ChatGPT your way past writer's block

[Britva415]

You're at the beach. You came with your mother. The ocean is visible through the clear blue sky above. A small sand dune borders the shoreline on the west. There’s a large oak tree on the southeast side of the dunes. It looks like it might be dying from lack of sunlight, but it still stands tall with its broad branches stretching across the sands like an umbrella.

A beach blanket lies scattered about the sand near the dune where you’d lain in the sun with your mother. An empty bucket can be seen at the edge of the water. Several other items of jetsam are nearby. There is also your wooden bucket near the sand dune.'

I note two things 1. the story is about tentacle porn - something I would never write 2. It's written in 2nd Person PoV, something I would never have attempted to write.

I'm impressed.

It's a tool, I'll certainly use it as a tool.

Tomorrow, I have a WIP with which I can seriously experiment.

Two observations.

First, it's written in second person (automatic cringe).

Second, it reads like ZORK or some other early text-adventure game.

I wonder what ChatGPT would do if we asked it to 'get ye flask.'

 

[LaRascasse]

No AI tool is writing a full competent story yet.

The best you can hope for is a sounding board to check ideas with, do a little research, but the words still need to be your own.

As of now at least, an AI has not been able to copy an author's style and create new original long-form content that can be passed off as the writer's new work. Nobody's going to be able to come up with a Shakespearean play set in modern exactly how the bard would have written it.

It's a writing aid (a good one), but not a writer.

 

[XerXesXu]

You sound like a scorned woman whose lover has been unfairly executed. There’s a thread on this forum where this has been discussed -thoroughly - and in detail. If you can’t find it, start a new thread.

Don’t hijack other’s threads.

If you're not interested, you're, not obliged to follow the thread. I notice you even plagiarised a lyric to describe your location. Sad.

 

[XerXesXu]

Two observations.

First, it's written in second person (automatic cringe).

Second, it reads like ZORK or some other early text-adventure game.

I wonder what ChatGPT would do if we asked it to 'get ye flask.'

See #27.

 

[Britva415]

See #27.

heh, thanks for the pointer, but ITYM #21

 

[XerXesXu]

heh, thanks for the pointer, but ITYM #21

Sorry, I never dreamed that you'd have plagiarised your post. It only goes to show!

 

[nice90sguy]

It's a good read, but GPT is not close to being able to pass the Turing Test against a skeptical interviewer who knows how to probe for understanding.

That may be obvious to you, but
A) Most people are far from sceptical,
B) Its performance is set to dramatically improve over the coming months. Microsoft (who is a major power-player in NLP) are integrating it with their conversation and intent-based products

 

[ElectricBlue]

That may be obvious to you, but
A) Most people are far from sceptical,
B) Its performance is set to dramatically improve over the coming months. Microsoft (who is a major power-player in NLP) are integrating it with their conversation and intent-based products

At this point in time, it's watch and wait, I reckon. I can see applications in many disciplines as a "document starter" (but then, that's what templates are for), but in terms of fiction - it's got a long way to go.

It'll end up like vinyl versus digital, I reckon. Folk still play records, and there's a reason for that. It'll be the same for writing. Don't lose your quill!!

 

[Sammael Bard]

Friends, I bring good news.

The AI has spoken:

 

[Bramblethorn]

That may be obvious to you, but
A) Most people are far from sceptical,

Barnum had some things to say about that.

B) Its performance is set to dramatically improve over the coming months. Microsoft (who is a major power-player in NLP) are integrating it with their conversation and intent-based products

Most of the discussion I've seen about upcoming improvements to GPT boils down to "same basic approach but with more parameters and minor tweaks to the algorithms". If they're really being honest, "and we're going to burn through a bunch more sweatshop labourers by having them label the most toxic content the internet has to offer until it gets into their nightmares."

Those steps may make it better at the things it's already good at. But they won't turn it into something that can write a coherent and internally consistent 10k-word story, or pass a Turing test against a competent examiner, any more than sticking a bigger engine in my car will make it possible for me to drive it from Melbourne to Auckland.

The underlying principle of GPT is learning patterns in text and reproducing them. It has zero capacity for understanding them or reasoning on them; if OpenAI multiply its parameter count by a thousand, they'll multiply that zero by a thousand.

(Noting that I'm giving opinions specifically about GPT here, not about what's possible for machine intelligence in general. If anybody wants my thoughts about how something like GPT could form part of something that's not just a high-powered bullshit artist with a search engine, I put them in my story "Loss Function", though I'll leave it to others to generate working code examples.)

 

[nice90sguy]

high-powered bullshit artist with a search engine

Perfect description. "Loss Function" is one of the very best stories I've read on this site, too.

If you haven't read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klara_and_the_Sun, you should!

 

[Jackie.Hikaru]

Hey all, FYI on a related note, I just had a story rejected with this note:

• Literotica is a storytelling community centered on the sharing of human adult fantasies. While we do not have a policy against using tools to help with the writing process (i.e. spellcheck, grammar suggestions, etc.), we do ask that all stories published on the site at this time be written primarily by a human. Please see this FAQ for more information: https://literotica.com/faq/publishing/publishing-ai If you have additional thoughts about AI and the future of erotica publishing, you may want to open a discussion with other authors in the Literotica Author Support Forum: https://forum.literotica.com/forums/authors-hangout.3/

In the story I had a small stanza of a song - maybe fifteen words - written by chat gpt. I clearly mentioned that it was written by chat gpt but seems like even that is a no no atm.
So... If you're using chat gpt or something analogous to write your stories, keep this in mind.

 

[nice90sguy]

I clearly mentioned that it was written by chat gpt

If you hadn't mentioned it, they probably wouldn't have flagged it. Unless...

 

[Jackie.Hikaru]

If you hadn't mentioned it, they probably wouldn't have flagged it. Unless...

Maybe I should take a Turing test? Or the Voight-Kampff just to be really sure

 

[rosebudliquor]

Honestly, I have no idea who, if anyone is doing such a thing. Are we talking about Lit authors?

Bob Dylan's been doing it for a long time.

 

[rosebudliquor]

This is mostly a response to VoBoy's edict: You're welcome eschew any tools you like. Here on Lit, since all is done for the writer's satisfaction, I don't think one person's dictates need to restrict another's practice. By VoBoy's rule the only thing Steve Miller wrote in the line "I speak of the Pompetus of love" is the P word. Even that word is based on him mishearing a nonce word someone else created. Did Steve Miller NOT write "The Joker"?
Shakespeare got almost all his plots and characters, and even some phrases we credit him with inventing, from others. Did he not write those plays? West Side Story--did Laurents and Sondheim not write it?
If I ask something like ChatGPT or NovelAI to read all my Lit writings and produce something similar, then I polish that work and submit it as a new one, I'd be giving the AI my favorite part of writing Lit to do, but the work would certainly be mine.
People credit Steve Jobs with saying, "Good artists copy, great artists steal," but Jobs credited Picasso, and others expressed the idea long before him.
Bloom's taxonomy of thinking puts synthesis near the top. That's the creative act, but it is also taking multiple things and putting them together to make something new. The making can include using new tools.

 

[Voboy]

This is mostly a response to VoBoy's edict: You're welcome eschew any tools you like. Here on Lit, since all is done for the writer's satisfaction, I don't think one person's dictates need to restrict another's practice. By VoBoy's rule the only thing Steve Miller wrote in the line "I speak of the Pompetus of love" is the P word. Even that word is based on him mishearing a nonce word someone else created. Did Steve Miller NOT write "The Joker"?
Shakespeare got almost all his plots and characters, and even some phrases we credit him with inventing, from others. Did he not write those plays? West Side Story--did Laurents and Sondheim not write it?
If I ask something like ChatGPT or NovelAI to read all my Lit writings and produce something similar, then I polish that work and submit it as a new one, I'd be giving the AI my favorite part of writing Lit to do, but the work would certainly be mine.
People credit Steve Jobs with saying, "Good artists copy, great artists steal," but Jobs credited Picasso, and others expressed the idea long before him.
Bloom's taxonomy of thinking puts synthesis near the top. That's the creative act, but it is also taking multiple things and putting them together to make something new. The making can include using new tools.

It’s an opinion. It’s certainly not an edict.

Write however you like. But don’t pretend an AI-written piece is a rosebudliquor-written piece.

As for your Steve Miller reference, I don’t quite get it. I’m talking about stories (or, in that context, songs), not individual words. Nor even phrases.

 

[TadOverdon]

 

[nice90sguy]

That's actually,

"Have an AI have a person and an AI describe a garden of flowers."

Now This is "Have a person (me) have an AI have a person and an AI describe a garden of flowers.":


AI: "The garden is a riot of color, with every shade of the rainbow..". etc

Person: "Fuck you".

 

[TadOverdon]

If you took a test but needed an app to give you the answers, did you pass the test?
If you use the parking features that come with the big penis compensation trucks to park, did you park it?
If you need a GPS to get you somewhere did you get yourself there?

Okay, if you'll pardon me - that's a bit oversimplified because it uses the parallel construction of three sentences to suggest that they're describing similar processes. They are not - exactly.

If you took a test but needed an app to give you the answers, did you pass the test?

This is clear cut. We all agree, I hope, that this is cheating. Even if you get away with it and "pass the test" in the eyes of the proctors, you've cheated and didn't complete the assignment honestly.

If you use the parking features that come with the big penis compensation trucks to park, did you park it?

Am I behind the wheel, operating the controls and monitoring myself and the vehicle and its surroundings to the best of my ability? If so, yes I parked it. What I'm doing is parking the truck while sensibly using modern safety technology to avoid errors. It's a responsible, albeit not absolutely necessary, approach to parking. It does not involve me letting the car "park itself."

If, on the other hand, I take Elon Musk's word for it that my car is not a Cylon and that Nothing Can Possibly Wrong, I am not parking my car - despite which, they won't have any difficulty holding me responsible in court for whatever destruction my failure to be parking my car results in.

(Okay, I just looked up the Big D Compensation features on the Super Duty F-250. I want all of these on my 2007 sedan, immediately. I feel not a twinge of genital inadequacy about it).

Go back seventy years. Am I driving a car if I'm letting the automatic transmission in the car shift gears for me instead of using the manual transmission that God revealed to the automotive priesthood of an earlier generation?

My dad drove cars that had a small driver's-side rear-view mirror that was not adjustable. Nothing on the passenger's side. No proximity sensors, no cameras, obviously, etc. etc. I don't happen to think that he was parking his car and I am not parking mine. I think that in both cases we're making use of the available technology to assist us to do the best job of parking that we can.

If you need a GPS to get you somewhere did you get yourself there?

No, not entirely. I'm relying upon the assistance of a navigator to simplify my life. The major difference here between a human copilot and GPS is that GPS is right and knows where it's going more often than my SO, and doesn't give me attitude if I miss a turn.

So, again: no, I didn't "get there myself," but there's no shame or test of character attached to using available assistance to navigate. I'll spare everyone the gendered jokes about some people being too hilariously stubborn to ask for directions because, supposedly, it makes them less of...whatever it is that's important to them. If you're all nice to me.

Anyway, the issues raised by AI generation of text and imagery don't perfectly match any of those examples. And I think the far more interesting and important conversations about all of this have to do with human creators' rights and copyright.

Instead of asking "Is it mine (No)," the meaningful question is "Whose was it?" Focusing the debate on the morality and "inevitability" of human beings utilizing components that are generated by what is to most of us a black box process spares us - if we don't examine it closely - the awareness of our responsibility for respecting the ownership rights of other writers and artists.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Anyway, the issues raised by AI generation of text and imagery don't perfectly match any of those examples. And I think the far more interesting and important conversations about all of this have to do with human creators' rights and copyright.

Instead of asking "Is it mine (No)," the meaningful question is "Whose was it?" Focusing the debate on the morality and "inevitability" of human beings utilizing components that are generated by what is to most of us a black box process spares us - if we don't examine it closely - the awareness of our responsibility for respecting the ownership rights of other writers and artists.

My two cents' worth: much of the discourse I've seen (not just here) about "ownership" of art is muddied by conflating two different questions. Those questions being "does X own this work?" and "does X get to eat?"

If we were able to separate those questions and provide a satisfactory answer to the second one, I suspect the discussions around the first would be more amiable and productive than they currently are. It's easier to have a nuanced position on AI-assisted creation when it's not threatening to put you out of pocket.

 

[XerXesXu]

If you took a test but needed an app to give you the answers, did you pass the test?

This is clear cut. We all agree, I hope, that this is cheating. Even if you get away with it and "pass the test" in the eyes of the proctors, you've cheated and didn't complete the assignment honestly.

I think you guys must be (like me) rather old.

Very few tests, these days, don't give you the answers. 2 or 3 incorrect answers are also added to give the student pause to think. That's how medical doctors qualify to practice.

If you've ever wondered what the docs are doing when sat across the desk from you tapping on a keyboard, they're consulting Dr Google.

As for the rest, I agree.

 

[XerXesXu]

Those questions being "does X own this work?" and "does X get to eat?"

Yes, now that the benevolent,' we wish to make a free gift of our work to mankind' has worn off, and the 'benefactors' wish to monetise what's anticipated to become a mega-billion industry, all the pigs have come to trough to demand their share. That's the tenor of the litigation presently in process.

My guess is, there'll be a consensus between the pigs about fair shares, and that will be adopted by the Courts. The end users will get their benefeit by throwing a few coins in the trough.

 

[SimonDoom]

You don't give your opinion on copying poems and lyrics and classical passages. I'd be interested to have it.

There are two different issues: plagiarism, which is passing off someone else's work as your own, and copyright infringement, the unauthorized copying of another's copyrighted work. Plagiarism is an ethical problem. Copyright infringement is a legal, and for many, ethical, problem.

If a character of mine in a story quotes a poem, it's not plagiarism, because I, the author, am not trying to pass off the quoted words as my own. If I lift lines from the novels of Dickens and insert them into my own novel in a sneaky way to make it look like the lines are my own, then it could be plagiarism.

On the other hand, if I have a character in a story quote an entire poem of Dylan Thomas, that's probably copyright infringement, and it's probably prohibited, even if it's clear in the passage that the character in the work is attributing it to Dylan Thomas. An author can quote and sample small portions of songs and poems without it constituting infringement, because it would probably be found to be a fair use of the work.

Unfortunately, there's no definitive guideline for exactly how much of a poem or song or other work one can take and put in one's own work and be confident that it's a fair use. It's murky. So your best course is to keep the use minimal.

A crucial point that many people do not understand is that if it's copyright infringement, it is not cured by giving attribution. If you don't have permission, you don't have permission.

I'm free to lift lines from Dickens and put them into my work as a matter of law, because his works are in the public domain and not subject to copyright. If I wrote a character who quoted long passages from Shakespeare, that would be neither plagiarism nor infringement. There would be nothing illegal or unethical about it.

Some uses are plagiarism but not copyright infringement, and some uses are copyright infringement but not plagiarism. Some uses are both, and some uses are neither.

 

[XerXesXu]

and some uses are neither.

Exactly. 8Letters use was neither.

My other point was that other copiers of others peoples' work were one or another, or both.