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Sunspring, a short science fiction film written by algorithm

arstechnica.com

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Re: Sunspring, a short science fiction film written by algorithm

#41

Post by daveguy »

fallous wrote: post #34
daveguy wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Joeboy's description of this screenplay as "word salad" was perfect: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11876333 I like your scoreboard too -- that pretty much sums it up. Although I do wonder if actors/directors could use this as a practice tool. Challenge: turn word salad into a meaningful scene. It almost seems like it could be an exercise in a theatre class. You wouldn't want to do this for the full 10…

Doing scenes with "word salad" is something improv actors do as a practice tool, as well as scenes where each actor only has a single word or simple phrase they can use as dialog. The latter is often part of a performance for an improv troupe.

Good point. I have seen the single word / phrase prompt for improv. It would be a truly impressive improv group that could make this coherent with an on the spot improv performance (but that wouldn't really be improv). The screenplay seems more difficult than a single word prompt because with the single word there is so much that you get to make up on your own. I feel like the ability to take the word salad and convey emotion and meaning through body language and delivery/emphasis of each word is a whole different skill set for an actor. words from the generate scene only without any additional improv/screenwriting is definitely the most challenging (and that's what they did here for a full 10 minute screenplay!)

Re: Sunspring, a short science fiction film written by algorithm

#43

Post by crgwbr »

Houshalter wrote: post #40

This is a weird thing about LSTM generated sequences. Any random 5 seconds of this sounds reasonable. Like it could come from an actual movie. But there is no coherency between these sections. It flows and ebbs randomly around the state space like a markov chain, with no direction. I think this is because LSTMs have very little "memory". They have a learned procedural memory, but no episodic memory. So they have a ve…

The composition method is more akin to how humans do madlibs than how we write stories, which explains the result. If anything, this video illustrates how fantastic the human mind is at finding patterns and meaning where none actually exist.

Re: Sunspring, a short science fiction film written by algorithm

#45

Post by schoen »

daveguy wrote: post #3
nxzero wrote: post #2

Interesting that the AI is able to produce a meaningful storyline without fully understanding characters; makes me wonder how it would do at producing stories without any characters; such stories exist, bit SciFi feeling too.

Meaningful? It sounded like some one tried to physically act out a clever bot self-conversation. ( http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vphmJEpLXU0 ) This is a great example of how far we are from artificial intelligence. The actors/directors/etc did a great job of trying to make it work. I like what they tried to do to make it coherent, but it just goes to show that there is no way to save truly bad incoherent writing.

I wonder where research on generating intelligible stories by computer is.

I think Roger Schank had some research on "scripts" in the 1980s, involving models of people's interactions and motivations. That might not have been very useful for AI in general, but maybe it's useful if you wanted to literally generate scripts for people to act out.

I'm sure you could make computer models of stories by combining models of scripts, tropes, and agents. I mean, a simple case would be something like The Sims, where the simulated agents act out simple stories autonomously and in response to prompts. You could probably make movies based on Sims stories already, although it's better at generating situations than dialogue!

Re: Sunspring, a short science fiction film written by algorithm

#46

Post by Pica_soO »

phaemon wrote: post #12
SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #5

Apparently the "essence of sci-fi" is people saying "I don't know what you're talking about" to each other.

I notice one of the inputs was The Phantom Menace. This film's dialogue was better.

Me se don't know what you are talking about

Re: Sunspring, a short science fiction film written by algorithm

#47

Post by schoen »

notahacker wrote: post #20
ccvannorman wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also we fill in tons of subtext I'm quite sure the AI has no idea about.

Also, this script appears to have been selected by a human actively looking to find apparently meaningful and original structure and sentiments from a long list of attempts by Benjamin, most of which clearly derived from the source texts > For a while, Sharp said, Benjamin kept "spitting out conversations between Mulder and Scully, [and you'd notice that] Scully spends more time asking what's going on and Mulder spen…

It reads a lot like Racter (I think I read that The Policeman's Beard is Half-Constructed actually involved a lot of human selection of amusing and interesting utterances).

Re: Sunspring, a short science fiction film written by algorithm

#48

Post by sthatipamala »

Houshalter wrote: post #40

This is a weird thing about LSTM generated sequences. Any random 5 seconds of this sounds reasonable. Like it could come from an actual movie. But there is no coherency between these sections. It flows and ebbs randomly around the state space like a markov chain, with no direction. I think this is because LSTMs have very little "memory". They have a learned procedural memory, but no episodic memory. So they have a ve…

When I was a kid, my friends would play a game where we go around in the circle and add one word to the running sentence. Most of the sentences sounded exactly like this script.

Re: Sunspring, a short science fiction film written by algorithm

#49

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

Houshalter wrote: post #40

This is a weird thing about LSTM generated sequences. Any random 5 seconds of this sounds reasonable. Like it could come from an actual movie. But there is no coherency between these sections. It flows and ebbs randomly around the state space like a markov chain, with no direction. I think this is because LSTMs have very little "memory". They have a learned procedural memory, but no episodic memory. So they have a ve…

The output is not far off what what a Markov chain or "Dissociated press" (1) technique would make. I did one of those 20 years ago for fun in a few hours; it wasn't AI then.

1)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissociated_press

http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/D/Dissociated-Press.html

Re: Sunspring, a short science fiction film written by algorithm

#50

Post by fallous »

daveguy wrote: post #41
fallous wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doing scenes with "word salad" is something improv actors do as a practice tool, as well as scenes where each actor only has a single word or simple phrase they can use as dialog. The latter is often part of a performance for an improv troupe.

Good point. I have seen the single word / phrase prompt for improv. It would be a truly impressive improv group that could make this coherent with an on the spot improv performance (but that wouldn't really be improv). The screenplay seems more difficult than a single word prompt because with the single word there is so much that you get to make up on your own. I feel like the ability to take the word salad and conve…

I don't mean a single word prompt, I mean you can only use the single word or phrase as dialog and have to perform a scene (also randomly provided) with other actors. Bob gets "roses," Jill gets "fire," and a third person has unrestricted dialog... now do a scene where Jill is a salesperson getting ready for pitch to a big client.

The word salad you're describing would be no more difficult than having a scene where actors have to speak gibberish (faux Klingon or something)... which coincidentally isn't unlike another improv exercise where one person has to convey a message given to them by the director to other actors but must talk gibberish or just use a single vowel sound.

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