Nowadays robots or machines, whether applicance or mobile phones, are known for featuring mechanical and repetitive tasks that people don’t like or take lot of effort and time. Their value is linked entirely and directly to this approach.
But something that has been the subject of research for computer scientists and engineers for a long time, is whether machines can also perform original and surprising work as humans do.
Already in the eighteenth century, in the early beginnings of robotics, some robots were designed to mimic human creative processes. In 1730, French inventor Frenchman Jacques de Vaucanson exhibited a mechanical man playing songs with a flute and a tambourine. Other inventors created robots capable of elaborating drawings or write poetry in several languages. All these ingenious machines did was to simulate creativity, playing something that had been previously scheduled, as could make a printer or media player.
Today, with the latest advances in artificial intelligence, computers are already able to perform such complex tasks as writing newspaper articles.
A recent study at the University of Karlslad in Sweden found that the texts generated by software were considered more objective, clear and nice that items made by a professional journalist, just that the absence of the human factor makes them more boring.
The ability of machines to create unique and entertaining content is a target for Professor Philip Parker, of the Insead business school. He already created a software that has generated more than a million books and articles to date, featuring several subjects such as 60-Milligram Containers of Fromage Frais or a Guide to Romanian Crosswords. According to Professor Parker, any genre of fiction that can be played with simple guidelines, it can also be created by a computer.
In fact, there are already several fiction articles and book created entirely by a computer, such as True Love novel, published in 2008 by Alexander Prokopovich , considered the first robot-novel ever, based on Anna Karenina book but with a surreal style. Nevertheless, Prokopovich thinks his own program “will never become an author, as Photoshop will never be Raphael.”
Even if we are still far from being able to compare the creative ability of a machine to the human, it does seem that new techniques in computer science and artificial intelligence can provide new ways of telling stories. This opens the door to exploration of very interesting new possibilities and interactive experiences,
We’ll talk longer about his topic; in next posts will discuss these possibilities and how they are affecting the development of our Storyteller project.
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