Shit GPT-3 Says
23 May 2021
GPT-3 gets criticized for generating text that is either very human-esque, or plain ridiculous. While generating the text for Grim Tales I experienced this a fair bit. So I kept a bunch of text that was generated. Most of it was removed because it didn’t fit the rules. And other text was generated just for fun.
Here are some of my favourite extracts.
The door opens. Finally. It’s about time. I’ve been waiting for this for so long! I look up, and what do I see? It’s not a soul! It’s some guy in some kind of a space suit! And he isn’t dead! Oh, no. He’s the last person that I ever want to see: Buzz Lightyear.
“Buzz? What are you doing here? Wait… Are you dead?”
“No.”
I decided to walk, and started off on my preferred mode of transport, a tractor. I do not like to use my scythe to get around.
As the business day dawned, my beautiful assistant Belinda (who is a sight to behold in her tight trench coat and breeches in black as night) showed me an unusual candidate for my services.
Grim often did weird things like trying to ice skate – that bizarre sport where you skate backwards just by using a pair of metal blades strapped to your feet.
He was dressed as a pilot and wearing a pilot’s hat with a “Death to All” logo. His scythe was over his shoulder.
He hurriedly headed downstairs and grabbed his favourite sunglasses from the top of his fridge. He put them on, jumped on his scooter and zoomed off to his job.
Note: Grim’s scooter was a human scooter..
As Grim headed for the bathroom, he passed by his china closet. He had to pause for a moment to have a little fun. He opened the door of the china cabinet and was delighted.
It was full of pretty porcelain dishes.
The Sun was his arch nemesis, it was one of the only things that could stop him. “I must get those shades!”, Grim said to himself. He grabbed a nearby snail and jumped on it’s back. The snail sluggishly carried Grim into the town that was just a few minutes away.
Did you know that more people die from boredom than disease? It’s true.
I went to a strip club with my friend Jim. He never saw me before in his life, but he let me go into the VIP room - after he told me that I needed a new suit, of course. It was pretty fun! One of the ladies came up to me and started whispering into my ear and telling me how she wanted to do things with her body that were illegal in most countries. She even bought all my drinks for awhile there! I’m not really sure if Jim knew this was going on or not, even though he was sitting right next to us.
It’s the Grim Reaper. You know, that guy from Supernatural. He’s got a sickle and all that jazz. Except in this book, he wants to sell you life insurance and talk about his fear of bird flu pandemics.
Next are some of the ‘branches’ - multiple examples of text generated following a paragraph. This demonstrates one of the current possible uses of AI in writing where it can be used as a tool to help writers’ block, or to write alternate scenes at various points.
Anyway, I take souls to their final resting place. A place called:
a rat-infested garbage pit. No, wait. That’s just the mortals’ version. Actually, I think it’s a thousand times worse than what the mortals think.
pretty boring. Nothing but endless fields of wheat, skies that shimmer in shades of gray, and an odd circular building in the distance where my bosses work.
the Void. That’s where the magic happens. If your soul is sent there you’re processed and you become a part of something greater than yourself. Our job here is to return the souls of the living to the Void. It’s just that simple.
‘the void’. It’s a big black space maybe two miles wide with a pulsing white light in the center. It’s around this point that the corpses that I deal with break apart into their constituent parts.
Oh sure it might seem exciting during the ‘end of time’ crisis, plucking heroes off the field of battle and bringing them into the world beyond, or being tasked with the high-priority job of harvesting the souls of:
corrupt politicians, but I’ve done it all before, and, quite frankly, it’s just so boring now.
the world’s most powerful mages and demigods, but the day to day grind of it is very dull.
prophets and seers. At first it was all bon bons and champagne, but quickly the task became repetitive and tiresome. Boredom. Then I got fired. That’s right.
suddenly very-dead-very-fast celebrities.
geniuses to make sure they didn’t die ‘before their time’.
I recently received a call from an old friend named:
John Henry, who is the leader of a group of superheroes. I haven’t seen him in so, so long. It was good to catch up with him again. He told me all about the heroes and villains of this day and age.
Gabriel. I don’t know why he’s trying to get a hold of me. I haven’t seen him since some time before his family was murdered. He’s down in Mexico, researching the supernatural and trying to catch glimpses of gods and goddesses.
Sun Wu Kong. He’s an immortal from ancient China. He asked if I would come down to the Grand Hyatt Hotel to play mahjong. Demon Wu Kong owns the thirteenth in the Imperial Palace and an enormous mansion in the northern mountains of the Gold Province.
Serena. She’s a succubus, who suddenly reappeared and called for a meeting. She told me that she ran into a strange, powerful force while she was enjoying her break from work, and that she was sent to this dimension on a mission.
Ashikabi. It seems that he was under attack by five humans, none of whom are living. Well, I can’t have that! He had just gotten his new superpowers, after all! So I rushed to help him.
Eddie. He lives in Manhattan. Little did I know, this was a very important call. What he told me was so hard to believe that it shook me to my very core.
Mary. She was calling to tell me that she’s the newest member of a secret crime-fighting group known as F.O.R.S.E. She said she’s investigating a strange illness ravaging people in a small town calling itself ‘Rending-town.
Steve, who was in the middle of a very important job. He had been tasked with ridding a pair of wyverns from a museum in Washington DC. I hadn’t talked to him in a long time, and I definitely didn’t expect him to call me.