A writing algorithm that finishes stories
“AI writing” is in a rather primitive state these days but the discipline is evolving quite rapidly. A recent development is an algorithm conceived by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) that can finish incomplete stories.
Avoiding generic terms
When it come to generating the end of a story, most current algorithms tend to favor generic sentences, such as “They had a great time,” or “He was sad.” Alan Black, a professor in CMU’s Language Technologies Institute, believes that writing algorithms need to incorporate some keywords into the ending that are related to those used early in the story. The algorithmic model also needs to be rewarded for using some rare words in the ending, in hopes of choosing an ending that is not totally predictable.
Case in point, here’s a story beginning: “Megan was new to the pageant world. In fact, this was her very first one. She was really enjoying herself, but was also quite nervous. The results were in and she and the other contestants walked out.” Existing algorithms generated the following possible…
