Would you read a book written by a computer?
Eventually science will find away to compete with humans in the arts right?
>>7807431
that would be the greatest thing ever. the main reason i hate a lot of literature is because authors turn it into a glamor issue, a book all about them. take the person out of it, you get an entirely unselfish piece of work
Probably not. I like working out the author's intent and understanding how they achieved various things.
>>7807439
Read Wikipedia articles. That's effectively the result of removing the human element.
>>7807439
lol
read nietzsche on the birth of tragedy
>>7807439
this. the reason I didn't like Infinite Jest was that it seemed like a thousand pages of Wallace trying to show off his wit
Theres no way it wont just be a generic reshuffling of pattern-recognized prose and plot
Man don't remind me of this.
What makes me sad is that I probably won't be alive when humans achieve a true cyber punk world.
The next generation will be happy fuckers, probably the happiest generation ever
>implying humans aren't computers
I'd read a book written by a true AI. I bet it would be incredible.
Not by a fucking computer algorithm, though.
>>7807457
>the result of removing the human element
not really, it's still humans writing those articles, and they sometimes create a lot of drama between themselves, barely unselfish
With complex enough algorithms the output could be the same.
Consider how humans choose what to write. It's just a massive set of rules of the sort "that is a profound/entertaining and this other things isn't". It's no accident that so many of the greatest books of all time have a lot in common with each other.
>>7807439
>take the person out of it, you get an entirely unselfish piece of work
this is not a given. Current forays into this territory basically involve feeding tons of text into the computer and saying, "emulate this." So even if the program itself has no "personality," in mimicking other authors it will appear to have one.
In case you're not convinced, take a look at this deep learning algorithm that can mimic the style of Van Gogh: http://www.anishathalye.com/2015/12/19/an-ai-that-can-mimic-any-artist
If you extend this to prose, it's not hard to imagine a program that, given Infinite Jest and a random reddit comment as inputs, produces a literary black hole of inflated self-worth.
If we graduate from deep learning to "true AI," I still don't see the problem going away. I think the creative "soul" of good literature is inseparable from the trappings of human-like consciousness. That is, even an AI would be unable to write a good novel that was not, at least in part, a reflection of itself.
>>7807658
> true AI goes to write a book
> has to use computer algorithm
>>7807431
>Would you read a book written by a computer?
As a curiosity, yes. Or if it was basically assured to be something I would enjoy reading.
The problem for books written by computers is that it lacks 'the author', which is a huge part of why people read and write books (and even why we enjoy them). Even if you assume that at some stage human-quality books will be produced by computers in a fraction of the time it takes humans to do it, you are still left with basically a marketing challenge at the end of the creative process. You have to ask- why do people buy and read books? I'd suggest most of the time the selling point is in some way the author or anchored to the author.
>Eventually science will find away to compete with humans in the arts right?
I'm not sure that we're really going to get that far away from statistical games and rigid procedures - however complex and interesting they may become. The issue is that most of the things we can make in this area are very "brittle", which is to say that they have a very narrow focus (because what we call creativity is not easy to emulate "in general", but the more specific you are about a creative task, the easier it is to specify to computers).
The low hanging fruit for general creativity is actually simply making humans better at creative work, and enabling them to have new social and creative interactions with other humans. Replacing humans or competing with humans seems pretty out there- probably not impossible, but it will only happen if it can successfully disrupt and replace existing creative workers for a profit, which is not going to be anywhere near as easy as disrupting taxis and hotels.
>>7807658
Your post was written by a
>fucking algorithm
I'll bet the things written by an AI will get pretty well crafted, as seems to be the general sense of a few other posters. Stylistically, if you knew what tone and mood you wanted your computer to produce, I'm sure you could do that; I even bet a computer could string together scenes with well-crafted tone and mood for an interesting narrative.
But I think there's an issue with directing the whole of the work. I think an effective work is not only well-written, but moreover examines something important in a new way, and I don't think it's possible for an AI to discern what is a profound and accurate observation into human life without the full set of data as to what human life actually is. And I think in the whole body of good works of literature, there's no indication as to how to extrapolate this insight out of existing works.
But what about computerized readers. Might as well get rid of those snarly, egotistical idiots that read and replace them with advanced machines
>>7807431
Hell yes. I can't wait for humanity to become superfluous and outdated.
>>7810565
the brain works through electrical impulses, basically 1s and 0s just like a computer, only much more dense. You humans use algorithms to do stuff aswell
>>7807439
>implying computer-generated art would do that
seriously? all the computer is doing is flipping through the library of babel and taking one out by rules the humans programmed into it. i mean, peeps are gonna pay attention to the shit they recognize, y'know.
>>7808835
well-said.
