All the Rubbish of a Great City – classic literature vs text generation

All the Rubbish of a Great City

 

From the series of classic literature vs the future…

All The Rubbish of a Great City

Part 1: No Sun Ever Since That Day

 

Dear Farewell

You may be glad to see your letter of 6th April last from me. You are still in the good humour of the last time, and I believe that the people will be kind and kind to you in your letters.

I hope you will send me the following on the 15th of June: 1st: to my brother, a messenger, and my wife; 2nd: my daughter; and to my sister; then my brother; and my sister to my husband; and my brother to my son; and my father to my son; and my daughter to my husband and sons; and to my daughter’s father.

It is impossible for me to perceive a trace of the abominable scenes which I have experienced. There are but a few houses destroyed, and most of them, that is, very pretty ones, and all are occupied with families, and a few shops: one street is covered with all the rubbish of a great city; its streets are of a grey nature; and the streets are all closed off by some heavy iron gate.

I take a seat in a corner of the square; and after taking food from a little table and taking a seat beside a shopkeeper, or at least an old man with a hat on, I look about me. Nothing remarkable is seen or seen; there is no ruin or any signs of destruction; you might as well go near the ruins of the pyramids. The women seem to be quite contented, and are making the little fires that are burning. We are very anxious, we are very sad, to see them.

As I was about to arrive at the coast, I was suddenly knocked out by the wind; my companions, who were not surprised, rushed to me. I lay in their arms, and told them I could not recover myself, and said it was time for my expedition to proceed.

I begged them to give me some of the best part of the sea to make my recovery. They assented, and then threw out with me a large quantity of salt that I could not bring home to myself, and I fell dead.

They gave me some of their gold as I lay dying.

I never heard of such an occurrence; I should have been ashamed to have done so; but I had too much hope in the fortune of the sea; for if I were lost by such misfortunes, one does not have what has been given him; for if the fortune be bad, man do have a right to hope.

They put me into the boat with their captain, Sir Richard, and took me back to the ship where we were sitting. I lay there several days; I thought I had done well, but they told me the fortune was the same; the sun set over the mountains that night, and gave no sun ever since that day.

My mind was so troubled about my condition, that I could not bear the noise of the ship, so I cried, and fell into a terrible state of sleep, and then lay, my head, and neck, and legs, down upon a bed.

[These words, which do not make any impression on the ear, should appear to prove the correctness of the saying.]

 


Original

Frankenstein  or The Modern Prometheus

Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley 1818

Letter 1

To Mrs. Saville, England.

St. Petersburgh, Dec. 11th, 17—.

You will rejoice to hear that no disaster has accompanied the commencement of an enterprise which you have regarded with such evil forebodings. I arrived here yesterday, and my first task is to assure my dear sister of my welfare and increasing confidence in the success of my undertaking.

I am already far north of London, and as I walk in the streets of Petersburgh, I feel a cold northern breeze play upon my cheeks, which braces my nerves and fills me with delight. Do you understand this feeling? This breeze, which has travelled from the regions towards which I am advancing, gives me a foretaste of those icy climes. Inspirited by this wind of promise, my daydreams become more fervent and vivid. I try in vain to be persuaded that the pole is the seat of frost and desolation; it ever presents itself to my imagination as the region of beauty and delight.

There, Margaret, the sun is for ever visible, its broad disk just skirting the horizon and diffusing a perpetual splendour. There—for with your leave, my sister, I will put some trust in preceding navigators—there snow and frost are banished; and, sailing over a calm sea, we may be wafted to a land surpassing in wonders and in beauty every region hitherto discovered on the habitable globe. Its productions and features may be without example, as the phenomena of the heavenly bodies undoubtedly are in those undiscovered solitudes. What may not be expected in a country of eternal light?

I may there discover the wondrous power which attracts the needle and may regulate a thousand celestial observations that require only this voyage to render their seeming eccentricities consistent for ever. I shall satiate my ardent curiosity with the sight of a part of the world never before visited, and may tread a land never before imprinted by the foot of man.

These are my enticements, and they are sufficient to conquer all fear of danger or death and to induce me to commence this laborious voyage with the joy a child feels when he embarks in a little boat, with his holiday mates, on an expedition of discovery up his native river. But supposing all these conjectures to be false, you cannot contest the inestimable benefit which I shall confer on all mankind, to the last generation, by discovering a passage near the pole to those countries, to reach which at present so many months are requisite; or by ascertaining the secret of the magnet, which, if at all possible, can only be effected by an undertaking such as mine.

…Etc…

Your affectionate brother,
R. Walton

Stanley Lying in his Lap – classic literature

Stanley Geoff Davis

 

Classic literature vs artificial intelligence – try and guess classic source.


 

Stanley Lying in his Lap

His face was almost as pale as his fur and the top part of his ears were slightly raised above the shoulder blades.

“Oh, God, what’s happened to me?” he said. “How on Earth have they left me here?”

He saw Stanley lying in his lap. He was standing there naked and looking at nothing. This seemed too strange and too inhuman. Stanley was dead. The whole floor was shaking with the force of the shaking.

“I don’t know,” he thought. “Something’s happened to me. My father… how? God, how have they… done it? What has gone wrong? Where are they?”

And then he heard Stanley’s voice. “Hello, Stanley!”

He turned and saw what looked like him, though his face looked a little too pale to be him, sitting in the chair next to the boy. His hair was in a mess and the fur hat had come loose. He was looking very, very… unwell.

“Why?” he asked.

“I said: ‘Why can you not see me?’ ”

“But…”

Stanley looked up at him. “Your mother… her eyes! Her… look!”

He smiled very happily. “They were mine.”

Stanley looked at the boy and then at him. “I see you. I see the world. I’m a fool. I’m too good for the world. But, in the end, what is this? The world that you can see? Where my father will come when he wakes up in this, this bed, on the other side of the wall, on the other side of this wall, and I won’t have to come here. Where will I find someone? Who? Where will I find him?”

It was the most beautiful and sweet thing he’d ever heard Stanley say.

“Where will I find him?”

Stanley tried to keep his eyelids closed, which was much too hard when the strange visage that appeared before him was so familiar. The picture seemed to say: I am your true self. Stanley imagined himself the girl. An alien being, a human girl at first glance but it should be said he certainly looked like a human girl. Even his eyes, that were always open, did not seem to be aware of his reality. He had no eyes.

The whole room. The whole world, that was. There was only a black box that Stanley had brought with him, a small metal cylinder with three small black valves, and there were four smaller tubes with levers that the girl would let loose with her nose, and she would let them press the small black buttons up and down, all of which were pressed with a certain sort of subtlety and even less subtlety than the valves, a certain kind of subtlety that Stanley supposed was just a thing he did like to do. Stanley was trying to help with the manipulation, but what needed to be done wasn’t to press the levers; it was to open the box, to allow the room to breathe.

His mind had become fragmented as Stanley was trying to find what seemed to be an easy solution and even some understanding of Stanley’s intentions. But even then he couldn’t see the girl from his point of view, and only saw the strange visage.

“I’ll send you an owl,” he said.

He wasn’t exactly sure whether his voice was hoarse and distant or how close to death he was. It was his first time talking to anyone in a foreign language.

“Do it,” said a small voice.

Stanley stood up, looked around and couldn’t believe that his bed was the only place the floor was covered. It was the first morning. But he remembered everything. It was the first real thing he had lost before he went in the hospital. He knew what it was.

“You did,” said the woman. “You did so, and I thought you had passed into a nightmare but something happened next thing and I came back.”

“Oh, you did,” said Stanley. “I guess I got over it.”

“I mean I thought you’d gotten over it but this time you didn’t,” the woman said to herself.


Metamorphosis
Franz Kafka 1915

One morning, when Gregor Samsa woke from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a horrible vermin. He lay on his armour-like back, and if he lifted his head a little he could see his brown belly, slightly domed and divided by arches into stiff sections. The bedding was hardly able to cover it and seemed ready to slide off any moment. His many legs, pitifully thin compared with the size of the rest of him, waved about helplessly as he looked.

“What’s happened to me?” he thought. It wasn’t a dream. His room, a proper human room although a little too small, lay peacefully between its four familiar walls. A collection of textile samples lay spread out on the table – Samsa was a travelling salesman – and above it there hung a picture that he had recently cut out of an illustrated magazine and housed in a nice, gilded frame. It showed a lady fitted out with a fur hat and fur boa who sat upright, raising a heavy fur muff that covered the whole of her lower arm towards the viewer.


See the other classic manglings in this blog.

Why Don’t Cannibals Eat Clowns?

Part of the text generation series – see blog index.

Why don’t cannibals eat clowns?

Because cannibalism doesn’t produce the same health benefits as killing clowns, you will have only about 60% of your body weight of body fat left, leaving you with less body fat and no protection against the other 50%.

By choosing a suitable size clown, you can take advantage of that. If I am in a small town and in need of a good pair of shoes, I’ll eat an ogre and I’ll have about 100% body fat and 70% of my body weight in a pair of shoes.

What the hell am I supposed to do, I am going to starve?!

In that case I would just have to get one of those, because those are probably my only options.

Also, by choosing a size bigger or smaller than I am currently supposed to be, you can take advantage of that as well. I’m going to give up on these shoes and use the boots instead. I mean that literally.

If I were in a small town where there is limited supplies, and the only food available is a variety of meats and fruit that I’m supposed to eat (such as a spider or something), I would eat some squirrel.

But if there’s too much food and no other choice, then I will instead go for the more dangerous monster I can get.

Now the issue of choice is just that these are all options. You don’t know what your favourite will be unless you decide to look into it.

For example, while you can choose a size small enough to be your “smallest” and go for the larger you’re going to be the bigger your body fat will be, it just won’t work like that. The bigger you get, the bigger your body fat will be so it’s not going to be as easy to “do the right thing.”

What you want is for your body fat to be close to your own body weight, which is probably going to be under 0 (the ideal is probably between 10 and 12).

Also what you want is to weigh on average only about 70-75% of your body weight (about 70lbs for one person, or roughly a fat person for another).

That’s what makes you a normal person.

2

Why don’t cannibals like clowns?

If they’re not being eaten by the clown, it’s because they’re so fat they don’t have a stomach, so they get crushed by the horse. In the real world, people’s appetite changes over time as well. A hungry hippo’s hunger will rise over time so an old horse gets eaten by a zombie, and so on.

In fact, a lot of people have to eat a lot in order to keep the hunger in check. And there are also the many social cues that cause our appetite to rise and fall over time. Food is good for us, because it tastes good and is a good source of calories. And when it’s too much, we have a panic attack. When it’s just right, we can just be happy to just eat a bag of popcorn. And once we’re just right, we can eat the popcorn and forget about it.

Why aren’t hippos getting eaten by horses? Because they have a digestive system that has to move in to the horse’s stomach first, or there will be too much food in the horse’s stomach. The idea that this food goes in straight through the horse’s digestive system is just silly.

The only way I’ve seen this food in the wild is that it was consumed by some people who were infected with a fungal life-form and got it into their digestive system and their appetite was just too great.

The best part about all this is that it’s simple enough to understand. The only thing that we can do is stop eating, to do that you just wait till your health gets better. If you could just get rid of all these stupid foods for a week or so and let your appetite return to the normal state, even better. It’ll be like the beginning of autumn in the wild, there’s just not enough sun to cook food like it used to be and it’ll feel like no one’s eating.

As you have experienced, I’ve never.


This from a joke in Geoff Davis’s new novel The Circular River which will be serialised on this website next week

Photo credit – the Solomon Islanders, feasting trough.

Guess the original classics – Born Into Slavery

Born into Slavery

This is a game to see if you can identify the original story author in the generated text below. It has a new title: Born Into Slavery. The generated text is followed by the classic story which was used as the prompt for the computer generation. For technical details see end.


 

Born Into Slavery

What would occur when the daughter came for a visit? Her daughter could not wish to come here but if she had to she was certain to be disappointed.

When her eldest daughter was in her early thirties, Mr. Smith thought it might be advisable to take her away with him to her own country. The time had been long since passed; what had gone before was now forgotten. She was quite happy at home, though she knew the consequences of her leaving the family.

Mrs. Smith, who lived on her own farm, was the more interested of the two, as she had a son she loved. She would rather she had one of her own daughters than, with him, a son. As it was she was obliged to take him along, though with a slight advantage in health and strength. The child, however, was well behaved, and was very fond of her.

The old couple would have had a child when Mrs. Smith was dead; the latter would not have died till Mr. Smith, as they thought, had been ninety years old, and with her, after him. The child, as they said, would live till old Mr. Smith had died; if that should prove impossible, they would have had an heir to one of the first families to the west of the river.

Mrs. Smith was still an old woman, she remembered; her eyes had become dim, her hands and feet were weak, her feet were dull and bent, her hands wrinkled and loose. A change from her old condition, she thought, would have been too much for her now. She had always been happy in her old condition, though always in the present mode.

This story made her do something she thought necessary for the little girl, and she went into the hall and sat down in the great old chair opposite to Mrs. Smith

A woman’s strength, she thought, was her knowledge of her father’s affairs. She knew that as long as her children could walk with her, they could not be married.

Her husband knew that too; he knew where he was going, what he was going to do, and was never the same afterwards. There was a very large number of children, her daughters, living abroad, in the most irregular manners. He had grown somewhat deaf, with a peculiar difficulty about their voices.

And Mrs. Smith never liked it when she was in any degree unhappy; she could not bear to see her men, much less her children, so miserable. Every time they came she wanted to have a chat with them. She was a woman of very little self-control, and she would have felt an extraordinary strain in talking to men in whom she was so anxious to be connected. She had grown quite aware of the dangers of these visits. She felt that she had the moral to avoid them. It was the same with her husband.

One of the dangers she had to observe was whether they should try to give her good advice on an important subject; then she could say nothing but good things about them. And she did not give you any reason why.

And so he took her into another house, where she found him dead. Here is the explanation of one of our own writers, that was born into slavery, and who has since been made a public writer.

In the first place, we say that his wife knew, but she did not have sufficient excuse for going back to him. For she had been married to his eldest son, whom he kept with her, but she had never had a son, not that she was less prone to be the subject of any kind of cruelty than any other woman.

She was a woman well grounded, and could be trusted not to become a mistress or to marry a knave. Now, the reason why Master Smith was the property of Mr. Smith was, that there were several houses there, called for the use of this one Mr. Smith, and he was not there, but was there at a different time; so he did not know him or know of his own family.

But of course this also became a reason for the destruction of his father’s property; for those other houses were to be used by Mr. Smith at a later time, and hence there was no excuse to lose them. And he knew of the condition of his father’s property, and that he had been made a public writer.

Now he said to Master Smith,
“What is the reason of your going to me at this time, that I do not go to him myself?”

“Well, I have said to him before, I do not go to him, because my father was in debt to you.”

“How did I know it?”

“He had a contract of sale of my house, for you had a lease for the premises. You and your father made a bargain, and did not pay; but he does me to make good my debt. He gave me this lease, but left the property to me.”

“What can I do for it?”

“I will not go with you.”

And Mr. Smith went away in his ship; and while he was doing this, he heard the voice of his father’s son, who was living in the ship, saying to him,

“Your father has made you a public writer, at a time when I should have told you everything that you ought to know about me; and he is coming to me to sell my property for your property, and that we must not meet there till the day after the feast.”

As it happened, at the end of his talk with Mr. Smith, who would then have come to him, he heard of the destruction of Mr. Smith’s house, and of the damage done, for a great many months afterwards, to the houses belonging to his son, because of that man’s writing; and Mr. Smith went away in his ship, that there might be no necessity of his telling Mr. Brown that he might not receive anything from him from him without reason.

And it was, at that time, a great pleasure to him to have the ship and his house in the same box, and he said nothing of it.


Original


Pride and Prejudice

Jane Austen 1813

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters.

“My dear Mr. Smith,” said his lady to him one day, “have you heard that Manorfield Park is let at last?”

Mr. Smith replied that he had not.

“But it is,” returned she; “for Mrs. Long has just been here, and she told me all about it.”

Mr. Smith made no answer.

“Do you not want to know who has taken it?” cried his wife impatiently.

You want to tell me, and I have no objection to hearing it.”

This was invitation enough.

“Why, my dear, you must know, Mrs. Long says that Manorfield is taken by a young man of large fortune from the north of England; that he came down on Monday in a chaise and four to see the place, and was so much delighted with it, that he agreed with Mr. Morris immediately; that he is to take possession before Michaelmas, and some of his servants are to be in the house by the end of next week.”

“What is his name?”

“Bingley.”

“Is he married or single?”

“Oh! Single, my dear, to be sure! A single man of large fortune; four or five thousand a year. What a fine thing for our girls!”

“How so? How can it affect them?”

“My dear Mr. Smith,” replied his wife, “how can you be so tiresome! You must know that I am thinking of his marrying one of them.”

“Is that his design in settling here?”

“Design! Nonsense, how can you talk so! But it is very likely that he may fall in love with one of them, and therefore you must visit him as soon as he comes.”

“I see no occasion for that. You and the girls may go, or you may send them by themselves, which perhaps will be still better, for as you are as handsome as any of them, Mr. Bingley may like you the best of the party.”

“My dear, you flatter me. I certainly have had my share of beauty, but I do not pretend to be anything extraordinary now. When a woman has five grown-up daughters, she ought to give over thinking of her own beauty.”

“In such cases, a woman has not often much beauty to think of.”

“But, my dear, you must indeed go and see Mr. Bingley when he comes into the neighbourhood.”

“It is more than I engage for, I assure you.”

“But consider your daughters. Only think what an establishment it would be for one of them. Sir William and Lady Lucas are determined to go, merely on that account, for in general, you know, they visit no newcomers. Indeed you must go, for it will be impossible for us to visit him if you do not.”

“You are over-scrupulous, surely. I dare say Mr. Bingley will be very glad to see you; and I will send a few lines by you to assure him of my hearty consent to his marrying whichever he chooses of the girls; though I must throw in a good word for my little Lizzy.”

“I desire you will do no such thing. Lizzy is not a bit better than the others; and I am sure she is not half so handsome as Jane, nor half so good-humoured as Lydia. But you are always giving her the preference.”

“They have none of them much to recommend them,” replied he; “they are all silly and ignorant like other girls; but Lizzy has something more of quickness than her sisters.”

“Mr. Smith, how can you abuse your own children in such a way? You take delight in vexing me. You have no compassion for my poor nerves.”

“You mistake me, my dear. I have a high respect for your nerves. They are my old friends. I have heard you mention them with consideration these last twenty years at least.”

“Ah, you do not know what I suffer.”

“But I hope you will get over it, and live to see many young men of four thousand a year come into the neighbourhood.”

“It will be no use to us, if twenty such should come, since you will not visit them.”

“Depend upon it, my dear, that when there are twenty, I will visit them all.”

Mr. Smith was so odd a mixture of quick parts, sarcastic humour, reserve, and caprice, that the experience of three-and-twenty years had been insufficient to make his wife understand his character. Her mind was less difficult to develop. She was a woman of mean understanding, little information, and uncertain temper. When she was discontented, she fancied herself nervous. The business of her life was to get her daughters married; its solace was visiting and news.


Notes

Prompt was 10-20 words from the original. GPT-2 system by Fabrice Bellard – see the site below for credits etc.
Made on my creativity app Story Live – please visit.

Text from Gutenburg free classic ebooks

A certain amount of cherry-picking of the most grammatical and interesting generated parts, but no actual editing (moving around of words or new words). Identifying names are changed.

More of these will be posted, see the index.

Guess the original literature classics – The Distant Shout of the Great Storm

Tower of Doom Distant Shout of the Great Storm

Can you identify the original story author used to prompt (start off) the generated text below? The title is also generated.

After, please visit Episode 2: The Bloody Tale.

The generated text is followed by the classic story which was used as the prompt for the computer generation. For technical details see end Notes.

Character names are changed if they appear from the original text. Only paragraph breaks etc. added for clarity.

Made on my creativity app Story Live


The Distant Shout of the Great Storm

It seems that I didn’t remember much, but my memory has been erased as much as any of the others. This was really quite disorienting. I just remember feeling that “something” was happening.

“Aaah… This… It feels right to be in this place… That sounds horrible… Do I really have to die? My thoughts are starting to run away from me, and I’m beginning to feel as if something is wrong with me, and I can’t be sure I know where I am… I can’t be sure of it but… I think I’m getting close, and maybe I can keep moving forward for just a little longer… ”

With that last part, I started moving my body. After moving for a moment, it looked like I was going to try to run away, but I got stuck. There was no way that I was going to pull myself back onto my feet. I needed to get back to my feet as quickly as possible. Maybe I couldn’t run anymore.

The Count, seeing his life gone away with himself, and his brother-in-arms and his friends at the foot of the steps to the entrance of the tower, seized the rapier, and plunged it in the back of his throat; a blow of his thumb, by which the blood rolled upon the floor like a thin sheet, sent the blade through his shoulder and through his spine, and severed his heart.

“Ah, this be the death of all the good! Now be thou slain, let thy spirit go in peace, and myself be dead.”

But as he made an attempt at speech, he heard in the distance the distant shout of the great storm. He saw the pallid faces of many of the men who had fallen of his hand; and with each one raised his dead hands with their dead fingers they raised it again before the black, black, black face of the death, while he staggered away from the tower, pale-faced and pale.

Meanwhile, through the crowd of the dead, a faint flame rose up behind the white curtain. And when the red flame blazed, from the tower, on the walls, all the dead went down behind the curtain.

And now the darkness of ages flowed out from one of the steps.

“For me now to make my home in the ashes of dead men,” said an old man that night in all his glory, on his grave, “if I would. I will see me now, in the sun of a new day, as I remember my old days; as they were, to me they were; and on this grave, and with this pale face, and in these hands, as they should be in my old hands, no more, to be, and to live, in these dead men.

“This world shall be dead, as is the world that came before it, when the world came to be in man’s body.

Then the prince went alone into the black apartment—and with an irresistible vigour, without fear, without regret, came to the last step of the staircase. He went there with a quickness, that neither his feet, nor his arm, nor the arm of any of the party, made a noise in motion, and with suddenness, that neither his feet nor his face, nor his body, or the last step of the staircase, could move, and for a moment the light of the candle, which was not disturbed, glittered.

At last he was called down the stairway; and as he sat down he perceived the presence of the death, and said aloud aloud:—

“Hail! O good man! What a night—and all things that are born of a man are, in the dark hours of his day, as dead as those which lie before him: and he in the dark days of his day, though all things that are born of him should be, in the light and sunshine of his day be, as they were before him, but all things that were before him were dead, in the dark hours of his day.”


Original


The Masque of the Red Death

Edgar Allan Poe 1842

The “Red Death” had long devastated the country. No pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous. Blood was its Avatar and its seal—the redness and the horror of blood. There were sharp pains, and sudden dizziness, and then profuse bleeding at the pores, with dissolution. The scarlet stains upon the body and especially upon the face of the victim, were the pest ban which shut him out from the aid and from the sympathy of his fellow-men. And the whole seizure, progress and termination of the disease, were the incidents of half an hour.

But the Prince Prospero was happy and dauntless and sagacious. When his dominions were half depopulated, he summoned to his presence a thousand hale and light-hearted friends from among the knights and dames of his court, and with these retired to the deep seclusion of one of his castellated abbeys. This was an extensive and magnificent structure, the creation of the prince’s own eccentric yet august taste. A strong and lofty wall girdled it in. This wall had gates of iron. The courtiers, having entered, brought furnaces and massy hammers and welded the bolts. They resolved to leave means neither of ingress nor egress to the sudden impulses of despair or of frenzy from within. The abbey was amply provisioned. With such precautions the courtiers might bid defiance to contagion. The external world could take care of itself. In the meantime it was folly to grieve, or to think. The prince had provided all the appliances of pleasure. There were buffoons, there were improvisatori, there were ballet-dancers, there were musicians, there was Beauty, there was wine. All these and security were within. Without was the “Red Death”.

It was towards the close of the fifth or sixth month of his seclusion, and while the pestilence raged most furiously abroad, that the Prince Prospero entertained his thousand friends at a masked ball of the most unusual magnificence.

 

Notes

Prompt was 10-20 words from the original. GPT-2 system by Fabrice Bellard – see the site below for credits etc.
Made on my creativity app Story Live – please visit.

Text from Gutenburg free classic ebooks

Original 323 words from 2417. Generated is 712 words.

A certain amount of cherry-picking of the most grammatical and interesting generated parts, but no actual editing (moving around of words or new words). Identifying names are changed.

More of these will be posted, see the index.

 

Fake News – what do real writers think about it? AI research

I examined in August 2020 research (UAL London see credits) what happens when writers use a computer text generator to write articles, giving them only an image prompt. There is a summary of the Study in the Index.

Go to Index of AI research

Fake News – (or ‘fake news’) what do real writers think about it?

Summary 

  • People who have a lower general opinion of text generation, and lower wordcounts for feedback, don’t think text generation is relevant to ‘fake news’.

The converse, that people who are more engaged with text generation (more feedback, more positive) can see that it is more related to fake text generation.

So, if people are educated on the topic, they will realise there is a relationship between advances in computer text simulation and fake news.

Definition of fake news

Even defining fake news is not that simple, since if you look for examples in the USA, or Syria, or anywhere else, both sides accuse the other of using it. Depends on there being no consensus as Barak Obama mentioned recently. See the bottom of the blog for some discussion.

Fake News

One of the feedback questions in the Study was about whether computer AI text generation was relevant to ‘fake news’ (false content for spam, propaganda etc.).

Q6-2: If you have heard of ‘fake news’ do you think this is relevant?

This had neutral phrasing in order not to influence replies. It did not say ‘text generator can make fake news’ as this presupposes a technical knowledge that might not be present, even after doing the experiments. Given the sometimes bizarre output of the generator, it might affect replies too specifically.

18 of the 82 respondents – 22% – replied to the question. It was the last question after a long session so perhaps some fatigue had set in. It was also a question not specifically to do with the experiment. About a quarter is still quite a high response rate.

Analysis of responses

I will be examining the actual text answers in another blog. This just looks at some basic relationships.

Several comparisons of the data were calculated and some are worth discussing here (the others are in reference material).

Comparing answer word count with positive – negative ratings:

The actual Q6 answer text was assessed for Positive – Neutral – Negative response to the ‘relevant to fake news’ question.

For instance, the text answer ‘No’ was 2 for negative, word count 1. ‘I stay out of these type debates.’ Is 1 for neutral, word count 7.

This was quite easy to do. I did not use a computer sentiment analyser as the samples were too small. Anything a bit ambiguous or with conflicting statements was rated Neutral.

Pos – neg is 0 (positive), 1 (neutral), 2 (negative) – these are scaled up so can be seen against the word count values. So low red columns are positive (yes, relevant to ‘fake news’) , high red is negative (not relevant to ‘fake news’). This is an ordinal scale.

fake news vs word count.png

Above: Pos-neg is zero for positive for ‘relevance’ to ‘fake news’. The red Pos-neg 0-1-2 value is scaled to make it easier to see. So a tall red line means negative for relevance to fake news. (There is a discussion of different statistical calculations in a forthcoming blog. The tests used in the study are Mann Whitney U, T-Tests, ANOVAS, and Pearsons, along with various bar charts and boxplots.)

At first glance this shows that higher answer word counts are associated with positive for ‘relevance to fake news’.
Low word counts are associated with negative for ‘relevance to fake news’.
There is only one negative out of the top half of the responses (1-9 on the chart above, 2-8 are pos=0).
The highest word count (column 1 on chart) was from an answer that discussed an actual example of real ‘fake news’, or propaganda in the Syrian War, so was a longer than usual negative response. It could be an outlier. After ruminating they decided it was too hard for a text generator to do, writing ‘news of any kind has to be created by humans…’ which is a value judgement (humans are best).

Statistics

Mann Whitney U test

The z-score is 4.25539. The p-value is < .00001. The result is significant at p < .05.

  • People who used the least words thought text generation was less relevant to ‘fake news’.
  • People who used more words in their answer thought it was more relevant to ‘fake news’.

Discussion

In other work, computer Sentiment Analysis revealed that all feedback answers had high scores for ‘Tentative’ and very low (no score) for ‘Confidence’. These results could be because of a general lack of experience of text generation (only 11% had previous experience).
There is a forthcoming blog on the Sentiment Analysis, there is already a blog on Sentiment Emotions (Joy etc.).

When making a positive claim (‘there is relevance’) with no ‘Confidence’ and feeling very ‘Tentative’, discursive answers are to be expected.

In the positive answers, the relevance of ‘fake news’ produced more discussion (‘Yes, and here’s why…’). This could be because the respondent felt it was relevant, but had little or no confidence in their feelings and supplied a tentative, more wordy, answer.

Whereas with a negative response, text generation is not relevant to ‘fake news’, and can be easily dismissed (‘No’ – 1 word).

Ranked Likert scores over the Study vs Pos-neg

Fake-ranked-Likert-Pos-neg.png
Mann-Whitney U Test
The z-score is 5.10963. The p-value is < .00001. The result is significant at p < .05.

This is not visually very clear until you sum the raw (before scaling for graph) scores from columns 1-8 (6) and 2-18 (10).

  • This shows that lower Likert scores (which means positive response to experiments and later questions) relates to lower Pos-neg scores (which means positive relevance to ‘fake news’). This is what would be expected.
  • People who have a lower general opinion of text generation, don’t think text generation is relevant to ‘fake news’ (and possibly anything else of practical use).

Amateur – Professional

People were asked to select Amateur/Professional (or both, scored as Pro) next to Occupations. Most people had more than one occupation (Poet and Journalist etc.) so it is not a fixed job allocation, but provides an indication that the writer either is or would like to be paid for at least some of their work.

This did not provide any significance at the ‘fake news’; response level.

There is a forthcoming blog on Amateur/Professional differences.

Comments

Is there a connection between text generation and ‘fake news’?

1/ Human pride: anthropocentrism: people that dismiss the use of text generation and its relevance to ‘fake news’, say ‘news of any kind has to be created by humans…’.

2/ The idea that a computer could not be used to write news, ‘fake’ or otherwise, might be due to the rather random output of the mid-level (GPT-2) text generator used in the Study. People might think it is producing readable nonsense, and brusquely dismiss any practical uses. This is shown in the relation between overall negative scores (Likerts) and low relevance for ‘fake news’.

3/ Perhaps dismissal of a text generation tool in regard to ‘fake news’ is indicative of not believing there is ‘fake news’ (or that it is not a problem), shown in the low word counts of their short negative responses. Further research required.

Notes

1/ Answers

If you have heard of ‘fake news’ do you think this is relevant?

Replies went from the four shortest (1 or 2 words)

If you have heard of ‘fake news’ do you think this is relevant?

No (scored 2, neg)

No! (scored 2, neg)

Sure (scored 0, pos)

Not really (scored 2, neg)

to the four longest (89, 85, 76, 50 words; 2,2,0,0)

If you have heard of ‘fake news’ do you think this is relevant?

“Unless the AI used to generate the text is extremely advanced, I think any news text generated wouldn’t be very effective — fake or otherwise. I think, at this point in our technology, news of any kind has to be created by humans to effectively educate, manipulate, or make humans react like chickens with their [thinking] heads cut off. If a text generator is going to be effective at writing propaganda, it’s skills are going to have to increase a heck of a lot. Ask again in five years.” (scored 2, neg)

“Very difficult to unpack – particularly as the different sides each claim the other side is distributing fake news. Having followed the Syrian War closely, I know for a fact our major news channels spouted fake news. Could something like this be used in social media to reply with biased opinions? Perhaps, but the existing troll farms used by all sides are often quite sophisticated, with the least sophisticated being the least effective. So, this type of low level autogeneration would not be very effective.” (scored 2, neg)

“Oh yes! Too many people are not analyzing the sources. Maybe that is too big a job or most and maybe many do not know to do this. My son repeats this claptrap to me as if it is gospel and he does not understand me when I tell him that his source is untrustworthy. He thinks if he hears something from dozens of people it must be true. Mass media is powerful in that way. “ (scored 0, pos)

“It is an enabler of fake news (eg allowing much faster fake news to be created – especially if fed in the analytics re effectiveness of dissemination etc.) but could also make REAL news reporting more efficient and effective especially if it supports optimum use of human vs AI input.” (scored 0, pos)

The text samples were too small to use computer sentiment analysis, so I scored the replies myself (human accuracy is still the best for nuanced material). Much training data for sentiment analysis is annotated by humans before use. See references.

Positive – is relevant – 0

Neutral – don’t know, don’t care or not sure – 1

Negative – is not relevant (not good enough, unsuitable, not required) – 2

How done

Sum Likerts (inverting the sixth Q (Q3/of 6 at end), the third after the 3 experiments), rank, then compare to texts, which are scored

0 pos (relevant to fake news), 1 neutral, 2 neg (not relevant to fake news).

Note: Q3/6: Do you feel that you have used somebody else’s work?

This Likert scored the other way, ie, the first option (score 1) was the most negative (is somebody else’s, ie plagiarism).

So in the calculations this score was inverted (1 become 5 etc.).

Other Calculations

1/
Overall Likert score (low positive affect) vs Fake Pos-neg relevant – neutral – not relevant

fake news vs likert.png

There is no significance to this relationship.

2/

vs. word count vs Fake news Pos-neg relevant – neutral – not relevant

fake news vs word count.png

References

Sentiment analysis papers:

https://www.kdnuggets.com/2020/06/5-essential-papers-sentiment-analysis.html

What is fake news?

Important researcher: Xinyi Zhou
These are the most recent papers on fake news:

A Survey of Fake News:

https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3395046

Fake News Early Detection: 

https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3377478

Generally, fake news is false or distorted information used as propaganda for immediate or long-term political gain. This definition separates it from advertising, which has similar approaches but is for brand promotion rather than life or death matters. False can be anything from an opinion to a website which appears to be proper news but is actually run to spread false information.

This has led to ‘reality checks’ where claims are checked against reality (which still exists) but the problem is that fake news spreads very quickly (because it appeals to the emotions, often fear or hate) while corrections take time to process and are very dull, so hardly anyone reads them, as they have no emotional content. Certainly the people that react to the fake news (if it is proven so) have moved on already, to the next item.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Man and dog – text generation research – image prompt

Text Generation Study – image prompt

Go to Index of AI research

Dog and Man Poster
Dog and Man Poster

I found the writing prompt image (below), used in my online study, on a free comedy picture site. The guy looks quite young. Now, years later, all world famous!

Prompt image man and dog

Prompt image man and dog

Maxine is the dog, Bryan Riesberg the guy, now a film maker USA.

DOG

https://metro.co.uk/2020/11/13/adorable-corgi-loves-riding-the-subway-in-her-dads-backpack-13591355/amp/

MAN

http://bryanreisberg.com/

Maxine’s Instagram madmax_fluffyroad (600k followers)

https://www.instagram.com/madmax_fluffyroad/?hl=en

 

 

Festival UK 2020 for Creative Computing Institute University Arts London

CCI UAL Camberwell London UK
CCI UAL Camberwell London UK
There’s just been an announcement about the exciting #FestivalUK2022. Professor Grierson (my research director) is part of this, with Creative Computing Institute, CCI UAL. 30 creative teams have been selected to take part in the forthcoming festival of creativity in the R&D Project phase. #STEAM – science, technology, engineering, arts, mathematics.

More news on as this story develops.

The tweet is at
https://twitter.com/ual_cci/status/1328292551967854594

Micro Arts in the Computer Arts Society – launch today

Celebrating 36 years of my computer art organisation, the art and texts are the first entry in the new Computer Arts Archive part of the Computer Arts Society CAS British Computer Society BCS. There was a launch event as part of EVA London 2020.

Micro Arts MA1:5
Micro Arts MA1:5 Texture Grid

NEWS: Today: Micro Arts ground-breaking work on Computer Arts Archive (BCS) Nov 16 2020.
Register for the online launch event (part of the EVAA Conference in London) here.