Harold Bloom said that Artificial Intelligence would one day write novels, but he did not beleive they would be any good. He is not far off – at least for now.

Recently, YouTuber , Austin Mcconnel decided to let his computer generate a story. The result was random. What is was the tale? What was the narrative struction of the story like?

Well, if I were to describe the style and method of the story, I would say it reminded me of William S. Burroughs and his cut-up technique.

Burroughs used the cut-up technique where he would randomly create a work rom paper scraps of his own work and news papers articles and other writings he cut up. Burroughs would paste them together and random where they seemed to represent a thought and call it a senseable story. He also beleive it was a mystical experience. The truth is the result was often anything but. Some did find him a genious for it – including Norman Mailer. What we can tell from the writing is Burrows had a dirty mind.

Ok, I am digressing here, however, the purpose of the digression was to illustrate as best I could the feel of the computer generated narrative. I linked the story below for people to watch and give their own view on the computer production.

The story is about International Space Day. For spoilers: the protaganists end up happy and stranded on a deserted space rock.