AI wins literary prize?
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According to Justinas Vainilavičius, "AI-generated science fiction novel wins literary prize in China", Cybernews 12/20/2023:
It only took three hours for Shen Yang, a professor at the Beijing-based university’s School of Journalism and Communication, to generate the award-winning admission.
The Chinese-language work, entitled The Land of Machine Memories, won second prize at the 5th Jiangsu Popular Science and Science Fiction Competition.
According to Chinese media reports, the draft of over 40,000 characters was generated based on 66 prompts, suggesting a “Kafkaesque” writing style.
Shen was encouraged to submit an excerpt of nearly 6000 characters for the competition by one of the judges, the Wuhan Evening News reported.
The judge, Fu Changyi, told the paper that he did not inform the other judges of the true authorship of the text because he wanted to see their judgment.
40,000 characters is on the short side for a novel, I think — and 40000/66 = about 606 generated characters per prompt on average, suggesting that the AI system needed a lot of help to stay on message and in style. There's a bit more in this (Chinese-language) Beijing News article, which explains (via Google Translate) that
[W]hen the operator asked the AI to "rewrite this content using Kafka's literary style," the answer sheet handed over by the AI was as blunt as "She stood there, like a character in Kafka's works…" Such low-level nesting can only be avoided by adjusting instructions, such as adding "Don't have the word Kafka", etc., and continuously guiding and disciplining them.
Also, as the Cybernews story tells us, about one in five of the submitted stories apparently did as well as the AI-ish entry (190/38 = 5…):
Nearly 200 works were submitted to the competition, with six winning grand prizes, 14 first prizes, 18 second prizes, and 27 third prizes.
Still, there's definitely going to be more LM-generated art in our future.
I haven't been able to find an online copy of the cited novel(la). And none of the coverage that I've seen specifies what LLM was used — maybe one from Kai-Fu Li's 01.AI? Perhaps a reader can provide links and details.
Here's the (human) author's Tsingua web page, which (at least so far) doesn't mention this accomplishment.
Philip Hand said,
December 21, 2023 @ 12:26 pm
The full text, including a couple of early drafts, is available at this link:
https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/DT7zaOA7Zp8CVn2ORfGsOg
It doesn't tell us what AI engine was used, so far as I can see.
I'll have a quick read and see if I can spot any noticeable features in the text.
Philip Hand said,
December 21, 2023 @ 12:42 pm
A quick wordcount puts it at under 30,000 characters (the 44,000 may be before editing?), which is well into novella scale. And the writing in the few pages I've read is just… naff. It's in a kind of chewed up translationese style that lots of pulpy Chinese writing seems to fall into. But nothing that made me feel it wasn't human.
Mark Liberman said,
December 21, 2023 @ 1:24 pm
@Philip Hand: "A quick wordcount puts it at under 30,000 characters"
How did you get the text into countable form?
Francois Lang said,
December 21, 2023 @ 7:33 pm
It's only a matter of time before AI generates Supreme Court opinions.
Given the current political climate, I have no idea if that's wishful thinking or a worst-case scenario.
Philip Hand said,
December 21, 2023 @ 9:48 pm
@Mark I didn't, just counted characters and lines. It's 25-28 characters per line, about 150 lines of text.
Jonathan Smith said,
December 22, 2023 @ 12:33 am
That linked image includes the many prompts used to (eventually) generate the "novel", many taking the form "now generate the Nth paragraph in strict accordance with the outline". Hilariouser are the repeated demands for text which is (paraphrasing) wildly creative and shocking and amazeballs and, most peculiarly, "never before seen from within your current language collection" (?). This of course is rewarded with dry-as-dust nonsense: (SPOILER ALERT) the request for a truly amazeballs ending gets — Suddenly the Land of Machine Memory started vibrating. Turns out it was all a simulation. Her glowing-ball companion was a computer program. She found herself lying in a hospital bed, friends and family by her side. So yeah.
The "v3" in the link is apparently a 5000 character-ish snippet from the novella-length v1/v2 drafts (lets not read them); the contest guidelines stipulated the short length. "The judges were dumb" / "The standards were low" is all I got…
Jonathan Smith said,
December 22, 2023 @ 12:43 am
I take it back, v1/v2 here don't seem to be much/any longer. Let's still not read them tho…
ray ding said,
January 8, 2024 @ 2:57 am
Given a certain amount of time to learn, I believe AI can write great literary content. I used chat-gpt to generate a poem and it's already interesting：
In the twilight's gentle glow Your beauty shines, aglow Like a flower in the morning dew My love for you, forever true
Your laughter, a melody so sweet Bringing joy with every heartbeat In your eyes, I see the stars Guiding me through life's memoirs
With every touch, my soul ignites In your arms, my spirit takes flight Together, we weave a love so pure Bound by destiny, forever endure
In the whispers of the wind, I hear your name In every dawn, my love for you aflame Eternally entwined, our hearts unite In this love, my forever delight
John Reeds said,
January 13, 2024 @ 9:07 am
Do we now know what engine was used? The professor who wrote it said that he would detail how he made the AI write it? My attempts at making AI produce anything creative have failed.
Francis Boyle said,
January 17, 2024 @ 8:25 am
The on in five figures suggests that the AI effort is still in the region that Sturgeon's Law would classify as "crud".