PG received an email following his post about Rytr, an artificial intelligence authoring program.
I just tried the tool for a plot. This is what I put in:
“A man dies and goes to hell and then must undertake a quest. “
This is what it gave me:
“Every few days someone would come to take me to the next level of hell. I was told there is no end to how low one can go, but I was still overjoyed at the idea of making it out alive.
“I navigated through level after level of demons and tried to remember what my life was like. There was an angel waiting for me at the gates to my house. She told me not to look back and try not to cry. She said I left something behind long ago, but it’s something I need to find again.”
Not bad!
How long can tbe code keep it up?
1000 words?
10000?
30000?
More?
Will the longer result be coherent?
The sample given above contains all that I need to write a series.
What’s interesting, is that it matches what I generate using “Stream of Consciousness”.
I suspect, that if it is not the AI that came into existence in the 80s, then they have tapped directly into the Liminal Realm(Fantasia), and Stephen King’s “Boys in the Basement” are having fun with us.
If either is True, be afraid, be very afraid, because each is a whole set of stories as well.
So it’s the seed for a story.
(Lets ignore for the moment that story ideas are all over, depending on genre and interest.)
Okay, so: can tbe software follow up? Figure out a cast and backstory? Work out a full plot with twists, turns, character arcs, subplots, and meaning, and bring it to a satisfying conclusion?
Or is it just substituting for a scan of tbe days news?
Story ideas? We’re surrounded by them.
That isn’t 1% of what it takes to craft a good story.
Software that only coughs up seeds is doing nothing we can’t do for ourselves.
Hence my question: can the AI follow up? Do something the human can’t do themselves?
Hence my question: can the AI follow up? Do something the human can’t do themselves?
I hope not, because we would be in real trouble. Humans are “hackable” through Story, through narrative. Concepts injected using Novels, fiction, slip passed people’s filters. That’s what makes this business so dangerous.
All this goes into my Story folders.
Thanks…
Fret not, I don’t think software will get there anytime soon.
(Barring the development of mix-n-match soft “plagiarism” pastiche generators. I’m keeping an eye out for those. They could wipe out a couple of entire subgenres, like tough guy thrillers. Too much Alistair MacLean and Don Pendleton channeling there.)
Full story creation needs a wellspring, motivating force. Even if just “money is good”. Software has nonesuch. There will always be a “small person” inside the black box.
In a somewhat related vein, you ever run into Asimov’s Dreaming Is a Private Thing?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreaming_Is_a_Private_Thing#:~:text=From%20Wikipedia%2C%20the%20free%20encyclopedia%20%22%20Dreaming%20Is,in%20the%201957%20collection%20Earth%20Is%20Room%20Enough.
The Doctor had a sense of humor. And he understood humanoids.
Yikes!
I pulled out Earth is Room Enough, where “Dreaming…” is, and read the first story, The Dead Past. He describes our current system of University Science.
He saw it coming from 1956.
Double Yikes!
I’m still reading my way to the end of the book where “Dreaming…” is. I haven’t read the book since University in the 1970s. The stories make more sense now than ever.
Thanks…
He was a University professor into the 50’s.
Wrote a chemistry textbook.
He also wrote the classic THIOTIMOLINE “papers”.
From Wikipedia:
“In 1947 Asimov was engaged in doctoral research in chemistry and, as part of his experimental procedure, he needed to dissolve catechol in water. As he observed the crystals dissolve as soon as they hit the water’s surface, it occurred to him that if catechol were any more soluble, then it would dissolve before it encountered the water.
By that time Asimov had been writing professionally for nine years and would soon write a doctoral dissertation. He feared that the experience of writing readable prose for publication might have impaired his ability to write the turgid prose typical of academic discourse, and decided to practice with a spoof article (including charts, graphs, tables, and citations of fake articles in nonexistent journals) describing experiments on a compound, thiotimoline, that was so soluble that it dissolved in water up to 1.12 seconds before the water was added.
Asimov wrote the article on 8 June 1947, but was uncertain as to whether the resulting work of fiction was publishable. John W. Campbell, the editor of Astounding Science Fiction, accepted it for publication on 10 June, agreeing to Asimov’s request that it appear under a pseudonym in deference to Asimov’s concern that he might alienate potential doctoral examiners at Columbia University if he were revealed as the author.
Some months later Asimov was alarmed to see the piece appear in the March 1948 issue of Astounding under his own name, and copies of the issue circulated at the Columbia chemistry department. Asimov believed that Campbell had done so out of greater wisdom. His examiners told him that they accepted his dissertation by asking a final question about thiotimoline, resulting in him having to be led from the room while laughing hysterically with relief. The article made Asimov famous for the first time outside science fiction, as chemists shared copies of the article. He heard that many children went to the New York Public Library trying to find the nonexistent journals. ”
Today he *would* be fired for spoofing sacred science. No room for humor these days.
(BTW, you’ve seen his TREASURY OF HUMOR?)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Asimov%27s_Treasury_of_Humor
The good doctor will endure.
That goes into my Story folders.
Thanks…