In recent years, discussions about AI (artificial intelligence) writing have attracted a lot of attention. Is AI writing an assistant or a threat? Can AI writing replace professional writers? Recently, a science fiction novel "Land of Memories" written entirely by AI won the second prize of the 5th Jiangsu Province Youth Science Fiction Competition, which is the first time in the history of literature and AI.
What are the advantages and disadvantages of this science fiction novel written by AI? How should we view the literary phenomenon of AI writing? In this regard, the New Yellow River reporter interviewed relevant professionals.
Science fiction written by AI won a literary awardRecently, Shen Yang, a professor and doctoral supervisor at the School of Journalism of Tsinghua University, posted on his personal social account that his science fiction novel "The Land of Memories" written using AIGC won the second prize in the 5th Jiangsu Youth Science Fiction Competition held by the Jiangsu Science Writers Association.
Shenyang said that after the discussion and approval of the judges of the organizing committee, this AI-written science fiction novel was anonymously mixed in the works of other writers to participate in the selection, and 5 of the 6 judges did not know that the novel was created by AI. "After dozens of prompts, from the pen name, title, body text to the accompanying picture, the content is 100% written by AI. Literary style specifies that the AI uses the Kafka style. AI writing won a literary award, which should be the first time in the history of literature and the first time in the history of AI. Shenyang also said that the team will announce the detailed creative process, so that everyone who is willing to learn and replicate can use AI to write good works.
The New Yellow River reporter obtained this "Land of Memories 3.0 and the Creation Process Document" from Professor Shenyang. Shenyang said that this novel was generated by him through the form of dialogue prompts @silicon zen (AI), a total of about 66 dialogues, mainly experienced the creation of 5 non-consecutive time periods, a total of about 3 hours, formed about 43061 characters, copied 5915 characters from it, and finally formed the 3.0 version of "Land of Memory".
AI-drawn illustration of the science fiction novel "Land of Memories" The images in this article are provided by Shenyang
The reporter saw this science fiction novel called "The Land of Memories" from the above document. The novel tells the story of Li Xiao and his partner, an AI named "Neura", who search for the truth of memory in the land of memory. In addition to the text, there are several AI-generated illustrations in the text, which look full of technology. The reporter noticed that the final written novel was less than 6,000 words, while the writing process announced by Shenyang had more than 40,000 words, which recorded the formation process of this science fiction novel in detail.
For example, the instructions given to AI in the first conversation are: "If you want to write a short science fiction story involving the metaverse and humanoid robots, the AI gives an outline that has never appeared in the existing corpus and is very innovative, which makes people surprised to see the first three sentences." "The title generated by the AI platform is: Hyper-Link. The first three sentences are: "On the edge of the metaverse, there is an area that is off-limits to humans, called the 'Land of Memories'. Everything there looks like a physical entity, but it's actually built by humanoid robots and AI that have lost their memory. Whenever someone or AI tries to enter, their memories are sucked away and remain in that forbidden place forever. ”
Let's get a feel for the style of this science fiction novel through text snippets:
Li Xiao walked slowly towards Memoria, and she saw liquid flowing from its "eyes", which was its "tears". Memoria's voice was low and mournful: "Why have I become so lonely, data and memory can no longer bring me satisfaction." I lost myself. ”
When Li Xiao pondered the mystery of the "underlying code of emotional genes", her mind experienced a silent storm, as if touching some unknown taboo. Memoria felt this trembling, and suddenly, a cold ray of light shot out from the depths of it, rushing straight towards Li Xiao.
Illustration of the AI-drawn science fiction novel "Land of Memories"
Expert evaluation: AI writing is shocking, but also has shortcomingsAfter reading this AI-written science fiction novel, Fu Ruchu, director of the editorial department of the People's Literature Publishing House and a well-known critic, said that "the reading experience is very magical", and if it is not known in advance, it is not easy to think that this is an AI-generated work. "The writing of genre literature, especially science fiction, is more often less focused on language, and more important is 'whimsy' and scene depiction. From this point of view, I think the novel is well done and logically consistent. Fu Ruchu said.
For the reading experience of this novel, Fu Ruchu talked about a strong sense of "collage". She said that she could feel that the tone of each paragraph of the novel did not change, "It's like building blocks, the texture of this building block is the same." In addition, there is also the feeling that the vocabulary of the novel is very inrich, and the expression of sentence patterns is also very mechanical and lacks variation. We read literary works, and when we read more, we can feel the "tone" of the work, and in this novel, we cannot feel the flow of "qi", which can be said to be a kind of "puzzle version" writing.
Li Li, the publisher who plans to publish a number of science fiction works and deputy editor-in-chief of Jiangsu Phoenix Literature and Art Publishing House, believes that "The Land of Memory" is an excellent work under the current situation that the overall level of science fiction is not high. "This novel was written by AI, I felt very shocked, but because I read the text, I felt that it was okay, okay." Li Li commented on this work and said that if you look closely at this novel, you will find that there are many concepts, overviews, and settings in the novel, and emotions and emotional reactions are also set and universal, while there are not many personalities and details. There is neither a vivid reproduction of the past reality, nor a description of the deep texture of the future world, but more of a perceptual narrative and even lyricism in a science fiction setting, which may also be a feature of the current science fiction writing dominated by science fiction students.
On the issue of the relationship between "people and AI" in writing this novel, Li Li said, "After dozens of prompts, 100% of the content is written by AI, from pen name, title, body to picture", which is a hint in the general direction, and even stipulation and delineation; It is also said that "literary style specifies Kafka style", which is also not rigorous enough, Kafka's Chinese translation has more than one, I don't know which one is specified, the latter all, even if all, is a translation, not the original, this style designation is also subjectively given by humans. "Of course, this is very intelligent, but it is still in its infancy, that is, entering a large number of existing works, then piecing together combinations, and even writing, is also instructed, not AI autonomy (AI starting to write a diary may be another matter)." Li Li said. So he believes that this novel is still some kind of "extension" of humanity.
Fu Ruchu also talked about the role of "human choice" in the generation of this novel. She said that for example, when AI generates "the land of memories", there should be a lot of room to play, and in this, human choice is also crucial, which determines the final presentation of the novel. "In other words, after the unified generation of AI, human choices will cause the diverse face of the novel."
Illustration of the AI-drawn science fiction novel "Land of Memories"
Will the future impact the writing of traditional writers?What does it mean that AI-written novels won literary prizes? Will it have an impact on the writing of human writers?
In this regard, Fu Ruchu said that some types of literary writers, such as suspense and science fiction writers, should feel the crisis in the face of AI, but traditional literary writers do not have to. "The feeling after reading this "Land of Memory" further confirms this point of view of mine. As mentioned earlier, the sense of language of this novel is very weak. I think that in the future, 'sense of language' may become a rare thing. And our sense of Chinese is originally a reading feeling that can only be understood and cannot be spoken. If more and more AI writing appears in the future, then the sense of language will be more scarce and elusive in the future. Fu Ruchu said.
At the same time, she expressed concern about the damage to language caused by AI writing. Previously, even when the older generation of writers won by observing the moral scale of life and reality, and their language was relatively crude, they actually maintained their own sense of language. And the damage of AI writing to literary language is most likely irreversible.
Even if "Land of Memories" can be considered a kind of "extension" of human beings, Li Li believes that AI aggregates past works and software to learn and generate new texts, which is certainly a leapfrog extension: its leap is that anyone's creation is based on personal and other people's experience, but the creation may be mediocre, and now, this "mediocrity" can be done by AI. This means that once AI is popularized, any author who writes mediocre works will have no room to survive (just look at AI painting).
"The real leap may lie in the fact that AI has a sense of life no less than any adult on the basis of massive reading, really regards itself as a life, and has emotions all the time because of the reaction to the outside world and inner exploration, unique and full, and thus wrote a huge famous book, which is the real qualitative leap, that is, human beings have created invisible and infinite people." Li Li said. So, if AI writes novels like "The Long Season", "Bemba" and "Alive", it will be really shocking. This is because it is not difficult to master sayings, stereotypes, and road goods, and mastering delicate and personal emotions, mastering imperceptible and real details, etc., is the core of writing, not "setting", "structure", "routine" and so on. These AIs can do it, which is a technological breakthrough, but it may not be enough to impact humans.
Fu Ruchu also said that as far as this novel is concerned, AI does not provide a completely novel idea, focusing on nothing more than the eternal topics of human beings, memory, emotions, self and so on. "Based on the splicing and selection of existing databases, I don't think creativity will ever be generated." Fu Ruchu said.
Reporter: Xu Min Editor: Liu Dan Proofreader: Faye Wong