Russian writer and artist Pavel Pepperstein and generative neural network ruGPT-3 have co-authored a story book called Trying to Wake Up. The book has just been published in Moscow by independent publisher Individuum.
Trying to Wake Up is touted as “the world’s first collection of short stories resulting from the collaboration of a writer and a neural network.” Half of the book’s 24 texts belong to Pepperstein while the other half was written by ruGPT-3.
The neural network was trained on Pepperstein’s stories, fragments of his interview, as well as on on classical literature.
“The algorithm had several takes writing the stories [with Peppershtein and] Felix Sandalov [Individuum’s chief editor] choosing the most successful takes.”
Apart from that, human intervention in the work of Pepperstein’s digital counterpart was limited to proofreading ruGPT-3’s prose.
“Working with a neurowriter you feel a constant techno-shock: on the one hand, you have ‘just a machine’ in front of you, but its wit, intuition, ability to create references and tell stories are superior to many ‘protein-based writers’. I had a feeling of a miracle, as if they managed to create a literary Golem in the laboratory by putting a piece of paper with Pepperstein’s stories into its mouth,” Sandalov said.
Pepperstein said he liked Neuro Pepperstein’s stories but “didn’t feel like there was any resemblance” with his stories.
ruGPT-3 was developed by SberDevices, a branch of Sber, the state-controlled financial and digital giant, which has announced the release of the book.
“Neural networks surround people in a huge number of areas of life: they assist contact centers, underlie virtual assistants, and suggest a movie to watch. We are constantly developing our models, retraining them and experimenting,” stated SberDevices CEO Denis Filippov.
“The greatest scientific interest for us now is the ability of neural networks to do more than just take on part of the routine: can they be taught to be creative? The first Russian-language book written by a person together with a neural network is an important step toward the evolution of neural networks and domains of application. However, the neural network can now imitate and help writers, but not surpass their talent,” Filippov conceded.
- Hard copies of Trying to Wake Up are available to order in the publisher’s online store and will soon hit the shelves of Russian bookstores. The electronic version is available on Bookmate.
