How does this work?

[Anonymous No.6384910]

>A Russian book written by a computer in St. Petersburg is to hit the country’s bookstores at the end of January.

>The book, published by the city’s Astrel SPb publishing company, is the work of a computer program, created by a team of IT specialists and language experts.

>The 320-page novel, called “True Love,” is a variation on Leo Tolstoy’s 1877 classic “Anna Karenina” but written in the style of Japanese author Haruki Murakami.

>It is based on 17 famous literary works that were uploaded onto the program. Within 72 hours, the computer generated its novel about true love.

>Alexander Prokopovich, 39, chief editor of Astrel-SPb, said the idea of using the software shocked his editorial team at first, but then they got carried away with the idea. The experiment seemed interesting, Prokopovich said.


Hmm… what kind of CS is this? NLP? How do you write a program that can write novels? Also, can a computer write a better novel than a human?

[Anonymous No.6384927]

>>6384910
whatever the computer is doing, it isnt writing, or even typing, a novel.

[Anonymous No.6384935]

That sure is a novel idea.

[Anonymous No.6384937]

>>6384927
care to expand?

Also, I forgot the link: http://www.sptimes.ru/story/24786

[Anonymous No.6384942]

>>6384910
>Hmm… what kind of CS is this? NLP? How do you write a program that can write novels?

Yes properly NLP. Computer generated text is not even that novel. There are comuter generated text publicized as ebooks through amazon. It is interesting if this is readable. It properly is, but only because they tweaked the shit out of it.

Look op markov chains if you want to do your own computer generated text easily.

[Anonymous No.6384957]

>>6384937
did they build a robot that could use a keyboard or something?

[Anonymous No.6384960]

It's funny to see something Orwell predicted in 1984 that has nothing to do with totalitarianism.

[Anonymous No.6384966]

>>6384957
Why would you even think that?

[Anonymous No.6385004]

>>6384935
ouch

[Anonymous No.6385006]

>>6384966
because that's the only way a computer can type something.

[Anonymous No.6385022]

>>6384942
>Computer generated text is not even that novel

True but this looks extremely sophisticated writing and prose. That's not something you can easily do (I presume).

[Anonymous No.6385044]

>>6385022
the fact that they say it's in the style of an author tells me it's probably a lot of fancy machine learning. I bet they let it study his work for a long time, programmed it to pick up on thematic elements and prose, and then told it to retell Anna Karenina in it;s own way.

[Anonymous No.6385064]

>>6384910
>yfw its a scam

1. pay a hack writer to write a shitty novel in a week.
2. push a news story about how a computer program did it
3. wait for it to inevitably go viral
????
4. profit

[Anonymous No.6385065]

>>6385022
No I wouldn't be able to do it easily, but NLP and machine learning is not that difficult. You just keep throwing data and algorithms at the problem, while tweaking and retweaking, until you are satisfied.
It's not like they ran their program one time and then published the output.

A mix of discourse processing and Markov chains should do the trick.

[Anonymous No.6385069]

>>6384910
is book is harmful is the source code wasn't released.

[Anonymous No.6385072]

>>6385069
has anyone really been far even as decided to use even to go do more what look like?

[Anonymous No.6385077]

>>6385044
fascinating! I wonder if there are any papers or books on this topic (ML on how to write books!). anyone know of any references? how the heck do you ML style of an author?!?

>>6385064
>conspiracy

and for what purpose? to make few dollars? there are better ways of scamming people.

>>6385065
>but NLP and machine learning is not that difficult

I beg to differ anon. I have no idea how to even approach style or plot, for example.

[Anonymous No.6385085]

>>6385077
what other reason do you honestly fucking need?

It is retardedly simple and cheap, and with a high likelihood of large returns...

[Anonymous No.6385091]

Quartz is now running this headline:
http://qz.com/182377/watch-out-creative-class-robots-are-coming-after-your-jobs-too/

>Watch out, creative class: Robots are coming after your jobs, too

hmm… and this:

>Intuition is great, but recipes are formulae—and formulae can be perfected with data

So in the future, everything will be automated.

[Anonymous No.6385096]

>>6385077
>I beg to differ anon

That is because you have never studied it (formally or informally) or tried to use it in the real world properly.
Can you program? Then you can do your first machine learning in a few days.

[Anonymous No.6385098]

>>6385077
>I have no idea how to even approach style or plo

I mentioned an approach for that btw, discourse processing (or some times called discourse structure).

[Anonymous No.6385103]

>>6385098
>I mentioned an approach for that btw, discourse processing (or some times called discourse structure).

didn't catch it! thanks! reading now a paper on it. fascinating!

[Anonymous No.6385176]

>>6385103
cheers!

[Anonymous No.6386636]

Fucking finally. If nobody had made a novel-writing program I would have had to do it myself, but apparently this goes as far back as 2008. I've been wanting this to happen since 2009, so this is wonderful to hear about.

[Anonymous No.6386648]

>>6384960
Predicted in 1948. Was off by 20

[Anonymous No.6386657]

LOL. Now being an author is going to be even more difficult. They have to compete with computer programs that emulate already established or famous authors.

Did Murakami approve this?
Tolstoy has no say in this. lol

[Anonymous No.6386664]

As a CS Major, it looks like it's about time to minor in /lit/

[Anonymous No.6386674]

>>6385091
the goal of a society should be 100% unemployment

[Anonymous No.6386686]

>>6386674
>the goal of a society should be 100% unemployment

so you're suggesting CS should automate everyone out of their jobs? what kind of living will humans than have when they'll be good at nothing. why should anyone study anything when they will never reach the level of expertise of a machine?

you need to think this through. having everyone on welfare will quickly lead to riots, overpopulation, wars, destruction of the earth etc.

[Anonymous No.6386695]

>>6386686
Sounds good.

[Anonymous No.6386699]

>>6386686
One way or another, we're getting rid of money.

[Anonymous No.6386697]

>72h
seems more like "computer assisted" than computer generated.

my guess is they feed a book into some sort of a translator, and generated a book from it, using different frequency dictionaries, harvested from other books. then edited it manually.

i don't know, i haven't been playing with nlp. it's just that

a) research in computer generated storytelling is rather lacking, and the few prototypes here and there are nothing but simple toys

b) russian is a bloody fucking difficult language, no way they extracted semantic structure from text, let alone generated it

[Anonymous No.6386701]

>>6386697
That doesn't sound like what they're doing at all.

[Anonymous No.6386713]

>>6384910
>>Also, can a computer write a better novel than a human?
what makes a better novel?
>>what kind of CS is this?
probably context free grammars or markov chains. It would be interesting if they did use NLP to emulate Haruki Murakami, but I doubt it. But really it's not so much NLP as it is 'pattern extraction.'

And forbes supposedly uses some automatic content creation software:
https://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/forbes-among-30-clients-using-computer-generated-stories-instead-of-writers_b47243

Right now, this one website is being used to generate dozen of fake CS papers that are actually getting published:
http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/scigen/
True story
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/shortcuts/2014/feb/26/how-computer-generated-fake-papers-flooding-academia

But all this stuff is pretty boring, books don't really need to make sense in order to sell and one can just use boring ol' string grammars.

It's a lot cooler when you are using a slightly different approach to generate real engineering systems.

[Anonymous No.6386749]

>>6386686
>what kind of living will humans than have when they'll be good at nothing.
The outcome of not having to work 8+ hours per day is being good at nothing? I for one am happy when I don't have to work.

>why should anyone study anything when they will never reach the level of expertise of a machine?
Because they want to and it is something that fulfills them. If it's not that way, they would have the opportunity to do something they like while contributing to society.

[Anonymous No.6386786]

>>6386749
>The outcome of not having to work 8+ hours per day is being good at nothing? I for one am happy when I don't have to work.

Vast majority of people find happiness and comfort in work. Doing what you love is a great way to live your life.

When everyone's on minimum wage and has little disposable income is a very dangerous thing indeed. If you want to see how well that policy works, go to your nearest ghetto.

>>why should anyone study anything when they will never reach the level of expertise of a machine?
>Because they want to and it is something that fulfills them. If it's not that way, they would have the opportunity to do something they like while contributing to society.

But you won't be contributing to the society. Everything you create will most probably not be good enough to compete with algorithms. They'll always be better than anything you create. That will be extremely depressing and demotivating.

[Anonymous No.6386886]

>>6386713

A bit of a test.

Who here can tell this is randomly generated and why?

http://apps.pdos.lcs.mit.edu/scicache/185/scimakelatex.10002.Tim+Berners+Lee.Bob+Kahn.Vinton+Cerf.Linus+Torvalds.Steve+Wozniak.html

I put in 5 random authors.

[Anonymous No.6386947]

>Also, can a computer write a better novel than a human?
I think they will be better writers than us once they achieve the artistic freedom to coin their own words and express ideas that haven't been expressed before. That is, I think they would have to make use of just the right ratio of familiarity to novelty.

[Anonymous No.6386948]

>>6385006
CAN YOU FEEL THE LOVE TONIGHT????

[Anonymous No.6386950]

>>6386886
The first sentence does not make sense.
>The programming languages method to the transistor is defined not only by the exploration of gigabit switches, but also by the theoretical need for thin clients.

Also, why didn't you put Richard Stallman as an author?

[Anonymous No.6386955]

>>6384927
>>6384957
>>6385006
dat asperger's

[Anonymous No.6386958]

>>6386686
>destruction of the earth
Shut the fuck up, you leftist neo-luddite. Environmentalism is the new Christianity as far as stopping scientific progressive is concerned.

[Anonymous No.6386959]

>>6386958

Except that historically environmentalists have been right 75% of the time and Christians have been right 0% of the time.

[Anonymous No.6386960]

>can a computer write a better novel than a human?

No.

A computer can create nothing; it can only rearrange what humans have created.

The fact that computers are able to compete with humans at artistic creativity just tells us the average human is a really bad writer, not that the computer is a really good one.

[Anonymous No.6386962]

>>6386674
That will never happen, and it's not a realistic goal. We already only need about 5% of the population to work to provide all the necessities of food, clothing and shelter. We have so many things beyond those necessities because as automation reduces the labor need for those, we invent other things for humans to do. We invent those things because people need, and will always need, to find ways to do things that have value to other people so that people will trade value and resources for those those things. Work, or the perceived value of human activity, is the only means for distributing the value that humans generate. The goal is rather that the maximum number of people are able to go into fields of work where they can use creativity or artistry, as opposed to more mindless fields that are less fulfilling to them.

[Anonymous No.6386964]

>>6386959
>environmentalists have been right 75% of the time
So?

If a judge sentences a thousand people to death and 750 of them are guilty, he's a terrible judge.

[Anonymous No.6386965]

>>6386960
Considering its supposed to be in the style of Haruki Murakami, Im inclined to agree

[Anonymous No.6386969]

How long until literature is obsolete anyway? Technology must be able to provide more compelling forms of entertainment and more efficient means of communication.

[Anonymous No.6386971]

>>6386964

Environmentalism has nothing to do with science and everything to do with mindful utilization of available resources.

Environmentalism is the best thing to ever happen to science, really.

However this computer-generated novel stuff is pathetic.

[Anonymous No.6386979]

>>6386971
>kill tens of thousands of jobs in energy production, animal research, agriculture, etc.

>"Environmentalism is the best thing to ever happen to science"

fucking LOL

[Anonymous No.6386978]

>>6386960

They can't compete, all they can do is compile sentences that are scientifically proven to stimulate people's minds.

Same as techno music, all it does is utilize music theory to systematically fire neurons that seams pleasing to people.

Watch, this is just the beginning. Soon we'll be seeing computer-generated paintings, then computer generated sculptures, and before long artists as a whole will be made irrelevant.

Then computer generated voices will be far superior to human voices, so music performers will be ousted

Who's to say that movie stars won't be removed from the picture one day? Animatronics are becoming increasing realistic, so you just program in some basic emotions, speech generation, and let them go.

Honestly, I'll have none of it. You guys enjoy building your own replacements.

[Anonymous No.6386980]

>>6386960
>>A computer can create nothing; it can only rearrange what humans have created.

Good artists copy, great artists steal. By computationally automating theft, we can make a very great artist.

Also, isn't much of what humans create simply a rearrangement of what's already been created?

[Anonymous No.6386981]

>>6386971
>However this computer-generated novel stuff is pathetic.
Pathetic how? Is it pathetic that people would use computers instead of their brains to write? Or is it pathetic in comparison to more beneficial technologies? I don't think it's an inherently harmful invention. It's just disruptive.

[Anonymous No.6386983]

>>6386978
>progress is for faggots, I'll stick to m'guns and m'bibble

[Anonymous No.6386986]

>>6386980
>Good artists copy, great artists steal.
Who said that? Shill McShekelstein?

[Anonymous No.6386985]

>>6386978
I'm pretty sure this thread was going in this direction from the beginning, but let me just say that you don't have to replace yourself if you simply merge with your tech.

[Anonymous No.6386987]

>>6386981

>I don't think it's an inherently harmful invention

Of course it's inherently harmful. It removes all need for creativity from the writing process. Why be creative when you can just build a novel off of the works of the truly creative?

THIS IS ALL JUST TO MAKE MONEY, ALL OF IT. Why pay writers and royalty fees, computers will do this shit for free. Just pay a group of programmers a few dollars to do all the math and you're set.

Fuck all of this, fuck it all.

[Anonymous No.6386988]

>>6386986
Well, plenty of works considered masterpieces are very unoriginal.

[Anonymous No.6386990]

>>6386985

What's the use of a human? There is no use

Now we've got programming that is creative, which means that the next step is for it to build other programs to be even more creative.

You think you can merge with this? It has no use for you.

[Anonymous No.6386998]

>>6386988
Good goy. Only G-d can create!

[Anonymous No.6387011]

>>6386987
There are probably more enjoyable ways to have fun besides writing. We can make machines that design video games and then play those games ourselves. I say "gaming" in a broad sense will be the most enduring form of recreation. You can replace writers, factory workers, musicians, etc... There will still be no need to replace human game players because we'll be playing for the sake of playing. You can't just design a machine to have fun because having fun will be what humans do best.

[Anonymous No.6387012]

>>6386990
A computer doesn't need to be made out of electrical parts you know.
There is no reason that biological or a biological and mechanical hybrid couldn't be superior to a purely mechanical.

[Anonymous No.6387015]

>>6387011

Fuck that, I don't want to live in a VR environment just because the rest of the world has zeroed out all of the other options.

I enjoy this world, I enjoy the tactile responses and the feeling of warmth from the sun. The lie that comes from VR isn't convincing enough to welcome its induction.

Fuck video games

[Anonymous No.6387029]

>>6387015
>I enjoy the tactile responses and the feeling of warmth from the sun.
Well, yeah, that's another way to have fun. Personally, I would feel content living a virtual life, but I can see how people would be dissatisfied with an illusion. The need for uncensored access to the real world shouldn't be compromised for the sake of a few people's entertainment.

[Anonymous No.6387034]

>>6387029

We're getting away from the topic at hand.

Is the convenience of an automated world worth the lack of purpose that we'll have afterwards?

Right now the only people who can inspire humans are other humans, we're the only ones who can teach, educate, train, etc. But when we program a computer to do this, what have we really gained?

[Anonymous No.6387036]

http://apps.pdos.lcs.mit.edu/scicache/18/scimakelatex.25165.Steve+Wozniak.stephen+hawking+.Pluto.archimedes.pythagoras.html

Seems legit.

[Anonymous No.6387047]

>>6386990
If we somewhere along the line create probability manipulation, then the strongest computers will be the ones that work in parallel with humans.

[Anonymous No.6387057]

>>6384910

Just saw this:

> How computer-generated fake papers are flooding academia

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/shortcuts/2014/feb/26/how-computer-generated-fake-papers-flooding-academia

However, how long before legit sci papers start flooding academia?

[Anonymous No.6387063]

>>6387057

considering that computers don't yet have the ability to think critically and extrapolate information from data, probably a long, long time. maybe never

[Anonymous No.6387065]

>They don't know about Kamachi.exe.

[Anonymous No.6387080]

>>6387063
>considering that computers don't yet have the ability to think critically and extrapolate information from data, probably a long, long time. maybe never

Hmm… you don't need those skills to really publish something. Automated proofs and computer-assisted proofs are already pretty close to this ideal. Humans are just inputing equations they'd like to prove and machine does a lot of thinking to construct a proof. So why should the person alone get all the credit?!

[Anonymous No.6387122]

>>6386978
you do realize that electronic music (including techno) is made by humans, right? The only music that isnt is generative music, and that is a whole nother thing.