Can you beat the new Bing AI?

[Demesnedenoir]

AI won't write better than the best. Indistinguishable from humans doesn't necessarily mean good, LOL. Maybe when the singularity is achieved, but by then, what the hell won't be screwed up? We'll be fighting off Arnold's all over the place, heh heh. We're at the stage of regurgitation being called AI. It is artificial but not really intelligent. It doesn't understand plot decisions, it does not understand simile or metaphor, it does not understand word choice, and it is not in fact creative at all. However, a whole lot of writing out there today is already not much better and I don't see as worthy to read.

AI guided by a human is different. For the time being, massive epics with all kinds looping and intertwined plot lines, complex magic systems, inventive creation systems, yadda yadda... yikes. I don't see AI doing it well. There needs to be more than regurgitation. And people will get sick of plunked out AI stories and start seeking better works.

The formulaic genres like romance and simple fantasy could be overrun by AI slop. Children's books, OOF! My goodness. Coloring books? AI can spit those out by the hundreds.

 

[pmmg]

AI will write better than the best. Its just a matter of time.

AI can do something that we cant. It can take a large dataset, and pull from it the best of. Using its data analytics, an AI can pop out 500 books, measure the feed back on them, and then use that to improve and pop out another 500. Eventually, I will start to catch on to what gets high ratings and what does not. It will produce better and better books with each iteration, until it can produce nothing but material assured to hit on every cylinder.

It will only get better at it as time goes on. It is going to happen that AI will produce the best piece of artwork, the best song, the best movie (if they are still around), and the best story. You may think that is far away, and maybe it is, but AI is not something that get gradually better...its something we improve, and then improve, and then its here, and improving itself.

Course, it may also get banned, and limited when it starts impacting people and belief systems, so...who can know?

 

[Jason]

Great content guys! pmmg - publish and be damned. Demesnedenoir - you had me google 'OOF'.

 

[Demesnedenoir]

It wins when it writes a book everyone enjoys... Unless of course, AI takes control of us all and MAKES us like that book, heh heh. Could happen. But I'll be waiting a while. There is no such thing as the perfect story.

AI will write better than the best. Its just a matter of time.

AI can do something that we cant. It can take a large dataset, and pull from it the best of. Using its data analytics, an AI can pop out 500 books, measure the feed back on them, and then use that to improve and pop out another 500. Eventually, I will start to catch on to what gets high ratings and what does not. It will produce better and better books with each iteration, until it can produce nothing but material assured to hit on every cylinder.

It will only get better at it as time goes on. It is going to happen that AI will produce the best piece of artwork, the best song, the best movie (if they are still around), and the best story. You may think that is far away, and maybe it is, but AI is not something that get gradually better...its something we improve, and then improve, and then its here, and improving itself.

Course, it may also get banned, and limited when it starts impacting people and belief systems, so...who can know?

 

[BearBear]

It wins when it writes a book everyone enjoys

No, it will by using the oldest trick in the book, plagiarism.

 

[Demesnedenoir]

Plagiarism is already rampant, out and out theft of books and reproducing them as your own, no AI required. A really crafty and dedicated person with or without AI could take massive advantage without even plagiarizing. I have no doubt people are doing what I'm thinking and making money, and there'd be nothing illegal about it. Training an AI to do it would be easy, IF yo owned unfettered access to AI, and it would increase a person's production to the point of the absurd, while still taking time.

No, it will by using the oldest trick in the book, plagiarism.

 

[Demesnedenoir]

Yep, tested my theory now with just this generation of Bing AI. It's doable now, but it would be better with a few more advancements. Or if I worked at improving my prompts. It would be hard as hell to catch, and if done better, even if caught, there might not be anything able to be done about it.

 

[pmmg]

I saw some speculating that AI is going to be the end of copy right as we know it. Along the lines of, what would stop someone from saying, Hey AI, go look up that book and read it to me.

Just another part of the undiscovered country were are entering.

 

[BearBear]

Just another part of the undiscovered country were are entering.

No wait, wrong movie.

 

[Demesnedenoir]

Anything is possible, but AI creators are, so far, being sensitive to copyright and for good reason, an escalation in theft is bad for PR and legal purposes. AI could, in fact, lead to an increase in (attempted) protection for artists, with say, Morgan Freeman able to go after anybody using his voice to narrate a book. Steven King could protect not only his work, but his writing style/voice with AI going after AI, heh heh. Actors going after people using their likeness in a movie. There could be an interesting rights war on the horizon.

Ai does not seem capable, at this point, of doing something like "What is the title of chapter three of Eve of Snows" probably because it's not in the public domain. Reading a Tale of Two Cities, yes, but not newer stuff, best I can tell.

Personally, I want an AI that seeks out sites pirating my books and sues the shit of those people... or sends hit men. Whatever works. My own personal Arnold kicking their asses in Terminator fashion. But I'd be satisfied with an AI that hunts those sites down and sends the standard threats.

I saw some speculating that AI is going to be the end of copy right as we know it. Along the lines of, what would stop someone from saying, Hey AI, go look up that book and read it to me.

Just another part of the undiscovered country were are entering.

 

[pmmg]

Ai does not seem capable, at this point, of doing something like "What is the title of chapter three of Eve of Snows" probably because it's not in the public domain. Reading a Tale of Two Cities, yes, but not newer stuff, best I can tell.

AI, as far as I know, does not have access to a large database yet. But if Eve of Snows has a digital copy, and AI gets access to amazon (or a site that pirated it), it will get it, and probably not even know. If AI is able to 'break free' and get free reign on the net, it will be like trying to close Pandora's box. Since I think that is inevitable anyway...may as well get ready for it. Would it be surprising if Google at some point gave its AI access to Google docs? And how much stuff do people have in Google docs?

But, I'd also say, I think there are forces that will work against AI. What happens when AI starts looking at divisive issues, like politics and religion? There are many things people want not to have their illusions challenged on, or will accept that the AI was any more correct about things than anyone else. In fact, its more likely people will not give AI credit for having had a fair opportunity at the picture. It was seeded from the start to be of one persuasion or another. I think it is just as likely, that AI gets rejected, and curtailed.

We have a number of AI threads floating around, and I am not sure which is which anymore. I am going to just say, as a creative type, and looking to be with those who are also aspiring to be creative type, AI should not be welcome. A faster tool for research, sure, but that's not what it will be. AI for me, will be a strike against those claiming to use it for their creative endeavors.

 

[Prince of Spires]

Malik actually raised a great point. AI can become a good writer, and it can be a fast writer. It can become better than some. But it will not be better than the best authors out there. The reason is pretty simple: there is no objective "best" writing. What works for one person doesn't work for the next. Both Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings have great ratings on Amazon. Which is best? Trying to combine both styles will only result in a hot mess.

What's more, there's no easy way to improve. Unlike when playing games, there is no easy win condition you can use to train your AI. Teaching a computer to play Go is easy. You just make it play against itself over and over again. With enough computing power, you can play millions of games in days, and each easily shows you which outcome worked best, since you win at the end. You can make a computer write a million books in a day, but there is no easy way to judge which of those million books is best. You need to get them out to readers, and have them rate your novel. And you need to get them to the right readers as well. A Romance reader, will not like your Lord of the Rings look-a-like, no matter how good it is. Even more, a Steamy Enemies to Lovers Romance reader may not even like your Cosy small town Romance.

Any author will tell you that writing the novel is actually the easy part. Getting people to buy it is a lot harder.

And batches of 500 novels is nowhere near enough to train an AI model. You're talking thousands of examples and iterations before you get some noticable improvements. Remember, an AI learns like evolution. It just tries stuff at random to see what works and what doesn't. In such a case, 500 of anything isn't close to enough. There might not even be enough great novels out there to learn how to write those.

Another point to consider is that there is little reason for AI developers to optimize an AI to writing novels. There just isn't enough money in writing novels. The average author makes a few $1000 a year. These days a good advance for a beginning novelist is $5.000. To make the New York Times best seller list, you need something like 8.000 copies. And the average NYT bestseller sells something like 100.000 copies per year.

Those 100.000 copies might make you $500.000. Which sounds like a lot, but you're probably spending half that on marketing. And if publishers with years of experience don't know what new author will become a bestseller, then AI probably won't do much better.

The math just doesn't work out. It's far more lucrative to create an AI that can program computer code. Or automate creating powerpoint slides or any of the other hundreds of jobs people in companies do all day.

 

[Devor]

Malik actually raised a great point. AI can become a good writer, and it can be a fast writer. It can become better than some. But it will not be better than the best authors out there. The reason is pretty simple: there is no objective "best" writing. What works for one person doesn't work for the next. Both Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings have great ratings on Amazon. Which is best? Trying to combine both styles will only result in a hot mess.

At the start of this conversation I would've agreed with you. But now I don't know anymore.

I told Bing to create a picture of my character. It took a million tries to figure out the prompt, but it ended up doing it. There's a few things I could quibble about - the hair is supposed to be green and gold, the vest should have a mantle, and I gave up on including the badge - but I also know that I could send the details to a real artist alongside a wad of cash and come out with much worse. I know because I've done it several times. Even the artist who did my map, which is absolutely stunning, forced me to change all the travel times and left me with a few more of these kinds of quibbles, and that was a best case scenario.

Spoiler: Character in my book

And if AI can do it for art, I think writing a novel is not far behind. They've only been working on this technology for about a decade, and it's improving rapidly. Maybe it's not the whole novel in one prompt. Maybe it's one scene at a time, carefully managed. But it's coming.

And for it's worth, there's some technique in writing the damn prompt. I'm not exaggerating by much when I say it took a million tries. But I think I've figured out how to consistently get something close to what I'm after for character art and that might prove to be insanely useful.

 

[pmmg]

Just need to learn to speak AI