AI Writing

Perplexity Prompt: Create an outline for a murder mystery in the style of Dorothy Sayers

Perplexity Response:

Setting: The Quaint Village of Little Hampden

• Little Hampden is a picturesque English village known for its tight-knit community, charming cottages, and a central village green where the annual summer fete is held.
• The village is surrounded by dense woods and rolling hills, with a small river running through it.
• The local vicarage, the pub called “The Weeping Willow,” and the village hall are the main social hubs.

Introduction: A Mysterious Death

• During the village fete, a beloved local artist, Jonathan Eastwood, is found dead in his studio, which overlooks the village green.
• The death appears to be a suicide, but certain inconsistencies lead to suspicions of foul play.
• Lord Peter Wimsey, visiting his aunt in Little Hampden, takes an interest in the case.

Key Characters

• Lord Peter Wimsey: The aristocratic amateur detective with a sharp intellect and a passion for justice.
• Mervyn Bunter: Wimsey’s loyal valet and assistant, with a keen eye for detail.
• Reverend Thomas Marple: The well-respected vicar with a love for gardening and a secret past.
• Eleanor Brampton: The victim’s muse and a talented painter, known for her fiery temper and tumultuous relationship with Eastwood.
• Dr. Henry Forbes: The village doctor, whose medical opinion on the death raises more questions than answers.
• Inspector Charles Parker: Wimsey’s friend from Scotland Yard, called in to assist with the investigation.

Red Herrings

• A mysterious figure seen near the artist’s studio on the night of the murder.
• A scandalous love letter found in Eastwood’s desk, hinting at a possible affair.
• A recently altered will that benefits a distant relative.
• A disgruntled former student of Eastwood’s who had a public falling out with him.

Twists and Turns

• Evidence that the suicide note was not written by Eastwood.
• Discovery of a hidden compartment in the studio containing a valuable missing painting.
• An anonymous tip that leads Wimsey to question the alibis of several villagers.
• A break-in at the vicarage that uncovers a stash of blackmail letters.

Character Development

• Wimsey’s empathy and understanding of human nature help him connect with the villagers and gain their trust.
• Bunter’s military background proves crucial in deciphering a code found among Eastwood’s belongings.
• Eleanor Brampton’s initial hostility towards Wimsey softens as she becomes an ally in the investigation.
• Reverend Marple’s struggle with his conscience as secrets from his past come to light.

Clues and Evidence

• A palette knife smeared with paint and blood, found in the nearby woods.
• A torn piece of a jacket caught on a bramble that matches the fabric of a local squire’s missing coat.
• A set of footprints leading away from the studio that suggests the presence of a second person.
• The discovery of a rare poison in the victim’s system, not readily available to the public.

Conclusion: Unveiling the Murderer

• Wimsey gathers all suspects for a dramatic reveal in the village hall.
• He meticulously explains how each piece of evidence fits into the puzzle, exonerating the innocent and cornering the guilty.
• The murderer is revealed to be someone unexpected, with a motive rooted in a long-held grudge and greed.
• Wimsey’s clever deduction and attention to human psychology bring the case to a satisfying close.

Epilogue: Aftermath and Reflection

• The village of Little Hampden returns to its peaceful ways, with the shadow of the murder lifted.
• Wimsey reflects on the nature of crime and justice, and the impact of the case on the community.
• Eleanor Brampton dedicates her next painting to Wimsey, capturing the essence of Little Hampden and its resilience.
• Wimsey and Bunter depart, leaving behind grateful villagers and a sense of order restored.

Based upon his playtime with Perplexity, he thinks the AI might be most useful for this sort of question – an author is stuck for a plot and wants some fresh ideas. PG thinks there might be help for sub-plots, character creation, etc., generated with similar more-focused prompts.

In his experiments with AI writing programs, PG has discovered a few strengths and weaknesses.

Following are the first few paragraphs of “The Sun Also Rises,” as originally written by Ernest Hemingway:

Robert Cohn was once middleweight boxing champion of Princeton. Do not think that I am very much impressed by that as a boxing title, but it meant a lot to Cohn. He cared nothing for boxing, in fact he disliked it, but he learned it painfully and thoroughly to counteract the feeling of inferiority and shyness he had felt on being treated as a Jew at Princeton. There was a certain inner comfort in knowing he could knock down anybody who was snooty to him, although, being very shy and a thoroughly nice boy, he never fought except in the gym. He was Spider Kelly’s star pupil. Spider Kelly taught all his young gentlemen to box like featherweights, no matter whether they weighed one hundred and five or two hundred and five pounds. But it seemed to fit Cohn. He was really very fast. He was so good that Spider promptly overmatched him and got his nose permanently flattened. This increased Cohn’s distaste for boxing, but it gave him a certain satisfaction of some strange sort, and it certainly improved his nose. In his last year at Princeton he read too much and took to wearing spectacles. I never met any one of his class who remembered him. They did not even remember that he was middleweight boxing champion.

I mistrust all frank and simple people, especially when their stories hold together, and I always had a suspicion that perhaps Robert Cohn had never been middleweight boxing champion, and that perhaps a horse had stepped on his face, or that maybe his mother had been frightened or seen something, or that he had, maybe, bumped into something as a young child, but I finally had somebody verify the story from Spider Kelly. Spider Kelly not only remembered Cohn. He had often wondered what had become of him.

Robert Cohn was a member, through his father, of one of the richest Jewish families in New York, and through his mother of one of the oldest. At the military school where he prepped for Princeton, and played a very good end on the football team, no one had made him race-conscious. No one had ever made him feel he was a Jew, and hence any different from anybody else, until he went to Princeton. He was a nice boy, a friendly boy, and very shy, and it made him bitter. He took it out in boxing, and he came out of Princeton with painful self-consciousness and the flattened nose, and was married by the first girl who was nice to him. He was married five years, had three children, lost most of the fifty thousand dollars his father left him, the balance of the estate having gone to his mother, hardened into a rather unattractive mould under domestic unhappiness with a rich wife; and just when he had made up his mind to leave his wife she left him and went off with a miniature-painter. As he had been thinking for months about leaving his wife and had not done it because it would be too cruel to deprive her of himself, her departure was a very healthful shock.

The divorce was arranged and Robert Cohn went out to the Coast. In California he fell among literary people and, as he still had a little of the fifty thousand left, in a short time he was backing a review of the Arts. The review commenced publication in Carmel, California, and finished in Provincetown, Massachusetts. By that time Cohn, who had been regarded purely as an angel, and whose name had appeared on the editorial page merely as a member of the advisory board, had become the sole editor. It was his money and he discovered he liked the authority of editing. He was sorry when the magazine became too expensive and he had to give it up.

By that time, though, he had other things to worry about. He had been taken in hand by a lady who hoped to rise with the magazine. She was very forceful, and Cohn never had a chance of not being taken in hand. Also he was sure that he loved her. When this lady saw that the magazine was not going to rise, she became a little disgusted with Cohn and decided that she might as well get what there was to get while there was still something available, so she urged that they go to Europe, where Cohn could write. They came to Europe, where the lady had been educated, and stayed three years. During these three years, the first spent in travel, the last two in Paris, Robert Cohn had two friends, Braddocks and myself. Braddocks was his literary friend. I was his tennis friend.

The lady who had him, her name was Frances, found toward the end of the second year that her looks were going, and her attitude toward Robert changed from one of careless possession and exploitation to the absolute determination that he should marry her. During this time Robert’s mother had settled an allowance on him, about three hundred dollars a month. During two years and a half I do not believe that Robert Cohn looked at another woman. He was fairly happy, except that, like many people living in Europe, he would rather have been in America, and he had discovered writing. He wrote a novel, and it was not really such a bad novel as the critics later called it, although it was a very poor novel. He read many books, played bridge, played tennis, and boxed at a local gymnasium.

And here is what PG’s current most interesting writing AI, Perplexity, generated:

Certainly! Here is a creative rewriting of the first few paragraphs of “The Sun Also Rises” in the style of Ernest Hemingway: 

Robert Cohn was once middleweight boxing champion of Princeton. Do not think that I am very much impressed by that as a boxing title, but it meant a lot to Cohn. He cared nothing for boxing, in fact he disliked it, but he learned it painfully and thoroughly to counteract the feeling of inferiority and shyness he had felt on being treated as a Jew at Princeton. There was a certain inner comfort in knowing he could knock down anybody who was snooty to him, although, being very shy and a thoroughly nice boy, he never fought except in the gym.

He was Spider Kelly’s star pupil. Spider Kelly taught all his young gentlemen to box like featherweights, no matter whether they weighed one hundred and five or two hundred and five pounds. But it seemed to fit Cohn. He was really very fast. He was so good that Spider promptly overmatched him and got his nose permanently flattened. This increased Cohn’s distaste for boxing, but it gave him a certain satisfaction of some strange sort, and it certainly improved his nose.

In his last year at Princeton he read too much and took to wearing spectacles. I never met any one of his class who remembered him. They did not even remember that he was middleweight boxing champion.

I mistrust all frank and simple people, especially when their stories hold together, and I always had a suspicion that perhaps Robert Cohn had never been middleweight boxing champion, and that perhaps a horse had stepped on his face, or that maybe his mother had been frightened or seen something, or that he had, maybe, bumped into something as a young child, but I checked on all the stories I heard about Cohn, and found out that they were true. This passage maintains Hemingway’s characteristic terse prose, simple and direct language, and understated tone. It also reflects Hemingway’s focus on themes of masculinity and the effects of societal pressures on the individual.

Perplexity has a “Tell Me More” option at the end of its responses (at least in the paid version). PG hit the “Tell Me More” button and here’s what Perplexity provided:

Continuing in the style of Ernest Hemingway, the narrative would likely proceed with a focus on the disillusionment and existential themes that are prevalent in his works. Here’s an extension of the rewritten passage, maintaining the Hemingway style: After Princeton, Cohn was lost. Like many of us, the war had changed him. It wasn’t just the physical scars, those were easy to hide. It was something deeper, a sort of emptiness that came with seeing too much and understanding too little. He wandered through Europe, searching for something he couldn’t name. It was in Paris that he found Frances, and for a while, it seemed as though he might have found what he was looking for. But happiness, like a shadow, is elusive when chased.

Paris was a city that promised much but held back even more. It was filled with expatriates like us, all running from something, all trying to write the next great novel, paint the next masterpiece, or simply forget the past. The cafes of Montparnasse were our battlegrounds, where we fought against our own disillusionment with words and wit as our weapons.

Cohn wrote a novel during those years. It wasn’t particularly good, nor was it bad. It simply was. Like so much of life, it existed in that gray area between success and failure. Frances encouraged him, perhaps more out of a desire to secure her own future than any belief in his literary talents. But in the end, it didn’t matter. The book was published, and Cohn found himself a minor celebrity among the expatriate community.

Yet, fame, Cohn discovered, was as empty as everything else. He began to realize that the problem wasn’t with Paris, or his novel, or Frances. The problem was with him. He had been searching for meaning in a world that seemed determined to withhold it. And in that search, he had lost himself.

It was around this time that I met him. He was a man out of step with the world, clinging to the belief that somewhere, somehow, there was something real, something true. I couldn’t help but admire him for that, even as I pitied him. For in the end, we were all lost, all searching, all hoping for the sun to rise on a new day that would bring with it some semblance of meaning. This continuation captures the essence of Hemingway’s themes: the search for meaning in a post-war world, the disillusionment with the “Lost Generation,” and the personal struggles of his characters as they navigate their lives. Hemingway’s writing often explored the complexities of human emotions and relationships against the backdrop of a world that seemed indifferent to individual suffering, and this narrative aims to reflect those elements.

End of Perplexity Rewrite

PG says Papa doesn’t have anything to worry about.

Postscript:

During his web-wandering in connection with this post, PG discovered something else of interest:

The Unpublished Opening of The Sun Also Rises
by Ernest Hemingway
Also includes:
Letter to Ernest Hemingway on The Sun Also Rises
by F. Scott Fitzgerald

This was published in a now-defunct periodical titled Antæus No. 33, Spring 1979, edited by Daniel Halpern. You can read this Unpublished Opening/Fitzgerald Critique article Here.

If you don’t have a copy, you can read The Sun Also Rises, with the opening Hemingway used after seeing Fitzgerald’s letter Here.

From Neowin:

In March 2022, Microsoft first introduced Reading Coach as an app available in Microsoft Teams. The app became available later for individual users outside the classroom. Today, the company has announced that Reading Coach is now available as its own Windows stand-alone app, or via its website at coach.microsoft.com, specifically for school use.

In a blog post, Microsoft says that schools that want to access the new stand-alone app can access it with a Microsoft Entra ID. School admins must enable support for Reading Coach via a signup page.

. . . .

Microsoft stated the apps will help students with their reading skills in a number of ways. The biggest feature is the app’s ability to create a unique story via AI for each student. The company said:

Create a story puts the story in reader’s hands by giving them the choice of a character, setting and reading level to create a unique AI generated story each time.

The blog post adds that the AI stories follow Microsoft’s AI guidelines, and are moderated for the story’s content quality and safety, along with setting up stories for specific age groups.

The app also lets students read from previously written content from its library. Teachers can also add their own story content as well.

Reading Coach lets students read stories out loud. The app’s speech recognition technology, combined with AI features, allows it to analyze how students read, and detect if they find specific words hard to read. After each session, the app shows an overall score and can also generate word practice sessions with those challenging words.

Link to the rest at Neowin and thanks to F. for the tip

From Intuit Mailchimp:

What are AI writing tools?

AI writing software includes various tools that can create content for you. AI writing tools make content based on user input. You can use these tools to create articles, product descriptions, landing pages, blog posts, and more.

However, AI software is not meant to take over the need for human writers completely. Instead, it’s just supposed to be a way to optimize productivity and make your life easier, especially if you’re creating a high volume of content. So rather than having to go in and write everything by hand, AI writing software can do some of it for you.

. . . .

10 best AI writing tools to use

There are various AI writing tools that you can use to increase productivity for your business. But the right AI writing tool for your company depends on your specific wants and needs. Different AI writing tools serve different purposes, so make sure you choose one that is best for your company. Here are some of the best AI writing tools that we recommend:

Writesonic

Writesonic is an AI content tool that can help with the content creation process. With Writesonic, you can use artificial intelligence to generate everything from blog posts and landing pages to Facebook ad copy.

Writesonic is especially beneficial for those dealing with writer’s block. It has over 60 AI writing tools that can help you brainstorm ideas and actually generate content for you.

INK Editor

INK Editor is best for co-writing and optimizing SEO. Consistency is key with writing, and with this AI writing tool, you can ensure that your content will consistently rank high on search engines. This will help to generate traffic to your company’s website and lead to more sales.

INK Editor also provides suggestions on how to improve your SEO score while you’re writing. So if your business goal is to create high-performing content that ranks high on search engines, INK Editor is for you. You can also get a free trial of INK Editor, or upgrade to a paid version to access more features.

Anyword

Anyword is a copywriting AI software that benefits marketing and sales teams. Some AI copywriting tools create content that sounds like a robot wrote them, but with Anyword, it will always sound like a human wrote it.

If you don’t have the time or resources to produce content for your business, Anyword can help to streamline your writing process by creating high-quality content. You can create blog posts, ads, articles, and more that you can use across various marketing channels.

Jasper

Jasper is a great AI writing tool if you want to create high-quality content at a quick speed. It offers over 50 templates and supports over 25 languages, so you can tailor the tools to suit your business’s specific needs.

With Jasper, you can create personalized AI-generated content to reach your target audience. Jasper will also assist with catching grammar mistakes to ensure you’re delivering the best work possible.

Wordtune

If you need an AI writing tool that can help with grammar and writing, Wordtune is for you. Not only does Wordtune help with catching grammar mistakes, but it also goes a step further and assists with writing compelling and engaging content.

Wordtune ensures the readability of content, so it always sounds like it came from human writers and not AI software. It’s also completely cloud-based, features a thesaurus with real-time suggestions, and can easily be integrated with social media platforms and other business tools.

Grammarly

If there’s one AI writing tool you’ve heard of, it’s probably Grammarly. Grammarly is often used throughout schools and businesses, and for a good reason. With Grammarly, you can rest assured that your work will be error-free and grammatically correct.

Grammarly does everything from spell check to grammar to ensure you always deliver the best work possible. It also features a plagiarism tool, ensuring you’re only working with original content.

. . . .

Hyperwrite

Hyperwrite uses advanced natural language processing technology to create original content for your brand.

Whether you need help writing articles, blog posts, landing pages, or a combination of the three, Hyperwrite generates high-quality content quickly. There is a free version of Hyperwrite, but you can also pay to upgrade and get even more features.

Lightkey

Have you ever wanted an AI writing assistant who can finish your sentences for you? If so, consider using Lightkey. Lightkey is an AI typing assistant that can predict your sentences up to 18 words in advance.

Think about how much faster you could type if you had an AI writing tool that could literally finish your sentences.

Copyal

If you’re struggling with writer’s block, Copyal will be your new best friend. This AI writing assistant can help you beat that mental block so you can deliver quality content faster than ever before.

Copyal is also compatible with over 25 languages, so you can produce content that works for your target audience. There is a free version of Copyal, as well as paid versions, which you can access depending on your business’s needs.

Lyne.ai

If you write a lot of cold emails, Lyne.ai can transform the way you work. This AI writing tool can write over 500 intros per hour, significantly increasing the number of emails you send. The more emails you send, the more response rates you’ll get, so you’ll see an instant increase in sales for your business.

Link to the rest at Intuit Mailchimp

From Yahoo News:

A University of North Georgia (UNG) student is on academic probation after she says she used Grammarly to proofread a paper. The school says the action was taken because they detected the use of artificial intelligence in violation of their plagiarism clause in the student code of conduct handbook.

“It’s just been very frustrating,” UNG junior Marley Stevens said.

Stevens, after submitting a paper for her criminal justice class in October, says she was surprised to learn her professor gave her a “0” for the assignment and reported her to the Office of Student Integrity.

“He was like you used AI on your paper, you get a zero, that was it,” Stevens said.

“I had Grammarly installed in my web browser, but I’ve only ever had the free version, so all it did was fix my punctuation and my spelling,” she added.

. . . .

She submitted the paper through the program Turnitin, which flagged it for the use of AI.

Turnitin launched an AI writing detection feature in March 2023 to find when AI writing tools generate words used in submissions rather than the students’ own writing.

Earlier this month, Stevens learned she’d been placed on academic probation.

Grammarly says its suggestions for grammar and spelling changes aren’t made through generative AI, which is an algorithm which can create new content on its own.

Grammarly sent FOX 5 a statement reading in part:

“Grammarly’s trusted writing support helps students improve their writing skills by offering suggestions for spelling, grammatical correctness, clarity, concision, and tone. These suggestions are not powered by generative AI and can still be accessed even when generative AI features are deactivated or not used by the student. However, some third-party tools may mistakenly identify any use of Grammarly as generative AI. We encourage institutions to establish clear policies on acceptable AI usage and adhere to those guidelines when assessing student success.”

Stevens said she’s used Grammarly on other assignments before without problems.

“I had teachers before who made us install it and turn a screenshot in that we had done so-and-so I’ve written my papers the same exact way all through college in a Google Doc with my Grammarly extension. I’ve never had any problems,” she explained.

. . . .

Regarding its AI policies, the University of North Georgia issued a statement reading in part:

“Our faculty members communicate specific guidelines regarding the use of AI for various classes, and those guidelines are included in the class syllabi. The inappropriate use of AI is also addressed in our Student Code of Conduct.”

Stevens took to TikTok to share her story, which has millions of views.

Stevens’ academic probation currently lasts until February 2025.

Link to the rest at Yahoo News and thanks to F. for the tip.

PG wonders if the professor in the OP actually read the paper in question or simply relied on one computer program accurately detecting the use of another computer program.

From Vanderbilt University:

In April of this year, Turnitin released an update to their product that reviewed submitted papers and presented their determination of how much of a paper was written by AI. As we outlined at that time, many people had important concerns and questions about this new tool, namely how the product exactly works and how reliable the results would be. After several months of using and testing this tool, meeting with Turnitin and other AI leaders, and talking to other universities who also have access, Vanderbilt has decided to disable Turnitin’s AI detection tool for the foreseeable future. This decision was not made lightly and was made in pursuit of the best interests of our students and faculty. 

When Turnitin launched its AI-detection tool, there were many concerns that we had. This feature was enabled for Turnitin customers with less than 24-hour advance notice, no option at the time to disable the feature, and, most importantly, no insight into how it works. At the time of launch, Turnitin claimed that its detection tool had a 1% false positive rate (Chechitelli, 2023). To put that into context, Vanderbilt submitted 75,000 papers to Turnitin in 2022. If this AI detection tool was available then, around 750 student papers could have been incorrectly labeled as having some of it written by AI. Instances of false accusations of AI usage being leveled against students at other universities have been widely reported over the past few months, including multiple instances that involved Turnitin (Fowler, 2023; Klee, 2023). In addition to the false positive issue, AI detectors have been found to be more likely to label text written by non-native English speakers as AI-written (Myers, 2023). 

Additionally, there is a larger question of how Turnitin detects AI writing and if that is even possible. To date, Turnitin gives no detailed information as to how it determines if a piece of writing is AI-generated or not. The most they have said is that their tool looks for patterns common in AI writing, but they do not explain or define what those patterns are. Other companies that offer popular AI detectors have either begun to either pivot to other business models (Edwards, 2023) or closed down entirely (Coldewey, 2023). Even if other third-party software claimed higher accuracy than Turnitin, there are real privacy concerns about taking student data and entering it into a detector that is managed by a separate company with unknown privacy and data usage policies. Fundamentally, AI detection is already a very difficult task for technology to solve (if it is even possible) and this will only become harder as AI tools become more common and more advanced. Based on this, we do not believe that AI detection software is an effective tool that should be used.

Link to the rest at Vanderbilt University

PG Note: Consensus is an AI that, among other things, works to make certain its answers are more reliable than other AI programs produce. The principal way it claims to increase the reliability of its answers is to focus on more reliable sources – academic research articles is what PG found – instead of general information floating around the web.

Question/Prompt: Has no-fault divorce resulted in an increase in the number of divorces in the US?

Consensus Response:

Top 10 papers analyzed

Some studies suggest that no-fault divorce has led to an increase in the number of divorces and changes in living standards post-divorce, while other studies suggest that it had little to no effect on divorce rates or that any increase was offset by better sorting of couples before marriage.

The Divorce Revolution: The Unexpected Social and Economic Consequences for Women and Children in America

No-fault divorce laws in the US have produced a 73% drop in the living standards of divorced women and their children and a 42% rise in the living standards of ex-husbands.

Journal of Marriage and Family, K. Kammeyer et al 489 citations 1986 – Highly Cited

These Boots are Made for Walking’: Why Most Divorce Filers are Women

Yes

No-fault divorce has led to an increase in the number of divorces, with women often filing for divorce and instigating separation, despite financial and social hardship.

American Law and Economics Review

M. Brinig et al. 189 citations 2000 – Highly Cited document

Further Discussion of the Effects of No-Fault Divorce on Divorce Rates

Yes

The new method estimated that around 57,000 extra divorces per year in the US are directly attributable to the implementation of no-fault divorce law.

Journal of Marriage and Family, N. Glenn et al., 19 citations, 1999

____________________________________________________________________________________

PG Note: The list of studies generated by Consensus continues with further responsive results, each with a title, and the other types of information from the study, date, and number of citations as shown in the first three.

Here’s a link to Consensus, which is in open Beta.

PG’s response to his quick try-out of Consensus is that has the potential to be very useful for its target audience, researchers, by saving a lot of search time and providing an intelligent initial filter that allows the researcher to more quickly identify valuable sources for further examination than a series of Google searches would.

This type of AI search capability would be a slam-dunk useful assistant for attorneys, who have used expensive online legal research systems for a long time.

PG hasn’t stumbled across anything similar from those legal research giants, but then he hasn’t looked.

UPDATE: PG just looked at Lexis, one of his employers from the distant past whose CEO once lectured PG about the internet: horribly disorganized – a complete mess that would never amount to anything.

Lo and behold, Lexis is heavily promoting its AI legal research product, which they promise will provide:

the fastest legal generative AI with conversational search, drafting, summarization, document analysis, and hallucination-free linked legal citations.

It appears that Lexis plans to leave the job of hallucinating to its lawyer/customers.

Or perhaps, legal hallucination is an add-on product available for a small[ish] additional monthly fee.

From Medium:

The creation of content is a noteworthy use of AI in book writing. Advanced algorithms for natural language processing enable AI systems to generate text that is both logical and appropriate for the given context. AI is being investigated by publishers and authors more frequently to help with book drafting, editing, and even section generation.

Thanks to large datasets, artificial intelligence algorithms are able to identify patterns in writing styles, themes, and structures. This facilitates the production of content that conforms to particular genres or emulates the traits of well-known writers. AI-generated literature may raise questions about its authenticity, but some purists see it as an additional creative tool to human creativity.

There are more and more instances of AI and human authors working together. AI is a useful tool for writers as it can help with character development, story twist suggestions, and idea generation. The creative process is improved by this cooperative approach, which makes use of the advantages of both machine efficiency and human inventiveness.

. . . .

But using AI to write books also brings up philosophical and ethical issues. Can a machine really understand the subtleties of culture, the depth of storytelling, or the complexities of human emotions? Even though AI systems are capable of producing text and copying styles, true creativity and emotional connection are frequently derived from the human experience.

Notwithstanding the progress made, there is still continuous discussion about AI’s place in book writing. Preserving the genuine voice of human authors and the breadth of human experiences is a delicate balance that demands careful consideration, even though it surely offers efficiency and creative possibilities.

In summary, the connection between artificial intelligence and book writing is quickly changing. Automation improves productivity, offers opportunities for collaboration, and provides data-driven insights, but it also raises questions about what makes human creativity truly unique. As technology develops further, the future of literature will be shaped by striking the correct balance between the benefits of artificial intelligence (AI) and the inherent qualities of human storytelling.

Link to the rest at Medium

PG noted the portion of the last paragraph of the OP that talked about “the inherent qualities of human storytelling.”

While that portion of the OP certainly caused PG to feel warm and fuzzy for a few moments, retired lawyer PG butted in with a question about what “the inherent qualities of human storytelling.” actually are.

Certainly, “the inherent qualities of human storytelling” are not manifested equally across the breadth of humanity. Some people are better storytellers than other people are. Some people are great at telling stories in print and others are great at telling stories on the stage or with a movie or television camera pointed at them and, on relatively rare occasions, some people are good at storytelling in multiple media.

For a motion picture, script-writing storytellers are involved, acting storytellers are involved, directing storytellers are involved, etc. We’ve already seen successful motion pictures like The Matrix and 2001: A Space Odyssey where the non-human acting storytellers play a key role or, in every Disney cartoon movie, where there are no human actors, all the roles.

As far as human emotions are involved, are there a lot of people who didn’t shed a tear when Bambi’s mother was killed by a hunter?

PG notes that AI foundational research has been going on for a long time. (More on that in a separate post to appear on TPV in the foreseeable future.)

However, the widespread use of AI systems by a lot of people is a relatively recent phenomenon that requires software and hardware sufficient to respond to a flood of prompts from a great many people at the same time. Hosting an AI program available to all comers today requires a lot of computing power on the scale of very large cloud computing services like Amazon Web Services, Microsoft’s Azure, and the Google Cloud Platform.

However, the history of modern computer development has been a nearly steady stream of smaller, cheaper, and more powerful devices. A couple of online reports claim your Apple Watch has over twice the computing power as a Cray-2 supercomputer did in 1985.

There is no guarantee that your next cell phone will equal the computing of a group of giant cloud computer systems in the next couple of years, but Moore’s Law says it’s only a matter of time

Moore’s Law is the observation that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit will double every two years with minimal rise in cost. Intel co-founder Gordon Moore predicted a doubling of transistors every year for the next 10 years in his original paper published in 1965. Ten years later, in 1975, Moore revised this to doubling every two years. This extrapolation based on an emerging trend has been a guiding principle for the semiconductor industry for close to 60 years.

Intel Newsroom

PG suggests that opinions about the ability of AI systems to generate book-length stories that many people will pay for are likely to be revised in the future.

As always, feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.

From The Economist:

As pupils and students return to classrooms and lecture halls for the new year, it is striking to reflect on how little education has changed in recent decades. Laptops and interactive whiteboards hardly constitute disruption. Many parents bewildered by how their children shop or socialise would be unruffled by how they are taught. The sector remains a digital laggard: American schools and universities spend around 2% and 5% of their budgets, respectively, on technology, compared with 8% for the average American company. Techies have long coveted a bigger share of the $6trn the world spends each year on education.

When the pandemic forced schools and universities to shut down, the moment for a digital offensive seemed nigh. Students flocked to online learning platforms to plug gaps left by stilted Zoom classes. The market value of Chegg, a provider of online tutoring, jumped from $5bn at the start of 2020 to $12bn a year later. Byju’s, an Indian peer, soared to a private valuation of $22bn in March 2022 as it snapped up other providers across the world. Global venture-capital investment in education-related startups jumped from $7bn in 2019 to $20bn in 2021, according to Crunchbase, a data provider.

Then, once covid was brought to heel, classes resumed much as before. By the end of 2022 Chegg’s market value had slumped back to $3bn. Early last year investment firms including BlackRock and Prosus started marking down the value of their stakes in Byju’s as its losses mounted. “In hindsight we grew a bit too big a bit too fast,” admits Divya Gokulnath, the company’s co-founder.

If the pandemic couldn’t overcome the education sector’s resistance to digital disruption, can artificial intelligence? Chatgpt-like generative ai, which can converse cleverly on a wide variety of subjects, certainly looks the part. So much so that educationalists began to panic that students would use it to cheat on essays and homework. In January 2023 New York City banned Chatgpt from public schools. Increasingly, however, it is generating excitement as a means to provide personalised tutoring to students and speed up tedious tasks such as marking. By May New York had let the bot back into classrooms.

Learners, for their part, are embracing the technology. Two-fifths of undergraduates surveyed last year by Chegg reported using an ai chatbot to help them with their studies, with half of those using it daily. Indeed, the technology’s popularity has raised awkward questions for companies like Chegg, whose share price plunged last May after Dan Rosensweig, its chief executive, told investors it was losing customers to Chatgpt. Yet there are good reasons to believe that education specialists who harness ai will eventually prevail over generalists such as Openai, the maker of Chatgpt, and other tech firms eyeing the education business.

For one, ai chatbots have a bad habit of spouting nonsense, an unhelpful trait in an educational context. “Students want content from trusted providers,” argues Kate Edwards, chief pedagogist at Pearson, a textbook publisher. The company has not allowed Chatgpt and other ais to ingest its material, but has instead used the content to train its own models, which it is embedding into its suite of learning apps. Rivals including McGraw Hill are taking a similar approach. Chegg has likewise developed its own ai bot that it has trained on its ample dataset of questions and answers.

. . . .

What is more, as Chegg’s Mr Rosensweig argues, teaching is not merely about giving students an answer, but about presenting it in a way that helps them learn. Understanding pedagogy thus gives education specialists an edge. Pearson has designed its ai tools to engage students by breaking complex topics down, testing their understanding and providing quick feedback, says Ms Edwards. Byju’s is incorporating “forgetting curves” for students into the design of its ai tutoring tools, refreshing their memories at personalised intervals. Chatbots must also be tailored to different age groups, to avoid either bamboozling or infantilising students.

Specialists that have already forged relationships with risk-averse educational institutions will have the added advantage of being able to embed ai into otherwise familiar products. Anthology, a maker of education software, has incorporated generative-ai features into its Blackboard Learn program to help teachers speedily create course outlines, rubrics and tests. Established suppliers are also better placed to instruct teachers on how to make use of ai’s capabilities.

Link to the rest at The Economist

Prompt: write the first paragraph of a noir detective novel in the style of Dashiell Hammett

Chat GPT 3.5: The night draped itself over the city like a worn-out trench coat, all shadows and whispers. I sat behind my desk, the dim glow of a solitary lamp flickering like the last ember in a dying fire. The cigarette smoke curled lazily, weaving tales of sin and secrets into the air. The rain tapped on the window, a rhythm that mirrored the clandestine dance of crime on the mean streets. The dame who walked through my door was trouble, and I could smell it like cheap perfume in a crowded gin joint. She had legs that stretched for miles, and eyes that had seen one too many double-crosses. As she spoke, her words cut through the smoke, revealing a plot thicker than the fog rolling in from the waterfront. Another night in this city of broken dreams, where the only thing certain was the uncertainty of the next twist in the dark alleys of deception.

And two DALL-E images generated from the first two sentences of the Chat GPT response above:

From Forbes:

For better or worse, artificial intelligence is poised to shake up the publishing industry. As a technologist who has authored over 50 books, I’ve been keen on its evolution in that space. From assisting in research to streamlining content creation and distribution, AI offers promising avenues for increased productivity and efficiency.

However, it also raises concerns about the preservation of human voice and original thought. In fact, with the increase in AI in content creation, we’ll soon see the pendulum swing the other way: Works may be labeled as “Non-AI,” just like we see “Non-GMO” in many food products. If you’re a thought leader looking to publish a book, you may be wondering how to leverage AI while avoiding its pitfalls.

. . . .

1. Assisted Research

It’s clear that generative AI tools like ChatGPT will have a significant impact on publishing. It won’t replace authors but rather make them more productive with aggregated research and synthesized content that can be tweaked to resemble the voice of the author. Of course, the risks associated with AI will introduce new fact-checking and authenticity processes. However, the benefits will outweigh the risks. – Mike Walker, Microsoft

2. AI-Powered Editing

Artificial intelligence is excellent at editing. I can see top authors leveraging AI to get their work output more efficiently and effectively with AI by reducing the time needed to edit their original creations. Unfortunately, I also believe we will see the rise of a lot of junk authors who can now quickly create mediocre work. – Rashmi Rao, RCubed Ventures

. . . .

4. Streamlined Content Creation, Distribution And Consumption

AI will impact authors by streamlining content creation, distribution, and consumption. While this may increase efficiency, it also poses a risk of diminishing the uniqueness of the human voice and original thought. Authors can leverage this trend by incorporating AI tools to enhance their work while keeping their own voices and perspectives. – Miguel Llorca, Torrent Group

5. Automated Text Analysis, Formatting And Translation

Certain laborious manual functions such as automated text analysis, formatting, personalization and translations can be automated. This allows authors to focus on their research and content. Publishing agencies can use AI to recommend better topics for authors based on its quick and wide capability to parse consumer needs. – Kiran Palla, AVS Academy

6. Greater Emphasis On Having A ‘Voice’

It will put a greater emphasis on having a “voice.” AI is excellent at putting together cogent, but ultimately lifeless, writing. Authors who have good ideas and execution but lack the human touch will be most impacted by AI-generated writing. As a writer, you should always focus not just on your argument, but what you—the human behind it—bring to the process. – Lewis Wynne-Jones, ThinkData Works

Link to the rest at Forbes

Prompt:

Provide a detailed character sketch of Rodion Raskolnikov updated for 2023

From GPT4:

Updating the character of Rodion Raskolnikov from Fyodor Dostoevsky’s “Crime and Punishment” for a 2023 context involves reimagining his background, motivations, and conflicts to resonate with contemporary themes and issues. Here’s a detailed character sketch for a modern-day Raskolnikov:

Name: Rodion “Rodya” Raskolnikov

Background

• Age: Late 20s.
• Education: A brilliant former student of psychology, who dropped out of a prestigious university due to financial constraints and disillusionment with the academic system.
• Family: Comes from a lower-middle-class family. His mother is a school teacher, and he has a younger sister who is struggling to find her footing in a competitive job market.
• Location: Lives in a modest apartment in a large, culturally diverse city.

Personality Traits

• Intellectually Gifted: Possesses a sharp intellect and often engages in philosophical musings about society and morality.
• Isolated: Tends to isolate himself from others, preferring his own company and thoughts.
• Altruistic Yet Egotistical: Displays moments of genuine compassion, especially towards his family, but is also deeply egocentric, believing himself to be morally and intellectually superior.
• Anxious and Paranoid: Exhibits signs of anxiety and paranoia, particularly after committing his crime.

Modern Adaptation

• Occupation: Works part-time in a mundane job, possibly in data entry or as a delivery driver, which he finds unfulfilling. In his spare time, he writes blogs and essays on social and ethical issues.
• Financial Struggles: His financial difficulties are a significant source of stress, driving him to question the social structures and disparities in wealth and power.
• Crime: Raskolnikov’s crime in 2023 could involve hacking into a corrupt corporation’s system or committing a cybercrime against a morally dubious business tycoon, believing his actions are justified to expose or dismantle corrupt power structures.
• Mental Health: Struggles with his mental health, experiencing guilt and internal conflict post-crime, which leads him into a psychological downward spiral.

Relationships

• Family: Feels a deep sense of responsibility and guilt over his inability to financially support his mother and sister.
• Friends: Has few close friends but maintains some online connections with individuals who share his ideological views.
• Romantic Interest: Could have a complicated relationship with a character akin to Sonya, who in this adaptation might be a social worker or counselor, representing empathy and moral clarity.

Conflicts

• Internal: Grapples with guilt, moral justification of his actions, and a sense of isolation from society.
• External: Faces the consequences of his crime in the digital age, dealing with law enforcement and the societal fallout of his actions.

Development

• Journey: Raskolnikov’s journey involves confronting the reality of his actions, grappling with the moral and ethical implications, and ultimately seeking redemption.
• Resolution: His resolution could involve turning himself in and accepting the legal consequences of his actions, symbolizing his acceptance of societal laws and moral boundaries.

In this 2023 adaptation, Raskolnikov is a complex character who embodies the struggles of modern society, including financial instability, the ethical dilemmas posed by technology, and the quest for moral grounding in an increasingly complex world. His story reflects contemporary issues of social justice, mental health, and the search for meaning in a digital age.

End of GPT4

As he reviewed the AI’s response, PG had to admit that his detailed recollection of Raskolnikov’s character traits had faded into the mists of time.

He’ll need to rely on the colorfast recollections of visitors to TPV to assess how GPT4 did with this challenge. He understands several movies based on the novel have been released, but hasn’t seen any of those either, so his mind is tabula rasa on the plot.

Prompt: Prepare a detailed outline of an adaptation of Gone with the Wind set in 2023

From ChatGPT4:

Adapting “Gone with the Wind” to a contemporary setting of 2023 requires thoughtful reimagining while maintaining the essence of the original story. Here’s a detailed outline for such an adaptation:

Title: “Gone with the Wind: 2023”

Setting

• Location: Atlanta, Georgia, and surrounding areas, with a modern urban and suburban backdrop.
• Time: Present day, focusing on the social, economic, and political dynamics of 2023.

Characters

• Scarlett O’Hara: A young, ambitious entrepreneur in the tech industry, known for her beauty, intelligence, and relentless drive.
• Rhett Butler: A charismatic venture capitalist with a mysterious past and a knack for risk-taking in both business and personal life.
• Ashley Wilkes: An idealistic environmental activist and Scarlett’s long-time crush, who struggles to balance his ideals with practicality.
• Melanie Hamilton: A compassionate, understanding social worker, married to Ashley, and a close friend to Scarlett.

Plot Overview

1. Introduction:
   • Scarlett’s World: Introduce Scarlett’s life in modern Atlanta, her tech startup, and her unrequited love for Ashley.
   • Social Context: Touch on contemporary issues such as climate change, economic inequality, and technological advancements.
2. Rising Tensions:
   • Business and Romance: Scarlett’s company faces financial difficulties. She meets Rhett at a fundraising event, sparking a complicated relationship.
   • Ashley’s Dilemma: Ashley is torn between his environmental activism and the pressures to conform to a more traditional career path.
3. Climax:
   • Business Crisis: Scarlett’s company is on the brink of collapse. She turns to Rhett for help, leading to a controversial business deal.
   • Romantic Conflicts: Scarlett’s feelings for Ashley resurface, causing tension with Rhett and Melanie.
4. Falling Action:
   • Personal Growth: Scarlett starts to realize the importance of balancing ambition with ethics and compassion.
   • Relationship Strains: Rhett feels neglected by Scarlett’s obsession with Ashley and her career.
5. Conclusion:
   • Resolution: Scarlett makes a significant decision about her professional and personal life, choosing her own path over her longstanding pursuit of Ashley.
   • Rhett’s Departure: Rhett decides to leave Scarlett, leading to her famous realization of self-reliance and determination to rebuild her life.

Themes

• Modern Feminism: Exploration of a woman’s role in a high-powered, male-dominated business world.
• Technology vs. Environment: The clash between technological advancement and environmental conservation.
• Personal vs. Professional Life: The struggle to maintain personal relationships while pursuing ambitious career goals.
• Adaptation and Resilience: How characters adapt to the rapidly changing world around them.

Visual Style

• Cinematography: A mix of sleek, modern cityscapes and lush, natural landscapes to contrast the worlds of technology and environmentalism.
• Costume Design: Contemporary fashion, reflecting the status and personalities of characters in a modern setting.

Soundtrack

• A blend of modern and classical music, capturing the emotional depth and complexities of the story in a contemporary context.

This adaptation maintains the core narrative of “Gone with the Wind” while updating its setting and themes to reflect modern societal and cultural issues.

End of ChatGPT4

PG will allow visitors to determine if the outline shows a useful amount of creativity or not.

If he had tasked himself to produce a similar document, PG admits he would not have considered the Soundtrack.

PG discovered the Google Arts & Culture site earlier this morning. It’s quite an extensive site and a definite threat to suck away a lot of time, but is nicely-done.

One of the site’s interesting features is listed as experimental. It’s called Poem Postcards. This location allows you to select a postcard based upon a classic painting, then use an AI to write a poem about it, then email the painting/poem to a friend.

Here’s a link to a poem postcard PG just created.

From Today Online:

From low-quality computer-written books flooding the market to potential copyright violations, publishing is the latest industry to feel the threat from rapid developments in artificial intelligence (AI).

Since the launch last year of ChatGPT, an easy-to-use AI chatbot that can deliver an essay upon request within seconds, there have been growing worries about the impact of generative AI on a range of sectors.

Among book industry players there is “a deep sense of insecurity”, said Juergen Boos, director of the Frankfurt Book Fair, the world’s biggest, where the topic was in focus last week.

They are asking, “What happens to authors’ intellectual property? Who does new content actually belong to? How do we bring this into value chains?” he said.

The threat is plain to see — AI writing programmes allow budding authors to produce in a matter of day novels that could in the past have taken months or years to write.

A flood of titles that list ChatGPT as a co-author has been offered for sale through Amazon’s e-book self-publishing unit.

Still, critics say the works are of low quality and sense little threat from AI for now.

British author Salman Rushdie told a press conference at the fair that recently someone asked an AI writing tool to produce 300 words in his style.

“And what came out was pure garbage,” said the Midnight’s Children writer, to laughter from the audience.

“Anybody who has ever read 300 words of mine would immediately recognise that it could not possibly be by me.””So far I’m not that alarmed,” he added, during a rare public appearance since a near-fatal stabbing attack last year in the United States.

Jennifer Becker, a German author and academic, echoed his sentiments, telling a panel discussion that the results when it comes to AI writing fiction “are still not that great”. 

“There is a lot of potential to use it — to use it collaboratively. 

“But I still don’t see the point where we really hand over the writing work to AI completely autonomously. That wouldn’t make for an interesting book.”

. . . .

Industry players stress however that in some areas there is more openness to dealing with artificial intelligence.

“It depends a bit on the genre,” said Susanne Barwick, deputy legal adviser of the German Publishers and Booksellers Association, who has been in discussion about AI with publishers. 

“The field of science and specialist books is already further along and has already dealt with it more.”

These areas were “easier than the field of fiction, where I think at the moment people still tend to look a bit more at the risks”, she added. 

Artificial intelligence’s relationship with publishing threatens to throw up a host of legal problems, with one major “grey area” being who owns the copyright of AI-generated content, said fair director Boos. 

“Then you get into a real mess, and it is a huge theme. There is also really a lot of money involved,” he said.

. . . .

Last month, Game of Thrones author George RR Martin, John Grisham and Jodi Picoult were among several writers who filed a class-action lawsuit against ChatGPT creator OpenAI over alleged violation of copyrights.

Along with the Authors Guild, an organisation representing writers, they accused the California-based company of using their books “without permission” to train ChatGPT’s “large language models”, algorithms capable of producing human-sounding text responses based on simple queries, according to the lawsuit.

Translation is another thorny area, with some industry players feeling artificial intelligence would miss the nuances and subtleties needed to render complex literature into other languages.

Link to the rest at Today Online

From Fast Company:

You’ll soon see AI in most writing tools. Canva, Notion, Craft, Coda, and other popular writing services have been racing to add new AI features. Google Docs added a new AI-driven summarization feature. Read on for what AI can do for you, where the hype goes too far, and a few recommended tools to try.

. . . .

AI TOOLS TO TRY

• Lex. I love its simplicity. It’s designed specifically for individual writers, not marketers, technologists or corporate teams. It doesn’t make braggadocious claims, just helps writers in subtle ways.
  
  Lex draws on the same OpenAI engine as Canva Docs but lacks its visual features. It’s useful if you write often but don’t need the 150 menu options available in Microsoft Word. For now, Lex is free, with a waitlist for access. For now, Lex is free, with a waitlist for access.
  
  Still in private beta, it already has great features, including:
  • A title generator to suggest headlines for whatever you’re writing.
  • A question answerer to respond concisely to factual queries.
  • A paragraph writer that assesses what you’ve written and suggests a relevant next paragraph or bullet-points that build on your argument. It can also help remind you of blind spots in your writing by listing topics, facts or issues you may have accidentally ignored.
  • Writing stats to track productivity.
• ChatGPT isn’t a writing service per se, but it’s a helpful way to challenge your own thinking by seeking out AI explanations of complex issues. More than a million people have already signed up to chat with this remarkable chatbot that answers questions with an eerily human touch.
• Craft.do has the best-designed implementation of any of the AI writing tools I’ve seen so far. You hit / and it gives you some options for adding directly into whatever doc you’re working on. It works on the Mac and Windows apps, on the Web and on iOS.
  
  You can use the AI feature to summarize or explain something; create an outline; write a pros and cons list; generate keywords or hashtags; suggest a title; add to something you’ve written; or translate your text into English, Spanish, French, Italian, German, Dutch, Portuguese, Korean or Japanese. It can stray beyond those features. I asked it to generate a limerick about AI, which you’ll see in this AI-generated document it spun out of my testing.
• Canva Docs calls its AI feature Magic Write, which I mentioned in my piece last week. It joins another Canva AI tool that lets you generate images by typing in a text prompt, and a magic resizing tool that will adjust your image to fit whatever dimensions you need. Those first two AI features are free.
• Copy.ai is useful for generating marketing materials.
  
  To test it I typed in some keywords about the Wonder Tools newsletter. It generated surprisingly decent marketing copy employing the Pain/Problem-Agitate-Solution framework.
  
  It didn’t, of course, generate the time or expertise required to figure out a marketing strategy. For non-marketers, though, AI-generated text can provide a helpful starting point.
  
  You can also use it to generate YouTube titles and descriptions, Instagram captions, TikTok video ideas, Facebook ad text, and various other formats.

Link to the rest at Fast Company

From School Library Journal:

There’s a good argument that Shakespeare is the world’s most popular author. About 90 percent of American schools assign Shakespeare to students. His work has been translated into more than 100 languages. Declare “To be or not to be,” and most will answer, “That is the question.” The Bard’s work is widely integrated across culture, education, and the modern English language. Despite this, people find Shakespeare hard. Some might even say too hard.

In a recent survey of 500 teachers, 56 percent said their students found Shakespeare difficult to read. Of these teachers, 60 percent said the Elizabethan language was the biggest obstacle for students reading the plays. The themes of love, betrayal, and ambition are timeless—but maybe Elizabethan English isn’t. For many first-time readers, Shakespeare’s plays are full of unfamiliar words, phrasing, and grammatical constructions.

This reported difficulty with the language shouldn’t be viewed as a problem with Shakespeare. Elizabethan English didn’t suddenly become dated in 2023. It’s been unfamiliar and antiquated to readers for many decades. But increasingly, the language is a barrier to new readers starting a love affair with the material.

Here, in my view, artificial intelligence (AI) offers a unique benefit: facilitating the reading experience of Shakespeare’s works. Large language models (LLMs: the AI systems that power popular products like ChatGPT) have exciting potential to help people read older texts with relative ease.

If you provide AI models with text, they can instantaneously synthesize, explain, and contextualize it. They offer definitions of words, historical context, and other details that might escape a modern reader. If you’re reading War and Peace and have a foggy sense of Russian history, running a passage through an AI model quickly provides bullet points on Napoleon’s invasion of Russia as well as definitions of period-specific terms.

AI can also accurately paraphrase Elizabethan language into modern English so readers can understand any line of Shakespeare. This strategy isn’t intended as a substitute for reading the original text, but as a “reading copilot” on hand to help.

Bard-themed AI tools are gaining popularity. One I created, Shakespeare Translator, has been used by over 50,000 readers. These AI models aren’t deterministic systems with pre-written translations mapped to certain lines. Rather, the tools use LLMs to analyze the context and language patterns, providing modern interpretations.

Many are quick to critique AI-powered reading tools. The arguments essentially center on the idea that using AI waters down the joy and rewards of reading. But using AI isn’t about replacing reading. It’s about helping more people appreciate difficult material, more readily, and with fewer barriers to entry.

. . . .

How useful are these translations? Are they accurate? Do they actually help students grasp the meaning of lines? Judge for yourself.

Here’s the original text of the famous Hamlet speech
“To be, or not to be, that is the question: Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them. To die; to sleep; No more; and by a sleep to say we end the heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to.”

Run through a Shakespeare translation tool, this is paraphrased to
“The big question is whether it’s better to keep on living or to end it all. Is it nobler to endure the hardships and misfortunes that life throws at us, or to fight against all the problems that come our way and put an end to them? Death would mean eternal rest and therefore an escape from the pain and suffering that life brings us.”

Or consider this from Richard III
“Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this sun of York; And all the clouds that lour’d upon our house in the deep bosom of the ocean buried.”

Paraphrase
“Our unhappiness has now turned into joy due to the presence of the ruler from York; and all of our worries and troubles are now in the past.”

Link to the rest at School Library Journal

Here’s a link to  Shakespeare Translator

PG’s Borrowed Thoughts:

The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance.

Carl Sagan