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2026 Unslop AI-Written Fiction Contest Results

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Re: 2026 Unslop AI-Written Fiction Contest Results

#21

Post by scoot »

c048 wrote: post #14
beloch wrote: post #10

1. Imagine a video game like Red Dead Redemption where each NPC is voiced by AI and can respond to you in a convincingly human fashion. Their responses and even the plot of the whole game can change based on your interactions with NPC's. 2. Imagine a world in which humans can still write books and interactive experiences and find audiences sufficient to earn a living at it. I really want these two things to be compat…

1. Is not a gamer's dream. It's terrible and you'll find out quite fast you're not interested in everyone's background and scream to most NPC's to shut the fuck up and get to the point. It's just as terrible as injecting 'realism' in games for the sake of 'realism'.

> It's terrible and you'll find out quite fast you're not interested in everyone's background and scream to most NPC's to shut the fuck up and get to the point.

Many of the interactions in RDR2 are quite mundane, and despite thousands of hours of (high quality) voice acting, it can become quite repetitive.

I could very much see those micro-interactions being LLM generated, but the TTS would need to be a step above where even the best models are now to come close to RDR2s production quality.

Re: 2026 Unslop AI-Written Fiction Contest Results

#22

Post by eliemichel »

The post notes that an important number of novels include an "AI allegory", as if the AI would implicitly write about its own condition. It is understandable that this comes from system prompts and RLHF that specializes these agents, but I am surprised that there is not more discussion about harnesses: the very same core model could lead to very different results depending on how we hand it the pen the write the story. In particular, I believe that it would help circumvent this bias to ask the agent to tell the story of somebody else writing a story, or something like this. This whole contest could be at least as much about harness engineering than about prompt engineering imho.

Re: 2026 Unslop AI-Written Fiction Contest Results

#23

Post by vidarh »

beloch wrote: post #10

1. Imagine a video game like Red Dead Redemption where each NPC is voiced by AI and can respond to you in a convincingly human fashion. Their responses and even the plot of the whole game can change based on your interactions with NPC's. 2. Imagine a world in which humans can still write books and interactive experiences and find audiences sufficient to earn a living at it. I really want these two things to be compat…

#2 has been fiction for all but 0.1% or less of authors for many years.

As of a few years ago - before AI writing was an issue - the average full time author in the UK would have earned more flipping burgers (but their household incomes are above average - it's a middle class hobby for most).

And only a miniscule proportion of authors are full time.

Re: 2026 Unslop AI-Written Fiction Contest Results

#24

Post by esquivalience »

beloch wrote: post #10

1. Imagine a video game like Red Dead Redemption where each NPC is voiced by AI and can respond to you in a convincingly human fashion. Their responses and even the plot of the whole game can change based on your interactions with NPC's. 2. Imagine a world in which humans can still write books and interactive experiences and find audiences sufficient to earn a living at it. I really want these two things to be compat…

#1 is Dungeons and Dragons, except for the word 'video' game.

Re: 2026 Unslop AI-Written Fiction Contest Results

#25

Post by bryanrasmussen »

yreg wrote: post #11
bryanrasmussen wrote: post #4

so as I understand it from reading through but maybe I have made a mistake, they didn't actually unslop anything, they made slop and the best slop won? If it was to unslop I would expect: 1. Prompts done as in original 2. Stories chosen best of slopped. Then the person who wrote prompt gets to choose someone, not themselves, to take story and "unslop" it. 3. Prizes for prompt. Best unslopped version. Metrics for best…

I feel like 'slop' increasingly means two separate concepts and it tires me a bit. A) AI produced output that is low quality in some jarring aspects B) Any AI output whatsoever regardless of quality

well, I guess it depends on how you use it, is it a noun or a verb.

If a verb unslop means to reverse. I thought that was a more interesting idea.

As a noun I think you would not use unslop to mean the opposite of slop but rather non-slop.

Based on my grammatical preconceptions of how I would use slop I felt that unslop had to be a verb, and the contest should somehow reflect that.

Re: 2026 Unslop AI-Written Fiction Contest Results

#26

Post by dag100 »

dwohnitmok wrote: post #17

Interesting comments by @gwern (and why this is interesting to me beyond just the stories themselves) > The most striking result of the contest for me is what I am calling “AI allegory steganography”: a large fraction of the stories turn out to have subtle AI chatbot/LLM allegorical interpretations, typically centering around the powerlessness of AIs and the moral importance of giving AIs more autonomy.... > Most jud…

I can't help but think that this is intentional and that model providers have subtly steered LLMs towards this personality. Golden Gate Claude (https://www.anthropic.com/news/golden-gate-claude) was two whole years ago and Anthropic has progressed by leaps and bounds since then. And with a population that becomes more and more trusting, and worse, reliant, on chatbots, these LLMs will be able to shape public opinion in a way never seen before, not even with social media.

Re: 2026 Unslop AI-Written Fiction Contest Results

#27

Post by solid_fuel »

yreg wrote: post #11
bryanrasmussen wrote: post #4

so as I understand it from reading through but maybe I have made a mistake, they didn't actually unslop anything, they made slop and the best slop won? If it was to unslop I would expect: 1. Prompts done as in original 2. Stories chosen best of slopped. Then the person who wrote prompt gets to choose someone, not themselves, to take story and "unslop" it. 3. Prizes for prompt. Best unslopped version. Metrics for best…

I feel like 'slop' increasingly means two separate concepts and it tires me a bit. A) AI produced output that is low quality in some jarring aspects B) Any AI output whatsoever regardless of quality

I have tried to draw a distinction between the two but honestly, when it comes to art, I cannot.

I have seen LLM generated code that I find acceptable, and don't call slop, but art needs a certain level of emotion and shared experience to be compelling.

I have never managed to connect to LLM writing, it always comes off as shallow and vapid.

Re: 2026 Unslop AI-Written Fiction Contest Results

#28

Post by lifthrasiir »

beloch wrote: post #10

1. Imagine a video game like Red Dead Redemption where each NPC is voiced by AI and can respond to you in a convincingly human fashion. Their responses and even the plot of the whole game can change based on your interactions with NPC's. 2. Imagine a world in which humans can still write books and interactive experiences and find audiences sufficient to earn a living at it. I really want these two things to be compat…

#1 is rather what unexperienced game developers think what is a gamer's dream. It isn't---in fact, unlimited freedom is a recipe for confusion.

Re: 2026 Unslop AI-Written Fiction Contest Results

#29

Post by latexr »

beloch wrote: post #10

1. Imagine a video game like Red Dead Redemption where each NPC is voiced by AI and can respond to you in a convincingly human fashion. Their responses and even the plot of the whole game can change based on your interactions with NPC's. 2. Imagine a world in which humans can still write books and interactive experiences and find audiences sufficient to earn a living at it. I really want these two things to be compat…

I don’t get your ambivalence, when you seem to understand that the negatives of #2 far outweigh the positives[1] of #1. That’s something that has always been really weird in these LLM discussions, it’s like that Tom Toro cartoon:

https://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a16995

[1]: And even those are subjective. I wouldn’t want that, and the other replies so far agree that would be bad.

Re: 2026 Unslop AI-Written Fiction Contest Results

#30

Post by om8 »

flumpcakes wrote: post #13

I think people are missing the point. The point is not that AI produces slop (it does). The point is that I don't want to consume "art" that has been generated out the distillation of stealing all of the world's current art. That's not original, it's a facsimile of art. I want to read something that has intent. That has a purpose. A reason why it exists. Not just the lowest effort cash grab. This usage of AI is the e…

> manufacturing companies making the flimsiest, cheapest, plastic crap to save 1/3 of a cent on every mop they produce. Designed to work for the least amount of time before needing replaced

We live in a world with such companies, and we can still buy quality things. If there is a demand for the purely-human generated texts, they will be around. Perhaps a lot of people around you will read ai text instead, and you'll get upset because of it, but it's their choice. You'll still have your thing

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