{"id":4745,"date":"2022-09-19T08:26:52","date_gmt":"2022-09-19T15:26:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=4745"},"modified":"2022-09-19T08:26:54","modified_gmt":"2022-09-19T15:26:54","slug":"if-you-give-an-ai-a-writing-prompt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=4745","title":{"rendered":"If You Give an AI a Writing Prompt…"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ok. Fasten your seat belts. I am giving an online writing AI a test drive, using my free trial of a website called Sudowrite<\/a>. I gave the AI a writing prompt from my crazy ideas file, a mere handful of words that I wrote down a very long time ago (I think in the ’90s) and never went back to. Here’s the writing prompt:<\/p>\n

St. Louis Blues<\/p>\n

“Take me to St. Louis,” said the cruise missle in the thick of the bramble patch.<\/p>\n

Howie Hinkle blinked, and put down his machete. “How’s that?” he asked.<\/p>\n

“Take me to St. Louis,” the missle repeated.<\/p>\n

Howie howled. “Paw, dammit, there’s an old water tank in here and it’s talkin’<\/em><\/span> to me!”<\/p>\n

\n

It’s not a great deal to go on, but that was the idea. With a bare hint of a concept, what would Sudowrite do? I could have written some of it myself, or edited it, but I wanted to see what the damned thing could produce solo. 100% of the writing after the prompt was done by the AI. I had hoped to avoid the literary equivalent of Salvador Dali. Well, too bad. Hello Dali…<\/p>\n

\n
St. Louis Blues<\/div>\n

“Take me to St. Louis,” said the cruise missle in the thick of the bramble patch.<\/p>\n

Howie Hinkle blinked, and put down his machete. “How’s that?” he asked.<\/p>\n

“Take me to St. Louis,” the missle repeated.<\/p>\n

Howie howled. “Paw, dammit, there’s an old water tank in here and it’s talkin<\/em>‘ to me!”<\/p>\n

His father, Howard Hinkle Jr., took him for a look. The old tank was rusty and damaged, with a huge gash in it. Penetrating the tank from inside was a cruise missle, with a single eye and a fin on top. A single missile launcher poked through the gash.<\/p>\n

“Who the hell are you?” Howie Jr. asked. “Why do you have a cruise missle?”<\/span><\/p>\n

“My name is Shiloh,” said the voice. “I am a cruise missle, and I will ask you one more time to take me to St. Louis.”<\/span><\/p>\n

“I don’t know where St. Louis is,” said Howie Jr.<\/span><\/p>\n

“I will find it,” said Shiloh. “I am a golem of the Mossad. If you do not help me, I will call my brethren. We will clear the bramble from the road, and from there, we will find you.”<\/span><\/p>\n

“Y-you can’t do that!” Howie Jr. said.<\/p>\n

“If you do not take me to St. Louis, I will call my brethren, and we will take your woman, and we will bring her back to Tel Aviv. We will use her to breed a generation of human-missle golems. You can raise them with your own spector. They will be of your tribe, and they will spread across the land.”<\/p>\n

Howard Hinkle Jr. swallowed, and wiped the sweat from his brow. “If I take you to St. Louis, will you let us alone?” he asked.<\/p>\n

“I will,” said Shiloh.<\/p>\n

“Deal,” said Howie Jr. “Let’s go.”<\/p>\n

Hours later, a police car rolled up, and several officers got out. One pulled Howie Jr. aside.<\/p>\n

“Which way did he go?” he asked.<\/span><\/p>\n

“Er- he went that way,” Howie Jr. said, pointing.<\/span><\/p>\n

“We appreciate your cooperation,” said the officer.<\/span><\/p>\n

“Say,” the officer said, “was that your grandma that was in the hotel room with you?”<\/span><\/p>\n

“Uhh, she’s my wife,” said Howie Jr.<\/span><\/p>\n

“Doesn’t look like a 43 year old woman, honey,” said the officer. “What’s your name?”<\/span><\/p>\n

“Howie, honey,” Howie Jr. said.<\/span><\/p>\n

“Yeah, that’s what he said,” the officer said.<\/span><\/p>\n

A week later, on the steps of the White House, President Obama announced the success of the St. Louis negotiations. Behind him, an Israeli flag hung. Beneath it, a Mossad agent clapped.<\/span><\/p>\n

“What a complete dick,” said the agent. “He really thought he got one over on us, didn’t he?”<\/span><\/p>\n

Shiloh’s eye blinked, and his fin wiggled.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ok. Fasten your seat belts. I am giving an online writing AI a test drive, using my free trial of a website called Sudowrite. I gave the AI a writing prompt from my crazy ideas file, a mere handful of words that I wrote down a very long time ago (I think in the ’90s) […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,27],"tags":[118,14,20],"class_list":["post-4745","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-noneoftheabove","category-reviews","tag-ai","tag-software","tag-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4745","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4745"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4745\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4746,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4745\/revisions\/4746"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}