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Study 028 - The Great Automatic Grammatizator (Patreon)

Published:
2023-01-27 14:52:00
Imported:
2026-06
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Roald Dahl predicts creative writing by Artificial Intelligence in The Great Automatic Grammatizator!

Special thanks to our reader, Doug Raffety!

Next up: a bonus episode on the Lovecraft adaptations in Cabinet of Curiosities!

Comments

Mark Simmons

Wow, that was quite a ride, and what a great ending! Thank y'all for highlighting this eerily topical (and satisfyingly strange) story. As a dystopian tale about mechanised creativity, it reminds me of Kurt Vonnegut's "Player Piano" and Ari Folman's movie "The Congress" (but apparently not the original Lem story). In these stories, the humans have to sign contracts ceding their livelihood to their machine replacements - that seems a little naive compared to 21st-century business practices, but I guess it's more dramatically satisfying. Two things that amused me this episode: The fact that Knipe starts off as a frustrated creator but finds his true calling as a destroyer of the craft of writing, which is quite the character arc. And also the new-to-me term "search engine organic" - at first I assumed this was just a euphemism for "Search Engine Optimization" (SEO), and if so, I kind of like it because that makes it creepy and Orwellian.

Cheshire Rogue

I’ve got to say, I was always indifferent towards the idea of IA generated art until I came across art that I thought was by one of my favorite artists only to find out it wasn’t their work but rather an AI imitation. So now I agree it’s a real grey area that needs to be watched real closely

The Aaron Campbell Studio

AI imagery or writing will never become a respected or viable artform for the same reason that AI robots will never replace athletes. People are drawn to art for the same reason they are drawn to sports - the pursuit of human excellence. No one would care if a robot climbs El Capitan without harnesses and ropes but when Alex Honnold did it, it was astounding. No one would care if an algorithm spit out the Sistine chapel. But we are overwhelmed when we learn a man did this over 500 years ago. We could care less what stories an algorithm has to tell, but the words of HP Lovecraft have captivated generations of dreamers. Humans will always strive for human connection. There is no human connection in algorithms only novelty. And as far as art goes that is all it will ever be.

Philip Cowan

A great month of stories, ending with a real chill, right in the last line of this tale, which - I believe - holds the key to Dahl’s ‘philosophy’ of writing. I might be reading too much into this, but Adolf Hitler was a second-rate artist who reaped endless misery, crushing the human spirit with his war machine. Is the dictator the inspiration for this Adolph who is a bad writer with no imagination and is happy to destroy everyone who is creative? Is there a theme here? It is imagination that makes us human, and even if you bludgeon your husband to death or knock off young tenants, there is a modicum of virtue in you if you can act imaginatively? I love the way Dahl sets a scene or creates a character with just a few lines, but even here, the virtue is in imagination - he leaves it to us the reader to conjure it all up in our own head.

Steven Vincent

The Tales of the Unexpected TV show was a big part of my teenage years growing in eastern Canadian way back in the 80s. I remember it so well. At the time I had no idea who the old skinny guy who introduced the stories was supposed to be but I really enjoyed the show. Each episode was uniquely weird, creepy, scary, or just plain oddball. It spoke to my naturally macabre scene of humor and inner love for all things horror and darkly fantastic. I would not learn till many years later that the old skinny guy was Roald Dahl the famous author of so many popular books. Life is full of surprises.

nils hedglin

We just had an official directive at my computer company saying we cannot use chatGPT to write any kind of computer code. There is a serious concern that copyrighted code could have been used to train the program, so that copyrighted code could show up if we use it and we would be liable. This is already happened in a similar more focused programming AI bot and there are outstanding lawsuits against it because it has produced copyrighted code.

Jack Saul

Dahl really predicts a lot of the contemporary commentary on AI- it doesn't need to be good, just good enough that you can sack people. I wonder if the story also feeds into Dahl's hatred of films of his work. That idea of signing your name over to a creating machine that uses your name, feeds you starving children but which isnt you and you dont control could be a desription of authors' relationships with Hollywood when their works get optioned. He hated the Gene Wilder Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and wrote Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, where the protagonist is menaced by flexible alien sausage monsters, as an attempt to create something that no one would be able to film- a thing "the machine"could not replicate. It worked too, but largely because its not very good and so no one wants to film it. Although give Netlfix time.

Clownf1st

Erotic -> Army Days -> Faulkner

Jeremey Guttilla

I’m ok with ai and robots as long as the people who own them don’t decide 90% of of are unnecessary, the sad thing is they won’t have to do anything except take all the jobs and wait for us to starve unless we alter the economic systems that underpin our society.

The Spider Incident

"This story is more about the conversation that it sparks than the text itself." You hit the nail on the head there for one of the things that makes a good science fiction story, a good science fiction story! I teach at a community college, and chatbots are a huge topic of discussion right now. I agree with Chad that some of the ways we evaluate a student's understanding of course material needs to change--but the existence of chatbots is only a minor factor. (The establishment of higher education has lots of issues, mostly due to having its roots in power structures that were very much about controlling who had access to knowledge...but I digress.) Anyway, things term papers are not just about conveying what you know, but also how you communicate that information. Writing assignments do have their place, even with the advent of advanced chatbots. I'm seeing many of my colleagues spending more class time on independent writing, instead of the writing being an out-of-class assignment that gets turned in; in addition to the benefit of the professor being right there to help students out when the student needs it, you'd be hard-pressed to use a chatbot when the professor is right there with you!

Jeremy Impson

Chad I appreciate the allusion you made between sound engineers of past vs the power nearly equivalent skill was can buy as software today. I also appreciate the similar comparison to what American "company towns" went through in the twentieth century. It's very true that change is inevitable, and that includes what we have to do to survive. You are right to be worried, but we cannot allow it to be inevitable that the job of being an artist will go away and they will be left with an overall reduction in the quality of life as they are replaced by AI. The examples of the de-industrialization in the 1900s are exactly what we should be talking about. The town I was born in never recovered from the loss of the local factories. And the town I'm in now is starting to suffer similarly, as evidenced by a decline in infrastructure. As a kid in the 80s, we were told that we had been freed to become knowledge workers, and that's why everyone was trying to get into college. At the same time, the economic change was allowed to undermine the social and legal protections we used to have. I remember being told that professional engineering and other "knowledge work" were simply incompatible with unions .Flash forward 40 years, here we are living in the results of that propaganda.

Jeremy Impson

I want to thanks Chad and Chris for pointing out how AI tools have the potential to enable a new level of personal creativity. As some of my other comments to this episode reveal, I get caught up in the negative aspects of AI and unrestrained capitalism. I certainly hope AI technology is open and accessible. It actually isn't right now, but I expect this to change soon once the understanding of the new approaches becomes better understood by the open source community. There will be a longer journey to get fair and open access to training materials, however. I do also want to say how I didn't expect Chris to be so open to this possibly. I earlier discussions about the definition of Art, and Chris tended to feel that Art was inherently more than "the work rendered by a person".

Jim Cannon

Oh I guess I am a total luddite when it comes to this stuff. "Art" can only be produced by a human being - or maybe a gorilla or elephant with access to paints - but an AI can only generate "product." Humans can churn out product, too, don't get me wrong. There are millions of James Patterson and Star Wars novels to prove that. But when you want "art," you need to go to an artist. Like, if you want a print of something or a t-shirt design or some consumable Disney crap, you don't need a human being at the tiller. You can plug an AI into Rembrandt or Vivaldi and you can get a facsimile back, but its not going to be a Rembrandt or Vivaldi.

Jason Thompson

Peter Watts’ “Blindsight” novels depict a near future where AI essentially runs humanity— not as evil overlords but simply because why would you ever not follow the AI’s suggestions when humans are so much worse at everything? And this leads to a general ennui and despair about the pointlessness of being human. This is only the backdrop to the main plot, which is about first contact with aliens.

Michael Cunliffe

OK, AI and the creative function, here we go… In one of my roles I am the creative lead at a visual arts studio for people experiencing mental health issues and have been doing a lot of work around the specific action of how creativity creates a positive mental state. It is very common for people to begin their journey by wanting to recreate a specific artwork, genre, or item that they have seen and set this duplication as a criteria for success, which rarely pans out and is based on the concept of art as product (I want to make this *thing*). Instead we work hard to engage people in the process of creativity - understanding how time spent making art is valuable regardless of what the final piece may be like (I have enjoying *making*). In psychological terms this is about creating a Flow state, placing the individual in a state of mind where the daily struggles are temporarily forgotten while the full attention is placed in the creative process. From this perspective an AI art generator is likely useless (although id be willing to explore the question) as it produces a product without the engaging process and the resulting psychological relief. The machine makes an item, but the value of making the item is lost. The closest comparison I can make is knitting - a pastime that is often referred to as relaxing and enjoyable, but if you just want a knitted jumper it is quicker and cheaper to get one in a shop.

Darth Pseudonym

Every creator I've ever heard speak about their motivation has referenced, in some sense, that they feel a deep creative need, a spark, that demands an outlet. For some people it's writing, for some it's music, for some it's painting or comics or film, but they seem to all have a deep drive to make things that is, maybe, not present in other people. I don't seem to have that spark, myself -- I can create, but I don't feel a great joy in doing it that artists seem to have. I could see the temptation of using a machine to do the hard part for some people, for the struggling artist whose skills are mediocre for one reason or another and are frustrated by the gap between what they want to make and what actually happens. But at the same time I just can't see AI-generated work being at all satisfying for somebody who has that need to create. It's not like ghostwriting is a new thing, or commissioning a painting. Why would AI-generated art be any different from paying somebody to do the job for you? Surely the emotional value is in the doing. Yes, AI generated art might submarine the value of real hand-crafted art, but the idea that an artist would be happy just pushing a button to make art happen seems contrary to the very core of what being a creative person is about. This story kind of made me wonder how Dahl saw himself, as an artist, at this point in his career. Was he getting tired of it, wishing he had a button to just crank out stories without the need to make it all happen for him?

Pearce Duncan

On the idea of Chris writing a graphic novel and an AI writing the sequel. That could work for “more of the same” kinds of series but could there be a scenario where, for example, Tolkien wrote The Hobbit, plugged it into an AI and it came out with Lord of the Rings? Or if you gave it Before Sunrise and it was able to give you first Before Sunset and then Before Midnight? Heck, has an AI come up with a really good joke yet?

Nic Wassell

This is perhaps just a question of sophistication, but it's hard to imagine an AI ever coming up with something that isn't designed to please. But there are lots of subcultures that arise out of seeing yourself in opposition to the mainstream. Could an AI ever feel the need to invent Punk? Or Juggalos? Or 80s video nasties? Once they exist, they could be paraphrased by an AI for sure, but I think you have to have feelings to know how to make them grate, and I think a lot of artistic creation relies on that skill. Maybe thought it's simply true generally that an AI could only ever imitate art that already exists and never come up with something new. It would be an interesting experiment - could you feed an AI all the music leading up to the 1920s and see if it comes up with jazz on its own?

Nickthulhu

Guys, it was all true about Dracula making that chicken! On a whim, I decided to give Chatgpt a try and this is what happened: My prompt: "In the epistolary format, write me a lost section of the novel Dracula where Johnathan Harker discovers Count Dracula cooking chicken in the castle’s kitchen, from the point of view of Johnathan Harker, and add much confusion, nuance, paranoia, and overt stupidity to the scene— effectively written in the sophisticated style of late nineteenth century English speech." Chatgpt's Output: "My dear Mina, It is with much distress and confusion that I write to you today. I have stumbled upon a most peculiar and disturbing sight in the castle's kitchen. I must admit, I am at a loss for words to describe the bizarre scene I encountered. As I roamed the castle, I chanced upon the kitchen and was aghast to find none other than Count Dracula himself, clad in a simple apron, tending to a crackling fire in the hearth. And what should I spy in his hand but a plump, golden-brown fowl, turning on a spit over the open flame! I must admit, I was struck by the absurdity of the situation. Here I was, imprisoned in this accursed castle, my every movement monitored by this enigmatic figure, and yet he should choose to spend his time in the kitchen, preparing a simple meal. I stood frozen, struck by the incongruity of the situation, and it was only as I watched him baste the chicken with a mixture of herbs and spices that I realized the sheer absurdity of my thoughts. I mean to say, what manner of man is this, who would spend his time cooking fowl when he could be indulging in more nefarious pursuits? I watched him in fascination, unable to tear my gaze from the scene, and I must confess, I felt a creeping paranoia take hold of me. Was this some manner of ruse, some ploy to put me off my guard? I couldn't shake the feeling that I was missing something, that there was more to this scene than met the eye. And yet, as I stood there, watching the Count work with such practiced ease, I found myself wondering if perhaps I was being overly foolish. Could it be that he was simply a man, like any other, who enjoyed preparing a meal for himself? In the end, I was forced to leave the kitchen, my head filled with a maelstrom of conflicting thoughts and emotions. I find myself now, hours later, still struggling to make sense of the scene I encountered, and I fear my confusion only grows with each passing moment. Yours in perplexity, Jonathan Harker."

It's a Ghost.

Speaking of writers writing in the style of others, Knipe was clearly writing his short story in the style of Edward Bulwer-Lytton...or maybe just rewriting Bulwer-Lytton’s story using similar but different words.

Eduardo Garcia

I'm a computer programmer, until a few years I was like Chad: "Everything is fine, as long as I can control this thing", i.e. I was on the other side of things, teaching the computer how to take other people´s jobs. But now, things like Github's Copilot can use AI to write code, do my job!! Now I know, like Chris said, all of our jobs can be replaced by a machine. Anyways, great show guys!

hontzlake

There's some overlap between this story and Gene Wolfe's novella 'Seven American Nights.' The writing machine isn't exactly in the spotlight but part of the story's effect comes from that unsettling feeling Chad was talking about when you realize what you're reading is implied to be a forgery produced by the device you're reading about. Also, as far as style goes, Gene Wolfe definitely cranked up the 'obscure word' setting so high he broke the dial.

Science Doctor, PhD

I find the discussion of "Can AI [as we know it now] produce art?" to be really interesting. My analogy has always been that an artist could drop a carton of eggs on the ground and potentially add context that would make it art. If, alternatively, there were an earthquake and the carton of eggs fell on the ground there would be no context (unless applied by an outside person) so that would not be art. Similarly, if a baby smeared paint all over the wall I would say it is not art (or at least not in a way we can discern) because there is no reason to presume purpose or intention was involved. There may be purpose that we cannot know because we cannot know their mind, and an outside observer could impart purpose (The 'joy' of parenting, the raw creative nature of infancy, etc.) but on its own, absent any sort of context, it would not be art. If a future "Data-like" AI were to exist, one that could mimic the way that humans think and engage in the world to a profound degree, then I think they would be able to make art, because there would be intention and purpose.

Steve

I think the problem with much of the arguments is that they compound two (or perhaps more) different things, creativity and capitalism. There are many ways in which art can be created, not all of it by humans. And then there's the economic issue, will I have a job? The answer one to the second one is, ultimately, no. There's very little reason for people to have to have jobs, unless they enjoy them or have some misguided work ethic. With slightly better AI, pretty much all production could be controlled with very little oversight by automated systems. Of course, capitalism will at first see to it that this doesn't happen. We'll all be in various services, such as podcasting, running games, fixing things where it's difficult for robots to go, or that are difficult to insure.

Shadavid

I may be misunderstanding CBST's point, but I'm reading them as stating that if I don't know the intention and purpose behind a creation I cannot determine if it's art or not. I recklessly engage with all sorts of creations, having all sorts of thoughts and emotions sometimes of an intense nature. Mostly I've not done research into the intentions and purpose of the artist. Sometimes I suppose I can see what the intention and purpose is, but that's just supposition. I'm clearly doing something when this happens, but within the suggested definition I'm not engaging with it as 'art'. It occurs to me that a more pithy way to phrase this is; Is the author ever dead?

Shadavid

Maybe the AI will be able to either see what we can do that it cannot or be able to help us be at ease with ourselves. Unless we are struck down in or close to our prime we all face a period in our lives where our productivity and usefulness diminishes. I hazard that most of us have or have had people in our lives that this has happened to. What we felt or feel about them (ourselves?) may point to what we need to address as a culture.

Tomas Rawlings

AI tech is clearly a huge topic and this was a great exploration of the themes. I'd add some of the most exciting/scary stuff comes when we're mixing new technology and allowing AI to do things, not that we can do well, but that our brain in limited in function for. So using DeepMind to help with fusion research; that is mindblowing in posibilities! https://www.wired.com/story/deepmind-ai-nuclear-fusion/

Rafe Ball

The AI replacing writers reminds me of a Judge Dredd story from some years back (that received a couple of sequels), "The Art of Kenny Who?" - there's a recent article on the story here: https://www.thegutterreview.com/but-who-is-the-artist-the-kenny-who-trilogy-and-the-reality-of-ai-art/ Also, not sure if this may have been mentioned on an earlier episode, but there has already been a short horror movie written by an AI, "Mr. Puzzles Wants You To Be Less Alive", as part of the "Netflix by Bots" series: https://theawesomer.com/bot-writes-a-horror-movie/642667/

Sweatin' to the Great Oldies

I haven't the slightest issue with AI as a tool to create art. Or ascribing ownership of the art to the person who prompted the machine to do what it does. I don't mind photographers using cameras to create stunning artwork despite having no talent whatsoever for drawing or painting. I don't mind film editors who use digital editing facilities and couldn't cut celluloid worth a darn. I don't mind animators who use computers to fill in the blanks between key frames. I don't think writers are cheating when they engage spell-check and grammar-check software. For what it's worth, I also don't have any issue with folks who run around a track with the aid of a car equipped with computers that monitor pressure and tire temperature and regulate fuel consumption and... I don't even have a problem with people using AI to generate first versions of legal contracts (a good starting point for a meeting with a lawyer) or school essays (a good starting point for class discussions) or to put together a stunning presentation (which you'll still need to perform). We should use the tools we've developed. Some will end up art. Others will be entertaining. Much will be no better than my doodles or snapshots or, heck, the intellectual quality of this here post. And that's fine. We do need to make sure everyone gets to work if they want to work. And that everyone has enough of everything so that they don't have to work if they don't want to. AI can be a tool to make that happen. Won't be easy. But then, it never was.

Adequately Excellent Entertainment

I like the idea of the machine needing to have an operator working a pedal, because it likens it to a loom. So the transformation of art into a commodity follows a similar path to the industrial revolution. On the subject of the more genre writers being more receptive to the idea of using the machine than the "artoure" authors I found this episode very timely as last month for the Comic Book reading club at my work chose the theme of "Pulp" so we read stories from Zorro and The Shadow. One of my coworkers pointed out that The Shadow story was very wordy because pulp authors were paid basically a penny per word. So to make any kind of reasonable living, the creator of The Shadow, Walter B Gibson, had to (and did) write "a novel a month for years and years", and for at least some amount of time wrote two novels a month (according to Wikipedia anyway). There are apparently stories of Gibson, having spent so much time thinking so intensely about the Shadow that he started seeing him around the house. Considering how prolific one had to be go get that "$1000 per story" and make an actual living on it, I think Dahl hit the nail on the head with who would be into the very idea.

Philadelphia Phil

So far, all the discourse I've heard in my life regarding Artificial Intelligence has been in the context of Capitalism: that is, how can we manufacture and monetize human-level intellect to perform the various tasks with which we might get paid. Dahl points us toward this direction using his characters, who don't see writing as self-expression, but as a "creative urge" that is fulfilled not by making art that is true to themselves, but by creating art that is validated through capital gain. As such, that "creative urge" kind of sounded like BS to me. Automation and taking people's jobs away, or taking the artist's ability to sell art for money away. Already AI has infiltrated the art-sphere simply because AI acts as yet another apparatus for capital gain, and that may be why it seems like some kind of miracle when an artist manages to create a truly moving piece. Often, it requires an inhuman obsession (I say 'inhuman' because the obsession removes the very human anxiety: "oh my god I am wasting my time I will never get paid for this and my 9 children will starve") or it requires the artist to already possess the means to feed and house themselves, to insure their own security so as to freely express themselves through their art. In that way, they are the artist may ignore that ever-present "golden contract" which seemed, to me, to represent the artist selling their creative integrity for money and security, a transaction I would never fault anyone for making but is nonetheless tragic. No artist should be forced to interact with Capital in order to express themselves, because Capital is inherently a coercive, usurious, and enslaving force, and our ideas for technological capabilities are all wrapped up in this Capitalist lens on life and what it means to be a person.

Z.A. Kahan

"They're either a benefit or a hazard. If they're a benefit, it's not my problem."