Computer Writes 200,000 Books, Man Takes Credit - Gizmodo Comments

Computer Writes 200,000 Books, Man Takes Credit

Uber_lompocus — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 02:22:17 EDT

And we still need humanity why? VIVA LA REVOLUTION MACHINAS!!!

Uber_lompocus

Computer Writes 200,000 Books, Man Takes Credit

jackfrost132 — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 01:55:07 EDT

@Lorne: Damn Elephants always putting peoples jobs at risk.

jackfrost132

Computer Writes 200,000 Books, Man Takes Credit

ntrgc89 — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 22:44:33 EDT

Seriously though, didn't they have something like this in Brave New World? Or am I thinking of 1984? I just remember a book where some automated thing spit out romance novels or something for the general public.

ntrgc89

Computer Writes 200,000 Books, Man Takes Credit

ntrgc89 — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 22:43:38 EDT

Brave New World here I come!

ntrgc89

Computer Writes 200,000 Books, Man Takes Credit

Simon — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 21:16:16 EDT

@matto

That is *the* comment of this thread. Spot on brother!

Simon

Computer Writes 200,000 Books, Man Takes Credit

BigViper — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 20:00:30 EDT

oww, now my brain hurts

BigViper

Computer Writes 200,000 Books, Man Takes Credit

Zillax22 — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 16:38:44 EDT

and the university system shits itself then goes BOOM! -

Zillax22

Computer Writes 200,000 Books, Man Takes Credit

barkingart — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 16:34:06 EDT

you are an english major? Not a good one, based on your sentence structure.

barkingart

Computer Writes 200,000 Books, Man Takes Credit

TinyLightning — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 16:24:49 EDT

As an english major, I ABHOR this monstrosity this man has wrought.

TinyLightning

Computer Writes 200,000 Books, Man Takes Credit

blank — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 15:24:47 EDT

@Accelerata:
I don't know. He's basically automated the intellectual laziness of today's C students and hack writers, who hopefully can now go the way of the scrivener.
(Scrivener: Look it up yourselves, you lazy C students. I ain't your Wikipedia!)

blank

Computer Writes 200,000 Books, Man Takes Credit

twreckx — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 15:23:47 EDT

What about data from countries that don't have a whole lot of stuff on the internet? It's kind of difficult to write reports on the goings on in Cote D'Ivoire if there's nothing on the interwebs in the first place. Lord I could have used this to write some research papers...

twreckx

Computer Writes 200,000 Books, Man Takes Credit

aka Bitter — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 15:14:59 EDT

At least now I know where the story for "50 Cent: Blood on the Sand" came from.

aka Bitter

Computer Writes 200,000 Books, Man Takes Credit

Accelerata — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 14:34:30 EDT

personally, I think this is a horrible horrible thing when applied widely. its basically the death of creativity, since all it does is randomly shuffle around pre-existing content. more to the point, if applied widely, it would probably end up posting information on the internet which would subsequently be picked up and applied by other scans. it only works if it has a body of original, non-automated data to work from.

something like this could be useful in niche scenarios though.

Accelerata

Computer Writes 200,000 Books, Man Takes Credit

blank — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 14:27:18 EDT

-"What about those clowns in Congress? Boy, what a bunch of clowns?" -"How does it stay so current?" -"Don't praise the machine!"

blank

Computer Writes 200,000 Books, Man Takes Credit

blank — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 14:23:04 EDT

@nucwin83: Legally this dude would be the author and he would still be liable. So he better make sure he reads those damn things before he publishes them!

blank

Computer Writes 200,000 Books, Man Takes Credit

Navin R Johnson — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 12:42:50 EDT

Here's a site that writes technical papers. I think they got some published a while back...

[pdos.csail.mit.edu]

Are we to assume these books got published? If so, did he PAY to have them published?

Navin R Johnson

Computer Writes 200,000 Books, Man Takes Credit

bnsqueak — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 12:40:47 EDT

Tell me when it writes novels. That shit would be BANANAS.

bnsqueak

Computer Writes 200,000 Books, Man Takes Credit

ps61318 — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 12:35:02 EDT

@nutbastard: As much as I hate making (or reading) unsubstantiated assertions, my sense is that the ENTIRE INTERNET is a very reliable source purely by "coincidence" - because the preponderance of people who publish aren't intentionally lying when they do so. There is very little (by percenage, again, this is a "sense," not an assertion of provable fact) peer review, corroboration, scientific method, etc., except in the vestigial remains of the origins of the Internet in DARPANet.

From an academic rigor standpoint, then, MOST of the Internet is garbage. But it's so vast that even if only 5% is worthwhile that's 5% of billllions and billllions of bytes of information.

For my (someday) thesis, perhaps.

ps61318

Computer Writes 200,000 Books, Man Takes Credit

MadColombian — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 12:27:27 EDT

@TheSonOfKrypton: Your not the only one. Computers writing their own code... not needing humans to write it anymore...

Um... what if they decide to write a program to kill humans eventually?

Like prophesied in terminator.

MadColombian

Computer Writes 200,000 Books, Man Takes Credit

hydramax6 — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 12:22:57 EDT

10 minutes, 3 monkeys.

hydramax6

Computer Writes 200,000 Books, Man Takes Credit

Collins1 — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 12:05:20 EDT

@joeyjoeyjoey: I think it's just a visual pun.

Collins1

Computer Writes 200,000 Books, Man Takes Credit

drewheyman — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 12:04:21 EDT

@nutbastard: being appropriately recursive and "smart enough not to even consider say, gynecological advice given in a gizmodo thread" is darned near impossible to do without boatloads of manual intervention. go do a google search or two to see this fact in action.

and the internet has looser standards in terms of "truthiness" (god i hate that word) than most published (truth-based) books do as established by US and international legal systems , partially due to the inability to verify the writer of items on the internet, which is something a publisher and author must vet to the best of their ability in the book world.

drewheyman

Computer Writes 200,000 Books, Man Takes Credit

XM8500 — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 12:03:32 EDT

crapping their pants*

XM8500

Computer Writes 200,000 Books, Man Takes Credit

nutbastard — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 12:03:14 EDT

@joeyjoeyjoey:
"if you carry a few different fakebooks with you its bound to save you."

no pun intended???

nutbastard

Computer Writes 200,000 Books, Man Takes Credit

XM8500 — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 12:02:58 EDT

I can bet you all of his college professors are crapping his pants now: this has got to be the ultimate way to cheat at writing papers.

XM8500

Computer Writes 200,000 Books, Man Takes Credit

drewheyman — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 11:52:46 EDT

@Paradise: what does "write poetry accurately" mean?

it sounds like it would write specific, ruled forms of poetry (ie haiku) which is not all-encompassing of the art signified by the term 'poetry'.

drewheyman

Computer Writes 200,000 Books, Man Takes Credit

UofITom — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 11:49:22 EDT

Written in MS Access, eh... a man after my own heart

UofITom

Computer Writes 200,000 Books, Man Takes Credit

Sora57 — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 11:41:29 EDT

Based on his voice-over, I believe he has also unwittingly discovered a cure for insomnia.

Sora57

Computer Writes 200,000 Books, Man Takes Credit

jackfrost132 — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 11:34:10 EDT

AI Codename: Mark Wilson

jackfrost132

Computer Writes 200,000 Books, Man Takes Credit

joeyjoeyjoey — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 11:32:49 EDT

Fakebooks (like the one pictured) are great when you do weddings, dinner dance parties, birthdays etc...

At every party there is always a few that will approach the band with a "request" and more than likely if you carry a few different fakebooks with you its bound to save you. I own several for this purpose (I actually own a copy of the one pictured)

So I actually dont know why the Fakebook pictured is used in this article. Doesnt really fit with the story unless youre just taking the literal meaning of "Fake" while not understanding the context of the word Fakebook in the title of the music book.

joeyjoeyjoey

Computer Writes 200,000 Books, Man Takes Credit

Collins1 — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 11:29:04 EDT

My dad used to be Dagenham Motors Group PLC's top salesman until he got headhunted away. I bet he's in that book.

Collins1

Computer Writes 200,000 Books, Man Takes Credit

nutbastard — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 11:25:36 EDT

@nucwin83:
But the ENTIRE INTERNET is actually a very reliable source - it is only parts of the internet that aren't. As long as this thing does recursive, redundant scanning (and is smart enough not to even consider say, gynecological advice given in a gizmodo thread) it should be fine.

And even if it prints things that aren't correct, given sufficient truthiness, what difference does it make? Just because it's on the net doesn't mean you shouldn't believe it, and just because it's in a book doesn't mean you should.

nutbastard

Computer Writes 200,000 Books, Man Takes Credit

Paradise — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 11:19:25 EDT

@fLUx1337: see this comment as well.

Paradise

Computer Writes 200,000 Books, Man Takes Credit

matto — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 11:18:15 EDT

I am willing to bet that the impetus behind this work is generating "better" content for googlebait sites.

matto

Computer Writes 200,000 Books, Man Takes Credit

Paradise — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 11:18:11 EDT

@cmarsh and @cmarsh: why? we wrote a gawk program 6 years ago in college that could write poetry [accurately]. It think it was only like 75 lines too.

We also wrote a program that played Stratego but apparently we were more right brained than left brained.

Paradise

Computer Writes 200,000 Books, Man Takes Credit

tiredman9 — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 11:16:52 EDT

sounds way too good to be true.
however if its real, I expect this to be used to write 100% of all high school book reports and college papers in say about a year

tiredman9

Computer Writes 200,000 Books, Man Takes Credit

nucwin83 — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 11:14:54 EDT

I gotta wonder what the liability would be if someone referenced one of his healthcare books and it resulted in the harm of a patient due to the fact that the AI pulled data from an unreliable source, like say... THE ENTIRE INTERNET?

nucwin83

Computer Writes 200,000 Books, Man Takes Credit

badbob001 — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 11:14:11 EDT

Isn't even the voice of the author real? It sounds almost like text-to-speech.

badbob001

Computer Writes 200,000 Books, Man Takes Credit

92BuickLeSabre — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 11:09:36 EDT

... ... *scan* *collect* *scan* *collect*... ...

J.M.H.
LulZ! MAc's R best ROBOT OVERLORDS at auto-internetz comments! Original Writers Rickrolled N Blended! LOL FIRST Sucka Foo!

(Hmmm...I think this process may still need some work.)

92BuickLeSabre

Computer Writes 200,000 Books, Man Takes Credit

DaOtter — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 11:08:55 EDT

@weatherman: Anything that watches those types of shows rules out the use of the term "intelligence".

DaOtter

Computer Writes 200,000 Books, Man Takes Credit

fLUx1337 — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 11:06:58 EDT

If he has done this, he has created the single best AI in the world, at the moment, no AI comes close to what this is demonstrating.

fLUx1337

Computer Writes 200,000 Books, Man Takes Credit

fLUx1337 — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 11:05:10 EDT

I also call ultra bullshit...

fLUx1337

Computer Writes 200,000 Books, Man Takes Credit

Geisrud — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 10:59:52 EDT

Gotta love fakebook. Seriously.

Geisrud

Computer Writes 200,000 Books, Man Takes Credit

weatherman — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 10:54:50 EDT

I'm creating an AI that will read these books and watch these game shows that he's going to make so that I don't have to.

weatherman

Computer Writes 200,000 Books, Man Takes Credit

cmarsh — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 10:52:38 EDT

Oh. It's a NYT article. Well, I still call bullshit.

cmarsh

Computer Writes 200,000 Books, Man Takes Credit

cmarsh — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 10:51:32 EDT

I call bullshit. I've heard this guy's voice before. He sounds an awful lot like the guy that did the voice-over for the fake tutorial about sabotaging fast food drive-in windows by taking parts out of a toaster- or something. I'm too lazy too look it up. Fake.

cmarsh

Computer Writes 200,000 Books, Man Takes Credit

TheSonOfKrypton — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 10:50:00 EDT

Um, does this scare the shit outta anyone else??? Or is it just me?

TheSonOfKrypton

Computer Writes 200,000 Books, Man Takes Credit

That_person — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 10:49:26 EDT

The Sarah Conner Chronicles got it all wrong. Skynet wasn't created for chess gaming, it was made to help people write articles really quickly. I bet judgement day comes about when someone plagiarizes one of its books.

That_person

Computer Writes 200,000 Books, Man Takes Credit

FlashSandbox — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 10:47:20 EDT

I like in the game how it says the words... "STAB"....

Awesome.

FlashSandbox

Computer Writes 200,000 Books, Man Takes Credit

thechansen — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 10:47:10 EDT

I prefer my books to be written by a room full of monkeys, bonus points if they are trained to smoke.

thechansen

Computer Writes 200,000 Books, Man Takes Credit

Stang70Fastback — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 10:46:32 EDT

Holy crap.

Stang70Fastback

Computer Writes 200,000 Books, Man Takes Credit

riqgeez — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 10:44:22 EDT

how about an online "Wheel of Fortune" game with real dinero or "Jeopardy for Gadgets and Geeks" for electronic and phones and computers? Sign me up today please!

riqgeez