What if... The author is an algorithm?

Some Reflections on Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Literature

Mauro Spicci and Timothy Alan Shaw

Il nostro nuovo millennio è stato testimone di un'incredibile e rapida crescita della tecnologia basata sul trattamento delle informazioni attraverso complessi sistemi computerizzati. Ciò che era fantascienza nel passato millennio è ora diventato realtà. Ma la tecnologia e l'intelligenza artificiale possono avere un impatto anche sulla fantasia e sulla composizione letteraria?

Our new millennium has witnessed an incredible, rapid growth in technology based on the handling of information through complex, computerized systems. Responses that have become even more necessary in our rapidly-changing, interconnected world. What was science fiction in the past millennium has now become reality. The benefits are clear for all to see: our pocket-sized smartphones give us immediate access to communication, social interaction, music, photography, navigation, encyclopaedic information, entertainment, banking, health monitoring. The list is long and will only get longer as the years pass.

The buzzword of our time is AI – Artificial Intelligence. We are talking about what is properly described as “narrow” (or weak) artificial intelligence, in which computers exploit algorithms and focus on performing one task well, and much more quickly than the human brain could perform it. This narrow AI might be dedicated to security through facial recognition, to translating from one language to another, to navigating, soon even to driving our cars with a high degree of autonomy. What many researchers are seeking to achieve, however, is what we may call strong or Artificial General Intelligence. While narrow AI may outperform humans at whatever its specific task is, like playing chess or solving equations, AGI would outperform humans at nearly every cognitive task.

There are some who doubt that Artificial General Intelligence will ever be achieved. Others again wonder if we want to achieve this. Is there a risk of generating forms of artificial intelligence that could surpass human intelligence and dominate humankind?

The other fascinating question is whether AI can be developed to move into fields where logic and computational capacity are not paramount. Could an artificial intelligence achieve fantasy, creativity, humour, aesthetic sensibility? Could a machine ever truly substitute an author? What would happen if the author were an algorithm?

We probably imagine that the answer is no – “machines” will not make us laugh, compose music or write (great) literature. We may be in for a surprise as experiments on literary composition in the “hands” of artificial intelligence are already emerging. We wait with bated breath for a new current of writers!

We believe that the best way to approach the topic of the relationship between Artificial Intelligence and writing is to confront it with a concrete example. The first example of a "novel" entirely written by an Artificial Intelligence is 1 The Road, published in 2018 by Jean Boîte Éditions. The novel is considered the first example of a text entirely written and edited by Artificial Intelligence and represents a cultural and literary product that deserves attention and careful reflection.

The activities proposed below are structured as a series of steps:

  • Step 1: Gathering background information about the novel and the context that made it possible;
  • Step 2: Exercising critical thinking through a Thinking Routine;
  • Step 3: Reading and analysing an excerpt from the first narrative text written by Artificial Intelligence;
  • Step 4: Promoting a student-led investigation and organising a debate on the topic of the relationship between writing and Artificial Intelligence.

STEP 1: SOME BACKGROUND INFORMATION

The first activity proposed is the reading and critical analysis of an excerpt from the novel 1 The Road: the passage is introduced by two paragraphs containing some basic information about the “author” (or the “creator”) and the style of the novel itself.

The Author 1 The Road, winner of the IDFA (International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam) DocLab Award for storytelling was created, but not written, by data scientist Ross Goodwin, who before his experiment with artificial intelligence had been a ghost writer, writing speeches for Barack Obama among others. Goodwin used a car fitted with a GPS unit and roof-top camera that fed information into a portable Artificial Intelligence writing machine. As he drove from New York to New Orleans the A.I. wrote captions for the images it recorded. The car is the pen but Goodwin created the machine, uploaded books by his favourite authors that the A.I. could learn from and fixed the rules by which it operates. The product challenges our concepts of writing and authorship as it removes the human element, making us wonder if “tech-art” can be considered art. The text of the novel was printed onto rolls of paper nearly 40 metres long, reminiscent of Jack Kerouac’s first draft of On the Road, which he typed onto a single 36-metre-long scroll.
Style and themes The novel covers three days of driving, beginning with the time setting “It was nine seventeen in the morning, and the house was heavy”. Each entry bears a precise time stamp in the margin like a scientific log. The entries are short, just a few sentences long and are not usually connected to the previous entry. The first day ends: “It was seven minutes after ten in the evening. The station was deserted. The path was already in the sun.” A.I. makes abundant use of time indications and this road novel, which has no plot, is more like a journey through time than space, organized by time of the day rather than by place or destination. The short sections can be strange, sometimes nonsensical but sometimes poetic and profound. As the novel progresses, more sentence structures appear as if the A.I. were learning during the trip.

STEP 2: CRITICAL THINKING

After asking students to gather some essential information about the context of the novel, you can move on to a second phase, in which students are invited to use their critical thinking to explore the marriage of humans and Artificial Intelligence in creative and original ways.
The proposed activity is a well-known Thinking Routine called "See, Think, Wonder," which promotes the exercise of critical thinking from a high-impact visual input.

SEE
  1. ELT-Aprile2021--01-author-CXXDWJWhatcanyou see in the picture?
    (A manand a robot arm)
  2. What is the robot holding?
    (A pen)
  3. What can you see on the board on the left?
    (A piece of paper)
THINK
  1. What do you think the artificial arm is doing?
    (It is writing on a piece of paper)
  2. How do you think the man is feeling?
    (OPEN. SUGGESTED ANSWER: the man may be surprised or even scared)
  3. What makes you think so?
    (He looks amused and surprised)
WONDER
  1. What makes a good writer?
    (OPEN)
  2. Can robots be good writers?
    (OPEN)
  3. Would you ever read a book written by a robot? Why (not)?

STEP 3: READ AND ANALYSE THE EXCERPT

In Step 3 students are asked to read and analyse an excerpt from 1 The Road. The analysis goes through the usual steps of literary analysis (Comprehension, Analysis, Interpretation, Your Voice) and helps students fully understand the stylistic structure and content of the novel.

A.I. Storytelling

The passage you are about to read contains a series of paragraphs produced by Artificial Intelligence in the space of eight minutes.

A.I. Storytelling: On Ross Goodwin’s 1 the Road by Connor Goodwin (pp.48 – 49) >>

 

Comprehension

1. In what part of the day do the actions take place? (In the evening)

2. Is there any identifiable speaking voice? (No, there isn’t)

Analysis

3. What are the main stylistic features of the text? Tick as appropriate:

a. The text is composed of single short paragraphs (x)
b. Paragraphs are disconnected from one another (x)
c. Each paragraph has a title
d. Sentences are short and disconnected from one another (x)
e. Paragraphs contain GPS coordinates (x)
f. Paragraphs are written using a 1st-person narrator
g. There are some examples of reported speech (x)

4. The passing of time is clearly marked in the text. What device is used to make it visible? (The time is written down on the right/left of each paragraph)

5. What evidence can you find in each paragraph about the place where the action takes place? Fill in the chart below.

ELT-Aprile2021_02-Simon-Armitage-tabella01

6. The language used in the paragraphs is rather factual, but sometimes it produces a rather poetic effect. Can you find any examples of “poetic style” in the paragraphs? (The last paragraph is rather poetic)

Interpretation

7. The passage contains some examples of inconsistent / illogical combinations of words.

a. Can you underline them? (“a military apple appeared”; “a street light was standing in the street”; “With the corner of which he had gone to the house”; “twenty or twenty miles away”)
b. What effect do they produce?

i. Estrangement (x)
ii. Confusion (x)
iii. Calmness
iv. Other (specify): …

8. The passage contains two proper names.

a. Can you find them? (Adam; Esau)
b. Where do they come from?

i. American folklore
ii. Comics
iii. The Bible (x)

c. What effect do they produce in the reader?

i. They amuse the reader
ii. They make the reader think the passage has a deep “biblical” meaning (x)
iii. They give the reader the illusion that this is an example of religious prose

d. Is this effect validated by the passage? (No)

9. Some readers have mentioned that 1 the Road reads more like a poem than a novel. Which of the following elements makes it similar to a novel? And which ones to a poem?

Your Voice

10. Would you continue reading the rest of the book? Why (not)? (OPEN)

11. Is there any element in the passage that you have just read that makes you think it was not written by a human? Share your ideas with the rest of the class.

STEP 4: ACTIVE INVESTIGATION & DEBATE

It is now time to explore the topic of the relationship between human intelligence and Artificial Intelligence through an Active Investigation, followed by a Debate exercise designed to further stimulate classroom discussion.

Answer Could AI replace human authors in the future?
The Canadian science-fiction novelist and futurist Karl Schroeder gives his answer to this question in a 2018 interview with Marie Christine Pinault Desmoulins of UNESCO.
Read and answer

Read Schroeder’s reply and answer the questions below.
“I believe that creativity could eventually happen outside of human beings. So I can imagine that AI will be able to create a book worthy of the name, but certainly not in its current form. These will be different kinds of machines, which we have not yet thought up. Today’s computers do not produce meaning, and human intervention is always necessary in the creative process, even if technological devices are becoming more refined and approaching human capabilities.

In my novel, Lady of Mazes, there is a scene where AI is going insane and sets up a kind of creativity bomb that fuels millions and millions of novels of exceptional quality, literally too many for people to read in all their collective lifetimes! And so, what happens to humans? Well, they adapt and continue their own creation.

Imagine that this creative bomb were to explode today. Why would that prevent me from continuing to write new books? Why should I think “me against a million books” and not “me and a million books?” I consider creativity – whatever its origin – an addition, and not a subtraction, to our own existence.

In fact, the notion of replacement is inherent in the concept of value. We could consider that everything can be replaced, according to a given value. As a writer, I could be replaced by a computer that has more commercial success than me. But this reasoning is only valid if commercial success prevails in the value system.

  1. In Schroeder’s opinion, why can computers today not produce creative writing? – Because they do not produce meaning.
  2. His novel Lady of Mazes imagines a future in which AI produces millions of novels of exceptional quality. What would human writers do in this eventuality? – They would adapt and continue their creation.
  3. Does he see creation through AI as a threat? – No, he believes creativity is an addition to our existence.
  4. In the last paragraph what opinion does Schroeder express about the potential success of a computer in his field? – He says that a computer might have more commercial success but commercial success may not be the most important aspect of our value system.
Research the topic and write brief notes

Research the topic and write brief notes about what AI can and cannot (yet) do in the field of creative writing.

You may find these sites interesting:

Now debate the question

The motion is:
“Artificial Intelligence has made incredible progress in our millennium but it will never match human creativity and produce convincing works of art.”

Divide the class into two groups and ask each to prepare short speeches in favour or against the motion. Students can use the material seen above and add their own research and ideas.

CONCLUSION

Advanced technology, machine learning and Artificial Intelligence have progressed in leaps and bounds over the last twenty years and there is no reason to suppose that this progress will be halted or even slowed down.

Our task, as citizens of today and tomorrow, is perhaps to be aware of how AI affects our lives and our security and to make informed choices where possible.

Our world is already a realization of many of the projections and predictions of science fiction and fantasy of the last century. The last and toughest challenge might well be designing computer algorithms capable not only of rapid logical and computational acts but also of imitating qualities that today still distinguish us from AI – true creativity, emotion and empathy, humour and playfulness.

Referenze iconografiche: Panther Media GmbH / Alamy Stock Photo, imageBROKER / Alamy Stock Photo

Mauro Spicci and Timothy Alan Shaw

Mauro Spicci: has a PhD in English Literature. He has taught English both in Italian high schools and universities and has published articles and books on literature, medical humanities and drama.

Timothy Alan Shaw: graduated from Oxford University and the York University Language Teaching Centre. He has 30 years of experience as a teacher and teacher trainer in Italian high schools and has published course books and guided readers in English.