Computer programmed to write its own fables
Source: theguardian.com
The Moral Storytelling System produces a tale, following user preferences, which delivers a simple message using ’incredibly complex’ calculationsMore than 2,000 years after Aesop warned his listeners in ancient Greece about the dangers of greed and pride via the medium of geese, foxes and crows, researchers in Australia have developed a computer program which writes its own fables, complete with moral.
Computer learns how to teach lessons … detail from an 1857 edition of Aesops fables, illustrated by Charles H Bennett. Illustration: LH Pordes/The British Library
Margaret Sarlej, at the University of New South Wales, has devised the Moral Storytelling System, which generates simple stories with one of six morals identified in Aesop’s fables: retribution, greed, pride, realistic expectations, recklessness and reward. The stories are structured around characters who are able to experience up to 22 emotions, from joy to pity, remorse and gratitude, in three different story worlds.
"The ’user’ simply chooses a moral, and the system automatically determines a sequence of events (ie a story) which make characters feel the emotions required to convey that moral," said Sarlej via email.
The academic described artificial intelligence in storytelling as "an extremely complex problem". Her supervisor, artificial intelligence expert Dr Malcolm Ryan, has told the university’s magazine, Uniken, of his attempt in 2007 "to get a computer to understand, and then reproduce, a page from Beatrix Potter’s children’s classic The Tale of Peter Rabbit". "Though the storyline appeared straightforward, Ryan found the level of complexity in the characters and their emotions was simply beyond what the artificial intelligence at the time could handle," reports the magazine.
Breaking stories down for a computer "involves not only encoding story elements like characters, events, and plot, but also the ’common sense’ people take for granted", said Sarlej. Telling a story is simple enough for a child to do, but stories are actually "incredibly complex".
"For example, if Bob gives Alice an apple, Alice will have the apple, and Bob will not. To a person, that’s obvious, and doesn’t require explanation. If Bob punches Carl, people would generally assume Carl will be unhappy about it, but a computer doesn’t have the ’common sense’ to make such an inference. In a computer programme, details like this must be explicitly spelled out," she said."When you consider all the different things that could happen in a story – all the possible events, their outcomes (which may vary depending on the situation), and how characters react to these events – it’s an extremely complex space which needs to be very precisely defined. On top of that lies plot: how to structure a story so that it actually means something or has a desired effect on readers. Computers need everything to be defined logically, but it is very difficult to specify hard and fast rules for plot."
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Read the full article at: theguardian.com
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