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I didn’t know how to write about my sister’s death, so I had AI do it for me
- smellsinore 5y agoHow did AI know when your sister died without you telling it? [AI] My sister died in June.
- jaredsohn 5y agoIt doesn't know. It just makes stuff up. In one of the versions it says the sister is still alive.
- rexreed 5y agoThe "AI" doesn't "know" anything. GPT-3 is a big data version of autocomplete. Just has a much bigger database and longer training than any autocomplete on your phone. But it's the same idea. There's no "knowledge" here. If instead of calling GPT-3 "AI" and instead we called it "Mega-Autocomplete" would you be just as wonderous about the outcome?
- ricardobeat 5y agoThis page behaves really oddly on mobile. Huge swaths of blank space, and the byline repeats itself on every section. And I had to dismiss two modals before seeing any content. Unreadable.
- hyperman1 5y agoI'm on desktop, and something in the site design just pushed me away. I can't really say what, except the site itself, not the content, was somehow repellant. The email modal gave me an initial feeling of dread: I'll have to fight this site . Then the site itself felt it would give content only slowly. The colors were just ugly. I gave up without reading much, and I'm pretty sure if I see any other URL containing believermag, I'll just skip it, no matter the content. Weird, I've never reacted like that to any site, even a recent flickering puke-yellow on black one was bearable. But somehow not this. And I can't even say why. YMMV of course
- bruce343434 5y agoreader mode to the rescue!
- vages 5y agoReader mode did not work on Firefox mobile, because each character appeared on a new line. Probably something to do with the programming.
- ggeorgovassilis 5y agoFor me it's the coloured border and horizontal scroll bar.
- vnfcvfshdfgs 5y agoI think it looks clean and elegant with js disabled.
- IggleSniggle 5y agoIt worked for me, but it’s easy to imagine why it wouldn’t on another device. The text is made to very slowly render in line-by-line as you scroll. If you scroll quickly, it’s very easy to get way ahead of the rendering. Maybe it’s trying to prevent skimming the article or skipping to the end? Anyway, the page was riddled with affectations like that, and all the affectations seem like they’re designed to make you feel both uncomfortable and fascinated, like when find a dead animal covered with maggots…obviously the article fits that aesthetic as well.
- ditegashi 5y agoWow that was moving
- JohnJamesRambo 5y agoI don’t think human authors should be worried yet, the AI versions all seemed like what I would expect from an AI. Just soulless words with no insight or deeper meaning which we find in quality writing.
- thom 5y agoHuh, I assumed this was a work of fiction tbh. Not sure how GPT3 comes up with that ending.
- advael 5y agoNo, the ending seems completely in line with what the model does well. What is impressive about GPT3 is that it seems good at keeping track of really long-term dependencies in long sequences of text, giving the impression of being able to hold on to trains of thought, a problem that's plagued generative natural language models for quite a while. I suspect that this is part of why people who have been working in or following that field for a while hype it so much. It's a pretty mechanical result when I put it like that, but it's also something that used to make AI-generated writing extremely obvious, and now that one cue is less likely to give it away It's also quite good at coming up with some good plausible items to continue a list with, which actually gets it into trouble in terms of sounding like human writing sometimes, like in the absurdly long list of body parts featured in one generative example So that's why I think it was a pretty plausible generated ending, though of course it's curated here, so it might not have been the first thing the model came up with. The concept of "existing" as a verb had been developed multiple times in the essay as something the author felt she had lost when her sister died, and the thought that the author felt she didn't exist was often tightly associated with thinking about the loss directly in a way that's quantifiable without that sophisticated of a language model, so along with math, which makes sense if your list is of life skills broadly that you could learn from someone, the model bringing up "existing" when there was a convenient list of verbs associating with the sister is, while also a beautiful and fitting way to end the essay, exactly the kind of trick GPT shows itself to be quite good at
- 5y ago
- sdoering 5y agoI wrote about my dad some time after he had passed away some years ago. I wrote about my stepfather after he had passed in February. And I wrote about my father in law after he had suddenly passed away in May. Every single time it was hard. emotionally. But it was a cathartic moment at the same time. I remembered what made me feel connected. What they meant to me. To outsource this to a machine would have robbed me of emotions, wonderful memories and closure. But I have to say from experience, that writing about them was a totally different thing than to read these words at their funeral. This was very, very much a different beast. It still makes me tear up thinking about it. It still makes me choke.
- emodendroket 5y agoI think if you read the piece it's not really about "outsourcing" the writing. It almost feels like the machine's guesses, though not necessarily great writing and not necessarily factual, give the author the courage to flesh out her own writing.
- notelectronic 5y agoI’m surprised by some of the backlash—it felt to me nearly like a form of digital Ouija board; given a prompt and some subconscious input, a vague or nonsensical response can feel like communion. I thought it was beautiful.
- sdoering 5y agode gustibus non est disputandum. I am happy that people like it. It just wasn't for me. No backlash from my side. Just not my kind of tea.
- sdoering 5y agoI read it. To me it didn't feel genuine. The whole time I doubted the premise. It felt like a literary experiment. Maybe a journalistic one. I don't want to assume. So I can only describe how it felt to me.
- fidesomnes 5y agoThis is so ignoble the author should be ashamed of himself.
- Tempest1981 5y agoIs it mixing car speeds and human speeds here? > When I started running, I didn’t even know how to run. I started out running only a half a mile, a mile at the most. I’m not kidding. I was a mile-a-minute man when I started. I remember the first time I ran a mile in under five minutes. I was running on one of my training runs on a Sunday night.
- morpheos137 5y agomathematically a mile a minute is 60 miles an hour. I am pretty sure he was not running that fast.
- lancesells 5y agoMost likely it's mixing in the phrase "mile-a-minute" with running because writing about running would usually include "miles" and "minutes" in a lot of the text.
- Bodell 5y agoI’m not sure I know how to write about how sad and awful I find this article to be. I also can’t think of a worse way for someone to use my death than to write a tech review for a product, much less this completely worthless product. This whole thing reeks of phony.
- wizzwizz4 5y agoDo you have to be so mean?
- Bodell 5y agoSince I’m not the one who used my sisters death to sell a product - and I mean really read what she wrote, she is purposely insinuating that she is having a love affair with the product. “I’ve never read such an accurate Modern Love in my life”, “I felt acutely that there was something illicit about what I was doing” , “One night, when my husband was asleep” - I think I’m being quite nice about it. If I knew this person in real life I don’t believe I would be as nice.
- nuclearnice3 5y agoI guess there's no accounting for taste. I found the piece a haunting and poetic meditation on grief and recovery. I will tell you how it felt for me. I felt I had lost half of myself. I felt I had lost my right arm. I felt I had lost my left leg. I felt I had lost my tongue. I felt I had lost my heart. I felt I had lost my mind. I felt I had lost my eyes. I felt I had lost my ears. I felt I had lost my breath. I felt I had lost my voice. I felt I had lost my smile. I felt I had lost my laugh. I felt I had lost my tears. I felt I had lost my future. I felt I had lost my past. I felt I had lost my parents, as well. I felt I had lost everything. I felt I had lost everything. And yet, I did not lose everything. I did not stop being me. I did not stop existing. There were things I could do: I could make my bed, I could wash the dishes, I could walk the dog, I could feed myself, I could live in the world. Thank you sweet Robot.
- 5y ago
- Ftuuky 5y ago“I really wanted to talk to her. I just couldn't find an algorithm that fit.” ― Peter Watts, Blindsight
- morpheos137 5y agoThe magical thinking people have around "AI" is incredible. Why is it that people don't get that gpt-3 can't think? It has no concept of the world. It has no concept of meaning. It has no concept of anything. It just statistical extrapolation.
- emodendroket 5y agoThis is more akin to "found art." The context gives artistic meaning to something not originally conceived with artistic intent.
- titzer 5y agoLiterally within milliseconds, this site popped a full page interstitial asking me to sign up for their writing right in my inbox. Reading the other comments here I don't feel guilty for closing it immediately. Like no, I haven't even read a single word, you jerks.
- emodendroket 5y agoEvery magazine and newspaper, more or less, does this. At a certain point it's not interesting to complain about anymore.
- titzer 5y agoThey used to wait until you had read at least a single word of the article. Now, they don't. These sites should be punished in search rankings, as it is a form of cloaking (https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/guidelines/cloaking https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/guideline...).
- emodendroket 5y agoI clicked that link and was immediately greeted with a popover asking me to sign up for some Google developer program.
- titzer 5y agoYeah, annoying as heck.
- hodgesrm 5y agoWhy should they be punished? All you do is press X and it goes away. This is hardly onerous, especially given that they are providing interesting content for free. It's far more trouble to get a book from the public library.
- notorandit 5y agoYou have a problem, bro. And a big one, IMHO.
- BasDirks 5y agoNo shit, they are dealing with the loss of their sibling.
- chitowneats 5y agoIs this about their sibling? Or about their fixation on a particular piece of tech?
- emodendroket 5y agoIt's about the sibling.
- BasDirks 5y agoWhen trains first ran, it caused great moral upheaval. Old men waving their canes at the machines. Photographs were seen as a cheap alternative for "real" paintings. What causes the outrage at these models and their output? Is it fear? Notice how critics often deem it necessary to use disparaging remarks: "soulless, no insight or deeper meaning which we find in quality writing, completely cliched, ignoble, phony"
- chitowneats 5y agoNot everything is meant to be automated.
- wizzwizz4 5y ago> Notice how critics often deem it necessary to use disparaging remarks: Sounds like the job of a critic.
- Bodell 5y agoWell I’m not speaking for everyone, but since I think I’m the only one who used the word “phony” here, I’ll speak for myself. I used that word not to disparage the tech (the tech I simply called worthless, as it’s not worth even discussing) but the person writing the article. If I were her family I do not believe I would ever speak to her agin until she retracted her product advertising in which she shamelessly used her sisters death to help sell. Her words are what I found disgusting. I’m also 31 and obviously into tech to be here, so not an old man waving sticks at trains. What bizarre assumptions you have.
- antiterra 5y agoAfter a period of significant novelty, GPT-3 reveals itself to be something other than a magical fountain of ingenuity. However, ‘useless’ is going too far when talking about it as a writing tool. It can serve a similar purpose as generative games and techniques such as ‘exquisite cadaver’ or free writing. One of the difficult things to do in art is to make something that makes some kind of sense but doesn’t simply follow an obvious logical path. Robert Frost put this as ‘no surprise for the writer, [then] no surprise for the reader.’ These leaps, or ‘illogical conclusions’ occupy a non-polynomial space of endless parameters. It’s like a traveling salesman problem where we aren’t sure where the salesman wants to be or how he traveled, until he has made it to his destination. Generative AI can help search the problem space.
- endisneigh 5y agoI know everyone deals with grief differently, but I hope my death doesn't illicit someone to use an AI to generate a story about me. my question would be: "why?" Why use software for this? if literature is art and art is a reflection of the spirit of the creator, then what is this? in any case I hope the exercise helped the author find some comfort
- nuclearnice3 5y agoI want my grief processed by quill pen on parchment! Thou shall use no 21st century tools to eulogize me!
- epoxyhockey 5y agoAuthor using AI as a form of algorithmic MDMA to get in touch with her feelings. I can see how she selects AI passages of deeper reflection and inspection. Yes, it feels fake from the surface level to pick from words that AI generates. But the same principle applies to a psychologist's suggestive words during a consultation, IMO.
- spidersouris 5y agoI really like the MDMA comparison, it truly pinpoints it. It seems like most of the people in this thread not agreeing with the process or even showing their hatred for it miss the point. AI in this specific case is not meant to replace a writer, but rather to act as a tool that a writer (or anyone) can use to get everything off their chest and access to what had been hidden from them for a while. Now, people have been arguing whether or not this article is an ad. To be honest, I do not care. The story was moving and it highlights the remarkable progress of AI in writing, which is all that matters to me.
- keiferkif 5y agoI know everyone grieves differently and there is no wrong way to grieve, but this is the wrong way to grieve.
- emodendroket 5y agoWhy?
- loseloseloser 5y agoWhat a ridiculous artcile. The author comes out as such a loser.
- muststopmyths 5y agoPersonally, I found the format of progressively adding to her words and letting the AI fill in the rest quite interesting. Her sister probably died some years ago (based on her being in junior high at the time, while she's already worked 15+ years reporting on the tech industry) so she probably has some emotional distance and felt like she could be experimental. However, the last story where most of the words are the author's and the AI only adds a handful of phrases was the most poignant to me.
- hodgesrm 5y agoAssuming the article showed exactly what GPT-3 filled in, it's an impressive accomplishment. It almost feels like auto-tune for writers. I've also been quite impressed with the quality of work that comes out of Google Translate over the last few years. I use Russian to English and English to German regularly. They are both good for rough cut translations that you can quickly polish. Translate uses AI extensively to improve the translation outcome. [1] [1] https://venturebeat.com/2020/06/03/how-googleis-using-emerging-ai-techniques-to-improve-language-translation-quality/ https://venturebeat.com/2020/06/03/how-googleis-using-emergi...
- lupire 5y agoTranslate is an AI search for meaning. GPT-3 is an AI search for meaningless bullshit.
- iaml 5y agoGoogle translate is actually quite meh compared to nowadays state of the art. Try deepl[0], it's usually much better. [0] https://www.deepl.com/translator https://www.deepl.com/translator
- hodgesrm 5y agoThanks! I'll try it. p.s., you know the state of the art has truly advanced when meh is useful. :)
- hodgesrm 5y agoI find this kind of writing troubling but perhaps for a different reason than many people. Writers draw on their experiences as well as previous readings to create new works. Every such work has a provenance that reflects its roots, sometimes imperceptably but at other times in ways that are obvious to every reader. Knowing these roots also helps readers understand the author's contribution, how it is different from things that came before. What are the sources of GPT-3's writing? Clearly there were texts that expressed similar feelings, otherwise it would not be able to infer new ones. Is it really creative and if so how? Is this just a new kind of plagiarism? How would you know? edit: syntax
- fouc 5y agoI feel like a lot of people with kneejerk reactions against this article didn't actually read the whole thing. Just jumped to conclusions.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- rexreed 5y agoSuggested alternate title: "I didn't know how to write about my sister's death, so I used big data-powered autocomplete to do it for me". I am as nonplussed about this as if the author bought a stock condolence card from Hallmark. Some people know how to write from their own personal feelings and emotions, and other's don't. That's why the greeting card industry even exists. I'm sure the greeting card industry will be all over longer-form condolence messages such as this using big data powered autocomplete systems like GPT-3.
- lupire 5y agoThis topic is addressed in the movie Her.
- 1MachineElf 5y agoI think this has a use case. Not the current implementation, but there are people out there who truly do need help with writing eulogies. They're hard to do, and something to make it easier would be a benefit. I think the author's story here shows how that struggle can play out. Funerals themselves are hard. Coordinating a ceremony that is supposed to coincide with everyone's processing of emotions about the loss of a friend/loved one is stressful. I'd might even argue that morning the loss of a loved one according to a schedule is unnatural itself. Now you've got to write an essay about someone's life on top of that? Personally, it's exceptional to have a relationship of any where I feel like I truly understand the person deep down. Without that understanding, how can I write a proper eulogy? Furthermore, how do I get the funeral audience to all agree with what I write? Maybe I can describe their general accomplishments in life, but would did graduating from that school really matter to them? What if they hated being there? Were they proud of their time in the military or not? Yes, they had a career, but is that how they wanted to be defined? Presenting any of these as unimportant might hurt the sensibilities of those who came to the funeral, not just in terms of their understanding of the deceased, but also in their general sense of what's valuable in life. Y'all want to hear hilarious story about that one time we almost got arrested? The most honest and accurate thing I can say about the deceased is what their life meant to me, but no one comes to the funeral to hear about me. So usually I let someone else more in tune with what people in general want take the lead on it. The above challenges contributed to my decision to include an outline for my own eulogy in my will - as an optional guide, at least. This removes the guesswork from those who would be burdened with my funeral arrangements. Not everyone plans ahead on these things, and so a resource for writing a eulogy can be valuable to some. It may not be an answer to the burning meaning of life question, but it an AI might help the process along. It's 2021, and maybe it is time there's actually an app for that. I don't mean it in a dystopian sense. Certainly I'd hope it would be offered by a non-profit and not some cryptocurrency startup seeking an ICO. Unless you're an oligarch or ancient ruler, coffins costing more than a used car is a characteristic of modernity. Recently it was announced that FEMA's given $1 billion towards Covid-19 funeral costs since deaths started climbing in 2020. Funerals are expensive and stressful. This is undesirable. Funerals should be efficient where possible. If an app can help with that, then some families would be grateful for it.
- skillpass 5y agoI'm surprised by the antipathy towards both author and technology expressed by many of the top level comments here. Personally I found the piece moving, even from the first generated sequence. By the last iteration I had tears in my eyes. I admit I might be biased. I also have access to the GPT3 beta and have used it for this same purpose of writing assistance. To me GPT3 as of now is like a super advanced thesaurus, a tool that you can use to broaden your perspective and get out of a rut in your writing.
- dotancohen 5y ago> I do believe in ghosts. Not the ghosts of the dead, but the > ghosts of the living. The ghosts of people who, because of > a trauma, have lost their sense of themselves. This is on par with the best human literature that I've ever read. If this is where GPT-3 is going, then I might be coming along too.
- mkishi 5y agoThis was the passage that turned me to Google to check if it was reciting something from memory.
- AlbertCory 5y agoWhy not have AI propose to your would-be spouse, because you find it too hard? Or have AI give the "I want a divorce" speech? The eulogy isn't "supposed" to be anything, and you can't do it wrong. No one, and nothing, can do yours better than you can. If someone criticizes it, they're not a person you want in your life.