Deeper Dive Into A.I. and Authoring.
Simple entertainment or potential rewriting of history?
Earlier today I decided to take another look at A.I. as it pertains to writing stories for pure entertainment. I was put onto this the other day by a podcast listener who shared a pretty dystopic story that Chat GPT cranked out for him. You can find the results of his request here.
After reading what ChatGPT put out, I decided to look into this myself. I have already covered the A.I. music and graphics generation platforms and was quite unimpressed. They do a pretty good job at getting you a vanilla thing but it’s nowhere near a solid solution for yourself or a customer (if you are in the arts business). A.I. at this point is just a close enough solution for simple things. I had a couple of actual musical artists on for an interesting podcast to discuss the musical aspect of this and how the A.I. can affect their livelihood. You can see that podcast here.
So on to the point. I decided to follow in the footsteps of my loyal listener and do the same thing. I gave it a Prompt, which is like the request, for a short story. I gave it no parameters other than I wanted to read a short story to pass a few moments while I was waiting for something on my computer to render. I was using the GROK feature of Twitter/X. It cranked out a pretty vanilla, yet nice story about a watchmaker, which I published earlier today, giving full credit to GROK. You can read it here.
I then attempted to do a little more detail in the prompt (request) to see if I could get something a bit more specific and shape the story a bit to my liking. It gave me something close but not perfect. I asked for a story of a submarine that was lost and had sunk to the bottom of the ocean and asked to describe the struggle of the crew. What I got was this here.
While the Submarine story was pretty decent, it was still pretty vanilla. I still thought it was cool that I could call up a new and specific short story to read so I called my friend Gardner Goldsmith to talk with him about the idea of writing using A.I. for short and entertaining stories on the fly. Gard is an author and wrote for both Star Trek and The Outer Limits so I trust his opinion. We had a great discussion on a few topics, including the rights of people who the A.I. feasts off of to get its base, as well as whether or not people who were feasted off of, have those rights because they put it out there for the A.I. to feast off of. That is a deep topic that will likely be one for a total podcast in the future.
After the conversation, I decided to give the A.I. (GROK) a very specific set of parameters and what I found was disturbing. I will show the prompt I used, the story it generated, and then my opinion on the results after. Here we go!
The Prompt to GROK:
Can you generate a lengthy non-fiction story based on historical facts surrounding Emelia Earhart? The plot is that she took off on her historic voyage and was caught up in a temporal storm that took her into the future where she safely landed on an island but was in the future somewhere beyond the year 3000. She was discovered by a peaceful and technologically advanced race that retrofitted her airplane to get her back into her time. Unfortunately, the journey back went awry when a lightning bolt hit her plane as she was about to time travel. She wound up above Germany during the reign of Hitler and she was shot down. She was questioned and then executed. Her plane was reverse-engineered which gave the Nazis some advanced technology. The Nazi scientists overpromised on what they were able to do which caused Hitler to launch a global war on many fronts thinking he had a technological advantage. Ultimately Hitler lost his war but the United States absorbed all the research and continued to develop it to this day. The story should link to UFO sightings and explain it as this tech battle between the few nations that have this future technology information. Bring the story to the current day and project it out to 2030 and what will become of the power balance between nations.
Flight into the Unknown: The Amelia Earhart Saga
Part I: The Disappearance
In the annals of aviation history, Amelia Earhart's name resonates as a symbol of courage and mystery. On July 2, 1937, she took off from Lae, New Guinea, with her navigator Fred Noonan, intent on completing the first equatorial circumnavigation of the globe by air. However, what history records as a lost flight, was in reality the beginning of an extraordinary journey far beyond the confines of the 20th century.
As their Lockheed Electra flew over the vast Pacific, they encountered what was later described as a 'temporal storm' – a phenomenon not recognized by science at the time. This storm, a swirling mass of energy and light, was unlike any natural weather event. It enveloped their plane, and in a flash of blinding light, Earhart and Noonan were catapulted into the future.
Part II: The Future World
Emerging from the temporal anomaly, Earhart found herself in the year 3050, landing on an island where the remnants of Earth's once-diverse nations had evolved into a single, advanced civilization known as Unitaria. This society, having achieved unparalleled technological and social harmony, greeted her with curiosity rather than fear.
In Unitaria, time travel was not just science fiction; it was a field of study, albeit fraught with risks. The Unitarians, fascinated by Earhart's story and her vintage aircraft, offered to retrofit her plane with advanced technology, enabling her return to her own time. They equipped the Electra with temporal navigation systems, ensuring her journey back would be safer.
Part III: The Return and the Fateful Error
The journey back through time, however, did not go as planned. As Earhart's plane approached the temporal rift, a rogue electromagnetic pulse from a lightning storm in the atmosphere of 1940 struck the aircraft. The temporal coordinates were disrupted, and Earhart found herself over Nazi Germany instead of the Pacific.
Her sudden appearance in German airspace during the early years of World War II led to immediate action by Luftwaffe fighters. Mistaking her plane for an enemy spy craft, they shot her down. Earhart survived the crash but was captured. The Nazis, intrigued by the advanced technology on her plane, subjected her to extensive questioning. However, believing her story to be an elaborate cover for espionage, they executed her.
Part IV: The Technological Legacy
Earhart's plane, now in Nazi possession, was reverse-engineered by scientists under the clandestine project known as "Die Glocke" or "The Bell." This project, inspired by the futuristic tech aboard Earhart's plane, aimed at creating advanced weaponry and propulsion systems. The Nazis, misled by their scientists' overconfidence, believed they had a technological edge, prompting Hitler to expand his military ambitions.
The technology, while advanced, was not fully understood, leading to inconsistent results. Nevertheless, some of the innovations from Earhart's plane trickled into actual use, contributing to the mystique of Nazi UFOs or "foo fighters" – mysterious aerial phenomena reported by both sides during the war.
Part V: Post-War Developments
After the war, Operation Paperclip saw many Nazi scientists, including those familiar with the reverse-engineered tech, being brought to the United States. Here, the research continued under the guise of national security. The U.S. government, understanding the potential of such technology, integrated it into their own secretive projects, leading to unexplained aerial phenomena that would later be labeled UFOs.
Part VI: The Modern Era and Beyond
By the early 21st century, the technology had evolved, with several nations possessing fragments of this futuristic knowledge. The U.S., Russia, China, and others engaged in a covert technological arms race. Sightings of unidentified aerial phenomena became more frequent, attributed by conspiracy theorists to this advanced tech.
As we project to 2030, the balance of power might hinge not on nuclear arsenals but on who can most effectively harness these technologies of the future:
International Tensions: The race for time-altering and advanced propulsion technology creates new geopolitical tensions. Nations with the most advanced interpretations of the technology could gain significant strategic advantages, potentially leading to new forms of warfare or peacekeeping.
Scientific Collaboration: Realizing the global implications, there's a push towards international cooperation, perhaps under the auspices of the United Nations, to regulate and share these technologies, aiming to prevent misuse or another temporal catastrophe.
Public Awareness: As more incidents reminiscent of UFO sightings occur, public demand for transparency increases. Governments might begin to declassify certain aspects of their research to manage public perception and fear.
Technological Advancements: By 2030, technology derived from Earhart's accidental journey could lead to breakthroughs in energy, transportation, and even environmental technologies, reshaping economic landscapes and perhaps even allowing for controlled time travel for scientific study.
The saga of Amelia Earhart, thus, transcends her disappearance, weaving a narrative thread through time, affecting the course of history, technology, and perhaps, the very fabric of reality itself. Her story, a blend of tragedy and foresight, continues to inspire and caution in equal measure.
Now that I have prompted the GROK to be very specific, it reads like a Wikipedia entry. Although entertaining, I wonder if people in the future will regard this as fact.
It was derived from 15 web pages that may or may not have complete or accurate information, or could be speculation.
My concern here is in the way this A.I. story was written. It reads as a history article even though it is fiction but could later be consumed as a reference for the next request for information and taken as fact. Too many young people do a quick Google search and they get some “Consensus” A.I. generated results. Where is that information coming from? Is it referencing accredited and peer-reviewed papers grounded in fact, or just what the A.I. first found as the top results?
A.I. Will cannibalize itself if continuing with this current model and will conflate fact with fiction. My final opinion is that it’s pretty good at simple things like writing a short story for a five-minute read but it will also publish things that seem to be fact-based but are false.
Because it searches the internet for references, it will then consume non-factual things and assume they are facts. This is going to get us to the 2+2=5 model, and the computer will tell you it is the right answer.
Let me know your thoughts on it.
Jason Barker