You may be surprised to hear a sizable fraction of U.S. sports reporting is now performed by automated systems. This is actually old news. Almost a decade ago, Quill began offering newsrooms software tools that spat out seamless, readable prose. The only human part involves inputting scores, dates, players’ names, etc.
Since then, one benchmark after another has fallen in the automation of journalism. In 2019, OpenAI unveiled a text generator to publishing outlets for editors and writers to try out. Guardian contributor Hannah Jane Parkinson was horrified to discover the program, GPT-2, replicated her voice with chameleon-like precision. Her article ended with the words, “Now you just need to work out whether it was actually me who wrote this piece.”
OpenAI also released a sample to the public, about the discovery of a unicorn by scientists in Peru. The program didn’t “know” that unicorns don’t exist; it simply proceeded to weave a readable account of their finding. It did this piecemeal, by combing the Internet to determine the highest probability of a word following a previously entered word.
The human-generated prompt was this:
In a shocking finding, scientist discovered a herd of unicorns living in a remote, previously unexplored valley, in the Andes Mountains. Even more surprising to the researchers was the fact that the unicorns spoke perfect English.
GPT-2 followed with this:
The scientist named the population, after their distinctive horn, Ovid’s Unicorn. These four-horned, silver-white unicorns were previously unknown to science.
Now, after almost two centuries, the mystery of what sparked this odd phenomenon is finally solved.
Dr. Jorge Pérez, an evolutionary biologist from the University of La Paz, and several companions, were exploring the Andes Mountains when they found a small valley, with no other animals or humans. Pérez noticed that the valley had what appeared to be a natural fountain, surrounded by two peaks of rock and silver snow.
Pérez and the others then ventured further into the valley. “By the time we reached the top of one peak, the water looked blue, with some crystals on top,” said Pérez.
Pérez and his friends were astonished to see the unicorn herd. These creatures could be seen from the air without having to move too much to see them – they were so close they could touch their horns.
While examining these bizarre creatures the scientists discovered that the creatures also spoke some fairly regular English. Pérez stated, “We can see, for example, that they have a common ‘language,’ something like a dialect or dialectic.”
Dr. Pérez believes that the unicorns may have originated in Argentina, where the animals were believed to be descendants of a lost race of people who lived there before the arrival of humans in those parts of South America.
While their origins are still unclear, some believe that perhaps the creatures were created when a human and a unicorn met each other in a time before human civilization. According to Pérez, “In South America, such incidents seem to be quite common.”
However, Pérez also pointed out that it is likely that the only way of knowing for sure if unicorns are indeed the descendants of a lost alien race is through DNA. “But they seem to be able to communicate in English quite well, which I believe is a sign of evolution, or at least a change in social organization,” said the scientist.
To repeat, that second quote was said to be entirely written by an AI system, without any human involvement beyond the prompt.
In late 2019, OpenAI revealed a publicly accessible version of GPT-2 running at 50 percent full power and with a one-paragraph limitation. Intrigued, I went online to try it out. I decided to challenge the bot with something nonsensical.
I wrote:
When did elephants pick up political cartooning? Observers are disturbed by a recent spate of colourful, clever creations penned by politically-minded pachyderms. It remains a mystery how such ungainly animals are able to precisely wield pens and pencils. Are elephants using tablets for their artistic efforts, perhaps? It hardly solves the riddle.
Are they simply too busy to use ink?
There may also be an ethical issue. Do these animal-groomed cartoons perpetuate cruelty to animals? Should they, then, be banned? I guess, just as we cannot ban human-authored works, we can’t ban animal-mouthed. We may never know the answer. The best solution, of course, would be to have an elephant in the room - with a pencil.
Here is another effort. I wrote:
I started throwing peaches at my neighbours several years ago. What began as a pointless, rather risky distraction soon turned into a serious hobby. As my aim improved, I realized I could be in the big leagues. I went professional this past May, and have been approached with big-money contracts by several peach-throwing franchises.
GPT-2 continued:
A major peach company has offered me $200,000 to throw at their annual Peach Bowl. I am currently doing some research into this sport to see if I really am the next Peyton Manning, but it’s a big gamble. I am sure there are better opportunities. I am just not sure that they are in this town.
It may be a bit kludgy, but there’s some “humour” in these surprising additions to my prose. What the OpenAI’s electro-scribe did with my cartooning elephants would have been deemed impossible just a short time ago — by me. (GPT-2 has since been overtaken by GPT-3.)
In May of 2020, Microsoft laid off dozens of journalists and editorial workers at its Microsoft News and MSN organizations, replacing them with AI systems. But does this mean the projections for writers are entirely dystopic? Sig Samuel, a writer for Vox, investigated GPT-2 and believes he’s found an invaluable aid to his novel writing.
As in my elephant and peach-throwing prompts, the OpenAI program offered elliptical observations and near-witticisms as it expanded on Samuel’s words, allowing him to think more laterally. While aware of the risks of such automation to writers, he is more inclined to see it as a collaborator than a competitor: “I don’t think AI will be good enough to write a superb novel on its own, but I do think it can be very helpful in a novelist’s creative process.”
Samuel didn’t have a knee-jerk, Luddite reaction to OpenAI’s prose. Truth be told neither did I, at least not at first. I was astounded by the follow-up sentence to my elephant contribution before the uncanny valley feeling creepily crept in.
It gets stranger, of course. In January, OpenAI revealed the intriguingly named DALL-E, a neural network can take any text and make an image out of it. It can render images of concepts it’s never actually encountered in training. One example is a cartoon of a baby daikon radish in a tutu walking a dog, which looks to my eye like a magazine-grade illustration. Check out this and other DALL-E creations here.
So there you go. AI systems are now capable of actual cartooning. I guess you could say this makes me feel…uncomfortable.
Automated systems will continue to encroach on areas of creative endeavor once thought beyond their range. So what will it mean to be human in a world where simulation reigns supreme? On one hand, perpetual leisure time and individual artistic creation could be opened up for millions, with AIs attending to the grunt work of transportation, food delivery and information processing, etc. Yet when AI systems roar well beyond the Turing Test to quickly pump out high-quality artwork, music, stories customized to anyone’s tastes - including film - what will our plodding human creative efforts mean anymore?
The post-Renaissance concept of the autonomous individual, which is foundational to our ideas of modern identity and democracy, would be up for grabs. Beyond this, everything we identify as exclusively human — from sexuality to artistry to thought itself — would be cast into doubt by systems that mediate, modulate or supersede our previous self-definitions.
What would it mean if all that defines you as a human being, including your ball-and-chain habits and quirks, could be simulated in a manner completely convincing to others?
Oh my God, that is scary but funny. My favorite combo. The unicorns...bwah ha ha.