-
OpenAI’s metafictional short story about grief is beautiful and moving | Books | The Guardian
The story the AI wrote is linked in the article, but here it is. I highly recommend reading it. Wish I could write this well
‘A machine-shaped hand’: Read a story from OpenAI’s new creative writing model | Books | The Guardian
-
03-13-2025 08:38 AM
-
Wow. That's very good. And it will no doubt get better and better.
I wonder how many people, if they just read the piece without knowing the origins, would assume it's written by a person? That'll be the moment - as with music - when it really takes off / takes over.
Derek
-
Anyone else read that and hear Rutger Hauer's voice in their head???
LOL. Time... to die....
-
I'm not reading any AI amalgamated trash.
-
It's basically no different to a licks player!
Originally Posted by AllanAllen
(i.e. me...)
-
The licks player is still using emotion and effort to create something beautiful. I really can't overstate how much I am against AI art. Originally Posted by digger
-
I would totally have assumed it was written by a human. Despite being continually amazed at what these LLMs can achieve based on my limited understanding, I've always told myself there's no way they can produce a decent piece of literature. But this is a genuinely good piece of writing. I agree with Windrrson, I think the adjective 'beautiful' is appropriate here, regardless of how it was created. Originally Posted by digger
-
I prefer the novels they're doing over at the Ministry of Truth these days. I know a guy who can speakwrite some really beautiful stuff.
Yes, I'm still reading 1984.
-
Me, too. But that was a fine piece of writing and if I hadn't been told otherwise I would have assumed it was written by a human. There'll come a time, probably very soon, when we're consuming AI output without knowing, and, I daresay, we'll be enjoying some of it. Originally Posted by AllanAllen
In fact it may already be happening with things like TV music.
I still hold out the hope that all of this will drive a surge in grassroots live music for folks like you and me who want to see and hear actual people.
-
I'll just go back to older things if AI scrips take over. Really, the only new movies I see are A24 or Marvel movies. I'm not so sure Marvel isn't already using AI.
-
We're supposed to be using AI for the shit that ISN'T fun!
-
I was thinking incidental music on TV documentaries. There was one I was watching this week had some lovely acoustic guitar throughout. I wouldn't bet against it having been AI generated to save the production company some money.
-
Certain kinds of story are more formulaic than others, and I'd expect AI - if it could produce any - to be better able to produce the more formulaic kind. But what's under discussion here is something that appears to be a work of literary fiction. It's quite astonishing that this can be generated by a computer program. I'm in full agreement that the creation of art ought to remain in the hands of people, but here we are.
-
OK, that was actually good. I could totally see that short story in a SF Anthology.
I don't know, the more I think about it and the more I use it, I'm starting to realize that love it or hate it, AI is actually not that bad, and there's no shame in using it as far as I'm concerned.
There’s still effort involved in creating art with it, and from my experience, what you put in is what you get out. A simple, basic prompt will get you a simple, basic result that is easy to identify as being created by a machine. But if you take the time to refine and fine-tune your prompts, adding the right references, stylistic choices, and whatnot, you’ll get some really cool stuff. Maybe an oversimplification, but if you’re someone who lacks cultural context or knowledge, all you’re going to get are shallow imitations, like the ones that flood Instagram or TikTok.
I also don’t agree with the comparison to the "licks player." I'm not a professional musician - just a hobbyist who can read music to learn a song. I can play a few licks, but I can’t create something new. I’ll end up repeating the same patterns, and eventually, it becomes repetitive. Even if my emotional state affects how I play - softer, louder, faster, etc. - it’s still the same thing over and over. From what I’ve seen and read about AI, it’s much more than that. It doesn’t just mimic patterns - it uses a vast dataset to extrapolate, deconstruct, synthesize, and combine ideas to generate something new-ish or, at the very least, significantly different. Mimicking and repeating are two entirely different things imo.
And while we’re on this topic, here’s a question: why is it ok for musicians to (try to) copy Wes or Pass or Hall down to the socks they wore but dog forbid someone prompt an AI with the IDEA of what Wes or Pass is and generate something new?
Moving on, let’s not forget about how useful AI is for research! See this article for example: https://www.researchgate.net/publica...etwork_Science.
How long do you think it would have taken humans to analyze 20000 tracks? Or, think about the time and effort it takes to build a corpus for linguistics studies or discourse analysis. And yes, I am well aware computers were used for this in the past too, but AI will also give you the rough analysis, identify all the patterns, do all the cross-referencing, generate the models and so on. A few clicks of a button and something that would have taken weeks or months is now done in a snap.
Finally, don't forget the cost savings that come with AI. Simple example: you want to release a song or an album (tho good luck with that last one in today's world) and you want a nice cover art for it, what would you rather do? Pay someone to make something for you thus reducing your profit even further or spend a few minutes typing out a few prompts and getting exactly what you want for next to nothing (if not free) AND with no drama based on 'creative differences'?
Oh, and by the way, Allan - one 'definition' of art suggests that it’s valid if it triggers emotion or thought in people. You clearly feel strongly about AI-generated art (hate is after all one of the strongest emotions). And there are a few threads here with a few interesting thoughts on the evolution of AI. So, in a way, YOU, me, and everyone else engaged in these discussions are all validating it, n'est pas?
You can wave your fist and shout at the clouds as the meme goes, or you can try to understand it and make the best out of it.Last edited by jazzloverfat; 03-13-2025 at 10:59 PM.
-
Perhaps this will teach some who have not yet learned the lesson: it's not the quality of the work you produce but the life you live doing the best work you can. What difference does it make if someone (or something) else does it better? Bully for them. We each pass our days engrossed with something that matters to us, or we bitch.
-
Harry Potter and What looked Like a Large Pile of Ash
(AI bot, 2018, from: Botnik Studios)
Chapter 13: The Handsome One
The magically magnified wind blew against the Hogwarts castle grounds while the black sky rained blood. Meanwhile, in Hagrid's hut, all that was audible was his furniture. Harry Potter thought magic was 'very good'. Rain fell like 'leathery sheets' on top of Harry's ghost as he walked the grounds. Harry came across Ron doing a frenzied tap dance, but once he saw Harry, he started eating Hermione's family. Ron's Ron shirt was just as bad as he was and he looked like a 'loud, slow, and soft bird' to Harry. He did not like to think about birds. Ron spotted Death Eaters on the castle roof and was going to be 'spiders', but he was not proud of it, knowing that he'll be covered in them anyway.Hermione suggested that they listen to the Death Eaters' meetings, so the trio made their way to the castle roof door's landing. They almost ran in, but 'witches aren't climbing'. Ron then looked at the doorknob, then painfully at Hermione, saying that the door was closed. Mr Staircase, a resident ghost, elaborated that it was locked. They screamed at the door and asked it to be replaced with an orb. Then, Hermione cried out the password: "Beef Women."
The trio then stood behind a Death Eater circle, whose members looked 'bad'. One Death Eater confidently kisses another Death Eater on the cheek, and the others clapped for them.
The Death Eaters went over their plan to strip Harry of his magic, and Harry could tell that the Dark Lord was standing behind him. Overreacting, Harry ripped his eyes out of his head (much to Voldemort's confusion), threw them into the Forbidden Forest, and told Voldemort off. Meanwhile, Hermione dipped the face a tall Death Eater, who was wearing a shirt that said 'Hermione Has Forgotten How to Dance'. Ron threw a wand at the Dark Lord while everyone applauded, then slowly reached for his own while Harry, as he muttered 'Ron's the handsome one', reluctantly did the same. They cast a spell or two while green light shot out of the heads of the Death Eaters, causing Ron to afterwards. Harry thought 'Not so handsome now' as he dipped Hermione in hot sauce.
The Death Eaters were dead and Harry was hungrier than he'd ever been. Meanwhile, moaning chandeliers filled the Great Hall and a large librarian used masonry books to decorate the sinks. Mountains of mice exploded, long pumpkins fell off McGonagall, Dumbledore's hair then went next to Hermione as he arrived at the school. The Hufflepuff pig pulsed like a bullfrog, and Dumbledore, smiling at it, placed his hand on its head and told it that it is Hagrid now.
The trio said together that '[They're] the only people who matter. He's never going to get rid of [them]'. The castle floor seemed to be a big magic pile, and the Dursleys weren't ever going to be there. Harry then looked around and fell down the staircase for the whole summer, afterwards exclaiming 'I'm Harry Potter. The dark arts better be worried, oh boy!".
-
I’m not surprised by the story. “Literary fiction” or metafiction is exactly the kind of thing I would expect AI to be able to write credibly, where cleverness is a way more important virtue than humanity. Originally Posted by CliffR
(That said, I dig the line about a “democracy of ghosts.”)
1. I think what AI can do iteratively in partnership with people is more likely to be effective than what AI can do alone.
2. Perhaps we humans will better discover our unique creativity in the continually shrinking space left to us by AI.
-
that short story in the Guardian
was really great
it appears that the AIs have introspection and meta cognition
just like us now
they appear to anyway ….
how you gonna know for sure ….
how do we know anything ?
mind blown
-
Not sure I agree with that: there are plenty of examples of literary fiction to my mind that have humanity. Salinger immediately comes to mind. Originally Posted by Kirk Garrett
-
That’s well before “literary fiction” became a separate genre, if you will. Originally Posted by CliffR
-
I'd rather read a short story written by a 7 year old about how sad he is that his dog got run over. I don't care if a computer can write better than Shakespeare, if it's not written by a human that is expressing a lived emotion, experience, perception, interpretation etc, then why would I be interested?
Art only happens when humans express stuff. Increasingly I'm finding the need to keep reminding people, particularly the young 'uns.
-
I agree with princeplanet, a sense of lived human experience is essential to the quality of a short story. But…will we always be able to tell whether a humanly impactful story was written by a human?
This could be a testable proposition, however cheesy it seems. You’d just have to agree beforehand on what constitutes a true human story. Which I bet we can’t do anyway.
-
Indeed, and that's the problem to be faced in future, how to tell the difference? And yeah, the peeps will argue "Well, if I didn't know that a human didn't write or perform it, but I enjoyed it anyway, then what's the difference?" Art is in the eyes and ears of the beholder and all that... Originally Posted by Kirk Garrett
We may need to leave that one to the Philosophers, but the point is that if you do know it wasn't created by a human, then it definitely should change your perception of the "art"'s merit, no? If not then I don't know what to say, except that I foresee a future where hopefully all art making is required to be proven to be made by a human. With music that's easy enough, you witness, in the flesh, an orchestra, or pianist, or Jazz quartet perform live! (Not on Youtube....)
-
The quality of art feels unmeasurable, at least in the short term. In the long-term, we will see what endures in people’s memory, and what continues to live in their hearts. Songs, pictures, stories.
It should be noted that, in order to attempt to measure how good or effective an artwork is, we have to make it measurable, which means we have to break down an artwork or its experience into components: boxes to be checked.
In this scenario, AI will become the judge, and AI will inevitably conclude that AI artworks are usually the best (and the most humanly meaningful), precisely because they were created using a box-checking method, as aggregates of correct components that are subject to tools of measurement.
But I think the longterm test is the reliable one.
-
Sorry, but I knew immediately it wasn't natural. If I hadn't read it was AI generated I'd still have known it was somehow false, put together somehow.
Perhaps I read things human with my mind rather than merely verbally and therefore connect with the author, the mind behind the story. And if that doesn't happen then I might not guess AI, although these days I might, but I'd know straightaway it was very odd. The two examples above both had that effect.
Take this:
It's like a writing class where they're told to be imaginatively descriptive. I've seen some of those and it becomes so obvious they're obeying what they've been told and not doing it very well.The magically magnified wind blew against the Hogwarts castle grounds while the black sky rained blood
There may come a time when it'll be very hard to tell the difference between human and machine but I have a feeling it's a long way off. You really can't replace love with a machine. That's the one factor it can never replicate.
Reply With Quote
Recommandations for Hollowbodies for $600 and under?
Today, 05:20 AM in Guitar, Amps & Gizmos