1,000 Robots Write: Mermaids of Mars, Part I — Exposition
As you may or may not be aware, I have a little project going.
The idea behind Mermaids of Mars (and 1,000 Robots) is trying to see if I can generate a serviceable fiction story using AI — and how I, or anyone else, might go about that.
Despite the hype, AI really sucks at writing fiction. Sure, it can write listicles and sports articles, but it lacks the kind of…well, humanity, that makes fiction readable.
But as a tool in a writer’s toolbox, that’s a different story.
For this (and another project I’m working on), I’m using the AI text adventure platform, Dungeon AI for the heavy AI lifting.
Why?
DAI was designed as a way for AI to run text-based adventure games (like Zork, for example) that would be designed and played by users around the world.
The problem with pre-AI text adventures is that they have to be meticulously planned, and they always tell the same story. AI generation doesn’t have to.
Because it was built around that idea, it’s good at generating output in standard fiction genres — sci-fi, fantasy, horror, etc. That makes it better for this purpose than, say, ChatGPT (which I’ve also played with, but was disappointed in). But it’s also based on the GPT LLM…
