post #4

GPT-3-generated writing is a combination of comically absurd and incredibly deep. The weak infants of the woman next door who had to be picked up with the tongs and thrown into the dustbin is quite silly but then there's He wanted to crawl away from it, but there was no place to go. which is a surprisingly deep statement about the revulsion he feels towards himself. That a computer can generate that says very uncomfo…

Deep statements are deep because the communicate feeling, if the machine never felt anything but tripped over meaning like this (and it's pretty obvious it's just gluing things together) it really dulls the effect.

Who’s to say that our greatest writers didn’t “trip over meaning”? A lot of poetic processes involve finding, curating and re-contextualizing interesting phrases (see found poetry), and there’s potentially a lot of value in applying the same process to computer-generated writing.

Re: The computers are getting better at writing

#20

Post by aimor »

What level of Fully Self Writing are we at right now? Maybe L1 with L2 on the horizon?

I like the idea of text generation as a writing aid, even a flawed network can help a stuck brain. But say writers really do hate writing, I still come back to the big question: Who's going to read it all? Cheap writing is bad enough already (think stock market news, recipe blogs, or any of my HN comments), I can't begin to fathom how much text I'll be scrolling through once GPT-7 is released. I suppose the automated writing will be consumed by automated readers then, and my involvement starts to feel kind of unnecessary.

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