5 ms·

Bot Writes New Harry Potter Book

16 points by bespoke_engnr 9y ago

zaken 9y ago
As funny as this is, I'm actually really looking forward to the day I can generate an entire, unique fantasy epic on par with the best human authors of today with the push of a button. AI-generated entertainment in general is going to be awesome.
- madez 9y ago
  Dwarf Fortress is a try at that, sort of.
- wsinks 9y ago
  Why will it be awesome? Isn't part of the fun thinking about the writer crafting everything?
- tarboreus 9y ago
  I wouldn't hold your breath.
skookumchuck 9y ago
It reads like "Bored of the Rings", but without the sly humor.
- grawprog 9y ago
  Reminds me of this: https://www.amazon.ca/Barry-Trotter-Shameless-Parody-Gollancz/dp/057507454X https://www.amazon.ca/Barry-Trotter-Shameless-Parody-Gollanc... They were really bad. Worse than bored of the rings. I enjoyed bored of the rings I didn't enjoy those.
andolanra 9y ago
This sounds like a nitpick but I feel very strongly about this: this is not "written by a bot", it is written by a human (actually, several humans) assisted by a bot. In particular, it was written by human beings using constrained predictive text keyboards that were trained on a Harry Potter corpus. As a general rule of thumb, even in 2017, if you're reading "bot-created" text that feels nonsensical but grammatical, it's either highly-constrained in its generation process (e.g. using templates), human-curated, or human-directed. Here's the actual announcement from Botnik, which clearly uses the phrase "predictive keyboards": https://twitter.com/botnikstudios/status/940627812259696643 https://twitter.com/botnikstudios/status/940627812259696643 You can actually experiment with the exact process used! The predictive text keyboards they created are available online: one for narration and one for dialogue. narration: http://botnik.org/apps/writer/?source=d08198a9a936f791b7ffe144a2e9b1e3,0e155979285771266d520c44607722a1 http://botnik.org/apps/writer/?source=d08198a9a936f791b7ffe1... dialogue: http://botnik.org/apps/writer/?source=4210c86ded39e6380ad0e17cecd767f6 http://botnik.org/apps/writer/?source=4210c86ded39e6380ad0e1...
- bespoke_engnr 9y ago
  Not a nitpick at all; thanks! I was wondering why the grammar was WAY better than I was expecting, and how they got it to keep track of the 'state' of a subject that had just been mentioned. If things had improved that much in NLP-land since I last played around with it, I would jump careers right now :-D.

16 points by bespoke_engnr 9y ago

As funny as this is, I'm actually really looking forward to the day I can generate an entire, unique fantasy epic on par with the best human authors of today with the push of a button. AI-generated entertainment in general is going to be awesome.

madez 9y ago
Dwarf Fortress is a try at that, sort of.
wsinks 9y ago
Why will it be awesome? Isn't part of the fun thinking about the writer crafting everything?
tarboreus 9y ago
I wouldn't hold your breath.

skookumchuck 9y ago

It reads like "Bored of the Rings", but without the sly humor.

grawprog 9y ago
Reminds me of this: https://www.amazon.ca/Barry-Trotter-Shameless-Parody-Gollancz/dp/057507454X https://www.amazon.ca/Barry-Trotter-Shameless-Parody-Gollanc... They were really bad. Worse than bored of the rings. I enjoyed bored of the rings I didn't enjoy those.

andolanra 9y ago

This sounds like a nitpick but I feel very strongly about this: this is not "written by a bot", it is written by a human (actually, several humans) assisted by a bot. In particular, it was written by human beings using constrained predictive text keyboards that were trained on a Harry Potter corpus. As a general rule of thumb, even in 2017, if you're reading "bot-created" text that feels nonsensical but grammatical, it's either highly-constrained in its generation process (e.g. using templates), human-curated, or human-directed. Here's the actual announcement from Botnik, which clearly uses the phrase "predictive keyboards": https://twitter.com/botnikstudios/status/940627812259696643 https://twitter.com/botnikstudios/status/940627812259696643 You can actually experiment with the exact process used! The predictive text keyboards they created are available online: one for narration and one for dialogue. narration: http://botnik.org/apps/writer/?source=d08198a9a936f791b7ffe144a2e9b1e3,0e155979285771266d520c44607722a1 http://botnik.org/apps/writer/?source=d08198a9a936f791b7ffe1... dialogue: http://botnik.org/apps/writer/?source=4210c86ded39e6380ad0e17cecd767f6 http://botnik.org/apps/writer/?source=4210c86ded39e6380ad0e1...

bespoke_engnr 9y ago
Not a nitpick at all; thanks! I was wondering why the grammar was WAY better than I was expecting, and how they got it to keep track of the 'state' of a subject that had just been mentioned. If things had improved that much in NLP-land since I last played around with it, I would jump careers right now :-D.