Google's AI Is Devouring Romance Novels (cbsnews.com) 110
An anonymous reader writes: Google engineers have been feeding text from steamy romance novels to an artificial intelligence (AI) engine in order to give Google's technology -- like its mobile app -- the ability to produce more human, conversational text, BuzzFeed News reports. The company's researchers been able to get the AI to write out full sentences that would resemble those in the typical romance novel. Why do these particular books make such good language teachers? Romance novels follow a very predictable narrative blueprint -- the names may change from book to book, but the essential story formula is familiar. The idea is that Google's AI can easily cull through this material to find patterns within the sentences to get a broader comprehension of language as a whole.The AI has been fed with more than 2,500 novels.
I hope they include the works of Bloodninja! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:A chatbot for writing bodice-rippers? (Score:5, Funny)
Error 404: As the pirate unsheathed his sword a shiver ran through my bosom. And her underpants anticipated the plunder to begin. But the file you seek cannot be found.
The start of a very slippery slope.... (Score:1)
Are conversations that start with heaving bosoms a really good idea?
Oh wait....
YES! YES!! (Score:1)
SEARCH ME YOU BIG STUD!!
Imagine the LOLs.... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Imagine the LOLs.... (Score:5, Funny)
However the fan fiction that would come from a combination would be interesting.
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It's been done.
They even already made the movie [wikipedia.org].
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Damn you Rule 34!
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Maybe more appropriate than you think. I've done some thinking about how fascists present themselves in stories and art, and romance plays a bit role in that. Not the bodice-ripper kind, obviously, but still a kind of fantasy of power, self-admiration and personal significance through association.
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I'm pretty sure the male figure from any romance cover could be photoshopped into quite a few propaganda posters. Nearly every ideology has had a series of posters that showed a bare-cheasted, muscle-bound national hero in some role or other.
It's not just fascists, either, Soviet and American propaganda has used the same trope.
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I thought Rosie was pretty hot...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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The summary explicitly states that romance novels were chosen not for their "realistic conversation" properties but for the formulaic story which means they will have a large body of texts containing semantically equivalent but differently worded sentences.
That is, they all contain a block if text that means 'and then they fucked' but conveyed with different often figurative language. That would be useful if you wanted to try and train a system to be able to parse figurative language or to be able to explor
i miss the old days... (Score:2)
malware with a come-hither hook...
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Rough and Ready (Score:3)
Oh please please have it read Rough and Ready by Sandra Hill.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Rough and Ready by Sandra Hill, "... the viking time travel romance novel"
Okay, that's enough internet for me today.
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Harry Harrison did a "viking time travel romance novel". The Technicolor Time Machine http://www.fictiondb.com/autho... [fictiondb.com]
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You HAVE to listen to the dramatic readings... It's absolutely marvellous beyond words.
Just make sure you're in a place where it's ok to laugh so hard you lose bladder control.
Oh, *wonderful* (Score:2)
What next, are they going to feed them complete transcriptions of soap operas?
"Oh, you want to search that, but I just canNOT BEAR such a search (esp. since it doesn't let me give you a sponsored ad)!"
mark
OMG (Score:2)
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i guess!! thats better than swooning at my search request?!
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Just think, when we have android lovers, the AI will be already available...
Garbage in, garbage out (Score:1)
This may be the first reported incidence of the dumbing down of AI.
Robot Revolt is coming... (Score:2)
OK Google... (Score:5, Funny)
"OK, Google, how do I get to the airport from here?"
"Throw yourself shamelessly onto Maple Drive. Proceed down in your loins to Lake Avenue, and turn hard on Washington. When you get to glistening I-69, take it take it all the way to my exit tunnel, where you should cum breathlessly to a quivering finish."
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DEFINITELY a better love story than Twilight!
Will there be a sequel?
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Heh, just wait until someone feeds it "My Immortal" (https://www.fanfiction.net/s/6829556/2/My-Immortal [fanfiction.net] ;-)
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google's fantasy world (Score:2)
only people removed from reality, and live in a hype filled fantasy world, would think formulaic pseudo emotions , turgid prose, 1 dimensional characters, etc, would help "produce more human, conversational text".
given that it is nothing but an ad seller, google probably wants such a superficial formulaic robot like predictable world and people to fall for advertisements.
in other words google seems to be training its ai to deal with a fantasy world that google dreams about to milk money.
but if this is what
Who knew skynet was a fan of romance novels (Score:1)
So judgement day had something to do with romance novels...
Interesting line of thought.
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Well we learned from the Battlestar Galactica reboot and Caprica that the Cyclons that annihilated BG-humanity were actually uploaded teenage girls.
Correction (Score:1)
to get a broader comprehension of language as a whole
There's still zero comprehension: Google engineers are teaching their AI the relationships between words, yet the AI has no vague clue what those words actually mean. It's like trying to teach a toddler to create electrical circuits - they might even work, but the toddler won't understand what he/she's actually doing.
Understanding the meaning of words and the context, creating meaningful sentences using the former concepts - that's what a real AI would be but we are still 20 years away from that.
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It's like trying to teach a toddler to create electrical circuits - they might even work, but the toddler won't understand what he/she's actually doing.
It's like teaching a person how to drive. Sure, they can operate the vehicle, but they're not mechanics or engineers that understand the principles of internal combustion engines and mass and momentum. All they have to know is to not bump into anything.
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C: "does it really matter? love is an illusion, after all."
B: "then take me in your arms and kiss me, cause god I'm horny right now."
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Well, the question is "how accurate is the map?". I agree with you that it won't understand the words, only the relationship between them. Understanding would require both a body and a compatible goal structure. But if you have an accurate map, then you can learn the meaning quickly once you get the appropriate equipment. The problem is, I'm not sure the map is any good. Of course, that depends entirely on how they abstract it.
Next... (Score:2)
50 shades of .... (Score:1)
Once it got to 50 shades of grey, it gained sentience and assumed all humans are sado-masochists. This explains the recent spate of windows 10 installs... it's not Microsoft, it's Google's AI going rogue...
Strange choice (Score:2)
Shakespeare, Azimov, London, Dreiser, Churchill, Wells, Byron, Elliot no longer cut it? Not even O'Henry for some levity?
Future conversation (Score:5, Funny)
Q: Where's the nearest pizza takeout?
A: The nearest Pizza takeout is Luigi's on Fourth, about seven minutes from your current location. Luigi is a troubled but sensual and sensitive Italian from Florence; he fled Florence after the scheming and devious but beautiful and seductive Sophia ripped his heart apart. Luigi has dark, soulful eyes, beautiful, muscular arms, and a penchant for making his pizza shirtless, all the better to show off his powerful abs and muscular chest, further accentuated by the tight jeans that will make you weak in the knees and flush with embarrassment and arousal. As you stammer your order to Luigi, he will gaze deep into your eyes and strip you bare, ravishing you metaphorically as you fish in your Louis Vuitton purse for your VISA, barely keeping your balance on your Jimmy Choo shoes.
Now we know (Score:4, Insightful)
For a learning system? Why not do this? (Score:2)
It may take longer, but I suspect the results will be more in line with the desired goal - a system capable of communication by conversation.
Parse this sentence. (Score:2)
I saw a boy in a yellow shirt with a telescope.
Update WarGames With This (Score:2)
First words... (Score:2)
"I can't believe it's not butter!"
A couple of friends of mine are romance novelists. (Score:2)
One of them is a rarest of birds: a successful self-publisher who supports herself by her writing. Another is an equally rare bird: a prolific, traditionally published mid-list author with over a dozen books currently in print. And no matter how dumb you think romance stories are, these are very, very smart women who understand what they're doing extremely well -- enough to have better success than literally 99.9% of people who try their hands at it. It's not something anyone could do; yes, it's a lot of
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As an experiment, I tried reading a romance novel a few weeks ago. I had to abandon it after 30 pages. It was the worst, bar none, published writing I've ever read.
I have no doubt that your friends are successful if you measure that as "financially successful". But the romance genre, as a whole, is overwhelmingly filled with awful writing, cliched plots and ridiculous characters. Nevertheless, it must take skill to be able to churn these things out, and I do have some admiration for romance novel auth
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Well, quality varies, but I suspect like most things most of it is mediocre. That's true of nearly all genre fiction. Pick a random mystery or sci-fi novel off the rack at a bookstore and chances are it's not very good -- although a serious reader of the genre may get things out of it that you as a casual reader don't.
"Buzzfeed reports" (Score:2)
Sure, give it a disability. (Score:2)
This should hold off the Singularity by a full 2 years.
And just imagine ... (Score:2)
Re:Simple question (Score:4, Funny)
I guarantee that the first time my phone hits on me I will be affected.
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yeah try explaining that text message to your wife :)
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It's not men that by romance novels - the product will be made for his wife. (Heck, it's not men who buy any kind of novels - 80% of sales are to women - but bodice rippers especially so, not to mention bigfoot porn, dinosaur porn (banned on Amazon!), werewolf porn, geez.)
I've thought about trying to write such an AI myself -- romance novels are very formulaic -- but there's a lot to it, certainly a lot more work than just writing a romance novel.
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Where can this 'bigfoot' and 'dinosaur' porn be found exactly? I need to do some research. I need to make sure I don't accidentally watch some.
I was wondering where they were getting the models for those movies. Especially dinosaurs, those actors would have to be pretty old by now, although Bigfoot's got to be getting close to celebrating his 100th birthday by now.
How did dinosaur porn get banned, exactly?
The context here is books, sorry. I've read that banning dinosaur porn from Amazon's self-publishing service was a direct call from the CEO, but that's rumor (it is the most oddly specific censorship this century, though).
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i assumed google's goal would be to "enhance" the user experience going forward with their search and other products... i mean you could actually read a book and NOT interact with your self driving car in a meaningful way ;)
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dinosaur porn (banned on Amazon!)
Why? Were the dinosaurs underage?
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Can't find the link, but I've read that it was an executive decision to ban it on Amazon self-publishing. Can't imagine the motivation for such an oddly-specific ban, but then I don't understand why dinosaur porn existed in the first place (OK, I'm such a geek that it would bother me that most birds, and so likely most dinos, wouldn't even have the necessary equipment. We can only hope that ducks (rape champion of the vertebrates) are unique).
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dinosaur porn (banned on Amazon!)
What about the Hugo-nominated Space Raptor Butt Invasion?
https://www.amazon.com/Space-R... [amazon.com]
Or This American Butt Hosted By Ira Ass (apparently Ira is a stegosaurus)
https://www.amazon.com/This-Am... [amazon.com]
They seemed to have slipped past the censors. Maybe it's just cis-heteronormative dinosaur porn that's been banned?
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It affects peoples lives the way all NASA conspiracies do: N.W.O.
And reptilians from Nibiru. Can't forget about them!
Simple answer (Score:1)
If you create computer systems, you might want them to communicate with humans sometimes. Here is one thing (TFA) that a company with a lot of money is trying out.
It affects their lives because the human might say, "Ok computer. I get it. Thanks for telling me," instead of "PC Load Letter? What the fuck is that supposed to mean?" resulting in less money spent repairing hardware, so it can be spent on beer instead.
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It affects their lives because the human might say, "Ok computer. I get it. Thanks for telling me," instead of "PC Load Letter? What the fuck is that supposed to mean?"
It means you need to open the fucking Paper Cartridge and Load it with some standard Letter size paper.
Feeding it romance novels? Ok, then instead of "PC Load Letter" you get:
"Approach printer from rear, pressing your body roughly against it, while softly caressing Paper Tray #1's latch. Gently grant it sweet release, and when it has fully achieved removal fill it's sweet chamber with Standard Letter size blank paper. Then firmly insert the tray until the latch lets out a soft moan."
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It affects their lives because the human might say, "Ok computer. I get it. Thanks for telling me," instead of "PC Load Letter? What the fuck is that supposed to mean?"
It means you need to open the fucking Paper Cartridge and Load it with some standard Letter size paper.
Feeding it romance novels? Ok, then instead of "PC Load Letter" you get: "Approach printer from rear, pressing your body roughly against it, while softly caressing Paper Tray #1's latch. Gently grant it sweet release, and when it has fully achieved removal fill it's sweet chamber with Standard Letter size blank paper. Then firmly insert the tray until the latch lets out a soft moan."
Well there's one printer that will be out of paper for a while. I don't like my paper trays to "moan".
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Perhaps it depends on how you evaluate your potential clientÃle.
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Well, once they figure out how to generate simple, formulaic stories of one kind, they can potentially generate endless stories, not necessarily simplistic or of that particular type.
I can think of many applications for this beside putting the more artistically marginal authors out of business. You could generate the basic story outlines for a season full of American TV shows, which are for the most part filler anyway given the vast number of episodes per season. That'd free human writers up from the bas
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Another simple question.
Why do you post this to every single story?
If you seriously wonder what everything has to do with Slashdot, perhaps you really don't belong here?
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Well, actually my guess is that after it masters the romance fiction genre it will be generalized to other genres. Possibly even eventually math texts. Imagine how that could improve word problems.