There’s definitely a sense of comedy in renaming Superman as Journalismman, especially considering that it’s more proof that AI can’t really think around corners all that often and tend to take a lot of things literally in a very comical way. Forcing an AI to watch hours of of Superman though just becomes hilarious since it all gets lumped into one very comical attempt at a screenplay that takes a lot of the most interesting and in some case controversial aspects of the man of steel’s long history and lumps them into something that makes sense in a very convoluted sort of way. When you think about it the hours upon hours of footage that can be seen on Superman would be kind of hilarious to see tossed into a melting pot just to see what might come out. Timothy Beck Werth of ScreenRant no doubt got a good laugh at this since watching an AI try to think in irrational and rational terms at the same time like a human being does manage to produce the kind of laughs that many can admit are born out of a need to make some kind of sense of it all, but also the need to think that it’s a great parody of what’s already been established as a great story.
I forced a bot to watch over 1,000 hours of Superman movies and then asked it to write a Superman movie of its own. Here is the first page. pic.twitter.com/3DCCa08qjE
— Keaton Patti (@KeatonPatti) October 28, 2019
If you can remember this same thing was done with Batman at one point and was covered by Daniel Alvarez of ScreenRant. If you can recall we heard the very disturbing idea of Alfred giving birth to Robin, yeah long story, as well as many other insane ideas that the AI came up with throughout its long and very tilted rant. The proof that computers are only as good as the people that make them is shown more often than not no matter how superior the machines can be at times since the thought processes that go on inside an electronic brain might be a lot faster and able to come to solid and logical conclusions where humans tend to meander and take their time, but one thing that humans tend to excel at is storytelling, and there’s a good reason for this. We’re nuts. Yeah, you read right, we’re all a bit cuckoo in the noggin from time to time and it helps us as much as it hurts us since if you think about it fiction isn’t as logical as a computer would want it to be at most times. The fiction we tend to enjoy the most is the stuff that flies off the rails now and again and only comes back in for a safe landing when we deem that it’s what the audience wants. Even then it’s likely that the author will try something new just to mess with the audience a bit and attempt to create a narrative that will make people think in a new direction. Machines might be on the verge of doing this but the AI attempts at this point kind of show that logic still holds sway over the computerized storytellers.
Maybe that’s why writers can hold their heads up a bit, because it’s kind of obvious that our job isn’t in as much danger as others at this point, as James Surowiecki of Wired would agree, since we have yet to create a truly psychotic or sociopath when it comes to AI and as a result our tendencies to fall into the more illogical and less rational side of a story is far superior to the machines that can outdo us in just about every way when it comes to self-expression. Writers are plentiful in this world and many of them happen to think that they’re very good at what they do, even if a good number of them really aren’t but get praise all the same. That being said though even the most vapid fiction writer is bound to tell a better story than an AI storyteller since, honestly, they’ll be more likely to be able to go on an irrational bender that will see them coming up with ideas that might be along the same line as the AI but will actually fit into the story a little better. Sometimes logic isn’t the most exact tool that it’s meant to be, as the AI for the Superman script proves as it reads like a blunt hammer driving one point into the story after another, almost like someone making word meatloaf and just throwing in whatever catches their eye.
It’s a funny attempt all the same since expecting a computer or a program to recreate something coherent out of hours upon hours of footage is bound to produce something that looks absolutely horrendous but reads like one of the strangest parodies you’ve ever read. Hopefully there will be more of these since they’re actually pretty entertaining. But as of now the realm of storytelling is pretty safe from being replaced by machines.
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