The Volitive Effect of Oral Literary Inundation on the LSTM Recurrent Neural Network by Richard Lyons Conlon

[TEN-MINUTE EXPERIMENTAL]
"We were curious . . . Six months ago, we began a project in which a small army of volunteers -- students, faculty, community members -- read the world's great works of literature to an LSTM recurrent neural network, whom we've given the name Geoffrey (for Geoffrey Chaucer, of course). And now, after a brief processing period -- a time of creative reflection, if...
[TEN-MINUTE EXPERIMENTAL]
"We were curious . . . Six months ago, we began a project in which a small army of volunteers -- students, faculty, community members -- read the world's great works of literature to an LSTM recurrent neural network, whom we've given the name Geoffrey (for Geoffrey Chaucer, of course). And now, after a brief processing period -- a time of creative reflection, if you will -- Geoffrey will produce -- create, if you will -- the world's first artificially-generated work of literature. If you will."
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The Volitive Effect of Oral Literary Inundation on the LSTM Recurrent Neural Network

Recommended by

  • Scott Sickles:
    4 Jul. 2022
    “ Can an entity be self-aware and still be unaware of its self-awareness??? Can it have emotions while not being aware of how emotional it is? Can it have discovered God and even pray, if its creator is man?

    Conlon has certainly created an aritificial entity that evokes all of these questions while simultaneously ignoring them because it’s got a much more urgent problem: a deadline for a creative project! It’s Monkeys Typing Hamlet without monkeys, typewriters or Hamlet, wonderfully skewering our expections of technology and humans, science and creativity.

    I declare this experiment a success! ”
  • Steven G. Martin:
    28 Nov. 2021
    “ I love that this short sci-fi comedy shows how profoundly the effort to be creative impacts the creator. Geoffrey's character arc, while short, has several stages -- including a final wordless set of actions -- that ultimately made me smile.

    "The Volitive Effect of Oral Literary Inundation on the LSTM Recurrent Neural Network" is neither anti-A.I. nor anti-technology, but instead pro-artistry and pro-creativity. I'm glad I read it and I'd love to see a production. ”
  • Nora Louise Syran:
    28 Nov. 2021
    “ A charming 10 minute ride through classic literature in “sound-bytes"— through which a machine teaches us about the creative process, especially how addictive it can be. Simple but effective staging. Bravo! ”
View all 6 recommendations

Production History

  • Professional
    ,
    Theatre Evolve
    ,
    2018

Awards

Finalist
,
Science Fiction Shorts
,
Playwrights’ Round Table
,
2020
Winner
,
2016-17 Stony Brook Science Playwriting Competition
,
The Simons Center, the C. N. Yang Institute for Theoretical Physics, and the SBU Department of Theatre Arts
,
2017