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by avip 2680 days ago
I've just read i.e https://twitter.com/gdb/status/1096098366545522688 and even though it's "best of 25" (I guess cherry-picked by a human) - this is mind-blowing. I am actually having a very hard time believing this is legit generated text.
4 comments

I couldn't be more disappointed with this bullshit honestly. The texts have almost zero coherence and keep repeating the same patterns (which they presumably learned from the data set) over and over again. If this is their best out of 25 samples then they aren't going to fool anyone.

>Recycling is NOT good for the world.

>It is bad for the environment,

>it is bad for our health,

>and it is bad for our economy.

>Recycling is not good for the environment.

>Recycling is not good for our health.

>Recycling is bad for our economy.

>Recycling is not good for our nation.

The first paragraph keeps repeating the <X> is <bad | not good> for the <Y> pattern 8 times.

>And THAT is why we need to |get back to basics| and |get back to basics| in our recycling efforts.

"get back to the basics" is repeated twice in the same sentence.

>Everything from the raw materials (wood, cardboard, paper, etc.),

>to the reagents (dyes, solvents, etc.)

>to the printing equipment (chemicals, glue, paper, ink, etc.),

>to the packaging,

>to the packaging materials (mercury, chemicals, etc.)

>to the processing equipment (heating, cooling, etc.),

>to the packaging materials,

>to the packaging materials that are shipped overseas and

>to the packaging materials that are used in the United States.

It literally repeated packaging 5 times in the same sentence and the overall structure was repeated 9 times. Also what type of packaging is based on mercury?

The parts you criticise are the parts I was most impressed with. These sorts of repetitions can be persuasive in writing/arguments, and it's impressive to me that a model learned this type of writing.
> These sorts of repetitions can be persuasive in writing/arguments

That is the saddest part. It's not because AI is good, it's because we count saying "X is good/bad" 3 times as a persuasive argument. It won't be hard to learn this kind of "arguing", it's just sad that's what we're teaching our AIs to do and get excited when they do it.

> saying "X is good/bad" 3 times as a persuasive argument

I didn't say that it's a persuasive argument, I said that it can be persuasive IN arguments. There's nothing sad about an AI learning it, or people being happy with it, it's very impressive.

Why? It is pretty much a well juxtaposed mix of random internet comments. And it's the best of 25, which means the other 24 is even more regular internet banter noisy.

(This of course doesn't make it an amazing feat of computer engineering.)

The overarching narrative is great, but that's probably driven by the great antithesis supplied by the experimenter.

It'd be interesting to know how this works, what happens if less or more is given as thesis/antithesis/assignment, and after how much output it turns into gibberish (or repeats).

Definitely impressive work, but the fact that this is hard to distinguish from human text, if true, is pretty sad for humans. Even sadder if anyone reading this could be swayed by such an argument.

Heck, maybe having to compete with this will raise human discourse (Joking).

It's impressive in terms of having a coherent flow - there is a clearly stated "opinion" in the beginning and everything that follows is in support of that opinion. However, the dead giveaway is that there is zero reasoning, just related statements linked together.
I read it and found it to be a bunch of walking in circles and repetitive baloney. It starts with a bunch of claims that is just the reversal of a pro-recycling poster and then goes into a repetitive meandering exploration about paper being made from materials, which is made from another materials. Probably something a model would regurgitate if fed with some popular literature about recycling. The most astonishing fact for me is that people actually think it's somehow surprisingly good.