A Computer Has Written A 'Novel' Narrating Its Own Cross-Country Road Trip (theatlantic.com) 36
Ross Goodwin, a former ghostwriter for the Obama administration, uses neural networks to generate poetry, screenplays, and, now, literary travel fiction. The Atlantic tells the story of how Goodwin used a custom machine to write a "novel" narrating its own cross-country road trip. Slashdot reader merbs shares an excerpt from the report: On March 25, 2017, a black Cadillac with a white-domed surveillance camera attached to its trunk departed Brooklyn for New Orleans. An old GPS unit was fastened atop the roof. Inside, a microphone dangled from the ceiling. Wires from all three devices fed into Ross Goodwin's Razer Blade laptop, itself hooked up to a humble receipt printer. This, Goodwin hoped, was the apparatus that was going to produce the next American road-trip novel. The aim was to use the road as a conduit for narrative experimentation, in the tradition of Kerouac, Wolfe, and Kesey, but with the vehicle itself as the artist. He chose the New York-to-NOLA route as a nod to the famous leg of Jack Kerouac's expedition in On the Road. Underneath the base of the Axis M3007 camera, Goodwin scrawled "Further."
Along the way, the four sensors would feed data into a system of neural networks Goodwin had trained on hundreds of books and Foursquare location data, and the printer would spit out the results one letter at a time. By the end of the four-day trip, receipts emblazoned with artificially intelligent prose would cover the floor of the car. They're collected in 1 the Road, a book Goodwin's publisher, Jean Boite Editions, is marketing as "the first novel written by a machine." (Though, for the record, Goodwin says he disagrees it should bear that distinction -- "That might be The Policeman's Beard Is Half Constructed by a program from the '80s," he tells me.) Regardless, it is a hallucinatory, oddly illuminating account of a bot's life on the interstate; the Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test meets Google Street View, narrated by Siri.
Along the way, the four sensors would feed data into a system of neural networks Goodwin had trained on hundreds of books and Foursquare location data, and the printer would spit out the results one letter at a time. By the end of the four-day trip, receipts emblazoned with artificially intelligent prose would cover the floor of the car. They're collected in 1 the Road, a book Goodwin's publisher, Jean Boite Editions, is marketing as "the first novel written by a machine." (Though, for the record, Goodwin says he disagrees it should bear that distinction -- "That might be The Policeman's Beard Is Half Constructed by a program from the '80s," he tells me.) Regardless, it is a hallucinatory, oddly illuminating account of a bot's life on the interstate; the Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test meets Google Street View, narrated by Siri.
A Ghost Writer for Politicians,hmmm (Score:1, Offtopic)
Sorry but a person that wrote the lies that politicians told, sorry but probably had a nervous breakdown, wrote that crap themselves, couldn't believe how bad it was and decided to blame it on a computer ;D.
You choose to do the job, well, accept the ramifications, paid professional writer of lies for politicians, I ain't going to believe anything you say or write, just the way it is.
Black? (Score:2)
I have a few friends who have been down that way. It seems like if your don't want to be looked at funny (to say the least) black might be a bad color to chose.
Gonzo (Score:2)
"Policeman's Beard..." Was Not Computer Written (Score:3)
Unless you think inserting random words in human authored Mad Libs is "writing".
The supposed "computer generated novel" was actually produced by a program that just substituted words [archive.org] into a set of frameworks prepared by the program's author. To quote the reviewer "None of the long pieces in the book could have been produced except by using elaborate boilerplate templates that are *not* included in the commercially available release of Racter. Nor does the Inrac language include any sort of 'syntax directive' powerful enough to string words together into a form like the published stories."
The actual apparent creativity and absurdity of the prose was entirely the authorship of William Chamberlain, the guy wrote and sold the program "Racter" and wrote all of the frameworks that was the basis of the "prose".
Re: (Score:1)
Nothing is cool any longer. Everything is just postmodern bullshit.
Re: (Score:2)
This book is much simpler, and much much worse
Is this the first step to the Electronic Bard? (Score:3)
I wonder if... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
...he used his machine to write Obama's speeches.
Well, we are the ones we've been waiting for, ya know ...
human touch (Score:2)
Soon the human touch will disappear.
books are written by AI, paintings are made by AI, movies are made by AI.
it will take only so much time before AI becomes so good at it that all human art will seem inferiour.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Phew! (Score:2)
I'm currently working on a novel about a self-driving car and a personal voice assistant that go on a road trip without people, to see America. When I saw this headline I thought someone had beaten me to it, but this is a different kind of thing apparently.
(sniffs in condesension) (Score:2)
Authored by a machine (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)