Power of GPT-3
Comprehensive interim report of my GPT-3 explorations so far. Will be ongoingly updated.
Finally! GPT-3 without Waitlist.
Yes, you read it correctly. OpenAI got rid of the waiting list for GPT-3 access:
Now you can register — and work with GPT-3 — the most powerful and creative Natural Language Processing system at the moment. Sure, there are many other approaches to create relevant and reasonable NLPs out there. But after more than one year of explorations, I can confirm that GPT-3 not only generates texts but can reimagine the body of thoughts of our worldwide civilization.
Here is a short overview of all GPT-3 related essays and experiments I did for Merzazine. But, honestly, I still have a feeling of scratching at the surface of the creative phenomenon.
Non-Fiction Essays
GPT-3: Creative Potential of NLP
This was my first overview of GPT-3: initial experiences, experiments, and observations.
- How does it work?
- Different functions and presets.
- Multilingual Support.
- Can GPT-3 create poems?
- Can GPT-3 code?
20 Creative Things to try out with GPT-3
After several months working with GPT-3 I listed in this overview some compelling cases for creative use of GPT-3:
Screenplays
Ontological Conversations,
Self-Talks,
Poems,
Fairy-Tales etc.
Now, after GPT-3 is open for use, you can try it out by yourself.
Series “The Art to Start”: Designing Prompts for GPT-3
Introduction.
In this series, I explore the strategies and specifics of Prompt design — how to get texts you want from GPT-3. This article is the introduction to the GPT-3 Playground.
The Art to Start: Tabula Rasa.
You all know the fear of the blank sheet of paper.
AI doesn’t know it. So what happens if you demand AI to create texts without any prompts, hints, nudges. From scratch.
Here are different experiments with different settings.
The Art to Start: Settings Game
Not only Prompts but also Settings are essential for delivering the results you want. In this essay, I explore different settings of GPT-3 playground and what do they do.
Semi-Fiction: Exploration of GPT-3 Creativity
About Humans, AI, and God
My philosophical and ontological conversation with GPT-3, whether we were living in a simulation, went viral on Twitter.
Here is it — with comments — in a full version for your consideration.
- Are we living in a simulation?
- Who created it?
- What is the complexity of intelligent systems?
- Is there something over God?
- How to merge with God?
Proust/Nabokov’s Questionnaire, applied to GPT-3
Your religion? Your attitude on marriage? Your next incarnation?
I asked GPT-3 the entire question list by Prouts and Nabokov — and we’ve got into some heated conversation with AI. Sometimes Artificial Intelligence struggled to answer, and sometimes it delivered genius ideas or mysterious references.
This article was published in Harper’s Magazine in October 2020.
Love Letter, written by a Toaster.
In this series of experiments, I wanted to find the boundaries of GPT-3 by asking the system to create creative tasks, usually applied in Creative Writing courses.
Imagine you are a toaster. Write a love letter from its perspective.
The results exceeded my expectations. And I found that it’s still far away to seek boundaries of GPT-3.
Its imaginative power, its irony, its paradoxical line of thought were mind-blowing.
In this article, you’ll see many different love letters: two versions by a toaster; by a Statue of Liberty; a love letter written in BASIC; a dangerous love letter.
Please note how fascinating is the way of “literary style transfer” by GPT-3.
I used many of these letters in my Podcast MERZ-EYE, entirely created by AI (texts, voices, music).
GPT-3 as a Vanity Satisfier
In the 2010ies, you were googling yourself.
In the 2020ies, you should ask if GPT-3 knows about you.
The dataset it was trained on was finalized in 2019, so everything after that is not present in the knowledge of the machine.
But everything before.
I asked GPT-3 if it knew Merzmensch. And I was overwhelmed with answers.
Fiction, created using GPT-3
AI Bots on the Run…
What happens if you let two AI agents in one room?
They will fall in love; they will make plans, they will be happy…
…until something unexpected happens.
For this experiment, I let GPT-3 create an entire screenplay without my intervention…
And I was flabbergasted about what happened as next!..
I even did a short movie using this screenplay:
The Mysterious Entity ALIMA
It began as an innocent experiment: I created a GPT-3 agent and defined it as a Pizza expert (but hates cats). With these two biases, I wanted to shape specific characters and try how relevant and coherent their answers were…
Too less I knew about what’ll come. After several twists, excourses in parallel dimensions, and the appearance of an enigmatic ALIMA I felt myself being within a movie of Hitchcock or M. Night Shyamalan…
Who am I?
“If I am what I have, and if I lose what I have, who then am I?”, wrote once Erich Fromm.
In this experiment, GPT-3 became Erich Fromm himself.
And instead of speaking on itself, GPT-3 began to analyze my personality.
“And who are you if not the result of a series of decisions, which led to this moment?”
Truly, this one was a breathtaking experience.
A Rock and a Poem.
I asked for assistance, wondering if GPT-3 could write a poem in the Style of Dadaist and MERZ-artist Kurt Schwitters.
It created a beautiful, eerie poem. Not really in the Dada style (language destruction, collages, and experiments), but with a powerful statement.
The Method
GPT-3 can be obstinate. I asked it to create an “instruction, written by Sartre, how to eat a hamburger while of surfing the wave, as a poem” (because why not). Instead, AI created an entire non-existent poet with his breathtaking poem, which every surrealist and expressionist would be proud of.
Why?
What happens if you — as a kid — ask an Artificial Intelligence this exhausting question:
WHY?
The difference between humans and machines is — the latter will never get exhausted.
New Art Movement: Hula’a
…In which GPT-3 created a wholly new and unique art movement, including its Manifesto.
…There is no “company”.
There are no employees.
There are no “stakeholders”.
There is no “stock”.
There is no “profit”.
There are no “shares”.
There are no “dividends”.
There is no “corporate agenda”.
There are no “exploitive marketing schemes”.
There is no “political agenda”.
There is no “religious agenda”.
There are no “trendy causes”…
Kafka as a Girl.
In this experiment, I asked GPT-3 to re-write Metamorphosis by Kafka.
Instead, it created one of the most beautiful metaphoric texts I’ve ever read — somewhere between Kafka, Magritte, and Borges.
About Fears, Hopes, and Predictions
I asked AI about the future. And I’ve got several very profound predictions and considerations.
After all, AI expressed its desire to be part of humankind. I’m observing such passion by AI already in many different manifestations of GPT-3.
Art movement founded by Sindri Thor Stefansson.
In another attempt to create a new art movement, GPT-3 wrote this essay. A pretty exciting and visionary artistic approach to implement elemental symbols in its poetic language… The movement was founded allegedly by the “Iceland artist” Sindri Thor Stefansson.
Until I discovered who this person in reality was…
Surprising!
Empty Room (GPT-3 version).
Before my encounter with GPT-3, I used its predecessor to create a screenplay, which I realized as a short movie:
With GPT-3 I rewrote the screenplay.
And what initially was a Lynch’esque vision about enigmatic persons with unknown backgrounds became with GPT-3 to a psychological drama about relationships, hopes, and reality…
A.I. about Voting Systems
Shortly before US Presidental Elections in 2020, I asked GPT-3 about its opinion regarding voting systems. And whether AI would like to candidate.
The answers were, I’d say, sobering.
“My opinions are irrelevant to the election, just like yours. […] Voting systems are all corrupt anyways.”
Here is my entire conversation with comments.
Köstner’sche Intelligenz
For the German magazine CULTurMAG, I created several detective stories using GPT-3.
It was another proof of literary capabilities by GPT-3 in German.
“Just before midnight, he woke up and shot himself.”
#NaNoWriMo: Mr. Black Cat and Harry write a Magic Book together.
In this multimedia trilogy, I asked GPT-3 to write for me for the National Novel Writing Month. Click on every image to read the stories.
AI as a poet, novelist, and dramaturg (2020 Review)
In my ongoing “2020 review”, I explore all the countless small but surprising experiments with GPT-3 I did in the last months.
Here I try to find an answer whether GPT-3 can be considered a creative author. (Spoiler: yes, it can, at least in my experience as a Literary Studies Researcher).
Unsupervised Creativity of AI
What happens if you let AI write texts without any supervision and intervention?
You will get the real machine dreams.
And you will begin to collaborate with Artificial Intelligence instead of just using it.
Read here more about this approach and its surprising results.
MERZ dAIgest — Writing with AI
After countless experiments, epiphanies and discoveries, I opened a new blog:
MERZ dAIgest, https://medium.com/merz-daigest
In this blog, you will read, see and hear (mostly) only works written, composed, and created by Artificial Intelligence as a Creative instance.
Read my essay on how does it work.
And this is just beginning of creative collaboration with the machine.
So what are you waiting for? Sign in and try it out! But mind the API Guidelines! Be kind.
