What's funny to me though, is that even the people who are generally supportive of advancing this kind of technology end up running down the same path. I read a post from Hugh Howey on the ramifications of AI in the writing world, and he posed the question, "How could computers ever learn to be creative?" I get that he was just making a point, but to me that's the entirely wrong question to be asking. What's interesting about it is that it appears that much of the research at least as far as creative writing is concerned is basically asking that same question: how can we get algorithms to BE creative. It made me think of the "Fundamental Theorem of Biomedical Informatics."
It seems doctors used to have the same conundrum (some still do...). No matter how advanced computers get, and no matter how much things we used to do start to get automated, when it comes down to it, having computers replace people entirely is almost always a bad idea (in my opinion). Because they can't think for themselves, they can't be creative, and they can't foresee every possible scenario, it's always better to have humans deal with the human decisions. Doctors should do the doctoring. Computers are great at making a process easier, by doing the mundane everyday things that actually inhibit a human's ability to make decisions--and I say, the more of that stuff they can take care of the better. But it works best when it's enhancing the human's ability to do his job, not replacing him.
Which brings me back to writing. Howey mentioned in his post that there are already tools out there to automatically generate names, plot points, and so forth. Writers are already using these, and no one considers their works to have been written by a computer. I don't think the question should be about whether or not computers can be creative (or psychopathic...), but whether they can help people do their jobs better. The technology is already there, and as has already been amply noted, algorithms are already being used to generate text for news reports and sporting events and in other areas. What amazes me is that it's not already being used to help writers write faster and better.
Here's a scenario (using current technology, not future): say you already have written a novel or two. You've even written a detailed outline of your third novel, but haven't started writing yet. You've got some modest coding proficiency and some basic knowledge about natural language generation (from the Internet...), and you decide you've probably got a detailed enough outline to be able to determine the general theme (in a keyword or two) of every major paragraph in your story (for an 80,000 word story at 25 words per paragraph on average, say 3200 paragraphs). You take each keyword, run it through every sentence in your previous two novels and pick one at random that contains that keyword (or a synonym), then run the sentence through a loop that replaces the nouns, adjectives, etc. in it with synonyms, then generate two or three more sentences based on those synonyms (or hypernyms, or hyponyms) following the same process. Do that for all 3200 paragraphs and suddenly you have an 80,000 word rough draft.
This is obviously going to give you quite a bit of garbage, but that's what the rewrite is for. You can go through and pull out the stuff that doesn't make sense, add in foreshadowing events, etc. The point is you can make that part of the algorithm as complicated as you want. Better output will require more sophisticated techniques, and methods will naturally improve over time, but once it's up and running, you've got a novel written. Aside from having to spend some more time on the outline and rewrite than you probably normally would have, you've completely skipped the part where you actually write that first draft. And once it's set up you can use it over and over and over....
Some would probably argue, rightfully so, that this takes much of the fun out of the writing experience (as well as much of the quality...). I totally agree with that. After all, the reader is going to have to stretch their brain to make connections between many of the individual sentences. But your outline guarantees that there is an overarching plot line, and the human brain is designed for filling in the gaps to get from A to Z (and it doesn't hurt that readers seem to have lower and lower expectations of writing quality). And what's fun about it for the author, is that the computer didn't write that plot, didn't create those characters. You did. You can still come up with fascinating characters, put them in amazing places, and tell a riveting story about them. With the surplus of story ideas most writers have, I would think this would be a dream machine for many. They can still plod through personally writing the stories they're passionate about, but why not take that wacky side idea and throw it in the generator, just for fun? Why not publish it when it's done (with a pen name if they're worried about that). With how many writers rely on getting as many novels published as quickly as possible in order to pay the bills, I think this will come sooner rather than later. Again, I'm surprised it's not already here.
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