Writing stories with an AI

Writing stories with an AI

2022.12

As Artist in Residence at the Understory in December 2022, I created a 1970s office environment with a hacked word processor typewriter connected to OpenAI's GPT3 and DALL-E AI models. The participant begins typing a story, and the typewriter continues the story autonomously. As the story unfolds on the typewriter, DALL-E illustrated the story on the wood paneled wall in three picture frames.

The current trend toward extremely large AI models trained on gigantic troves of data would not be possible without the continuous growth of computing power. This process began in the 1970s, with the advent of general purpose microprocessors available -- the advent of the PC (personal computer).

Current compute resources for training large AI models use specialized hardware and GPUs, but all of this compute would not exist if not for the small beginnings in the 70s. The wood paneled office brings one back to the very beginning of development of today's advanced computing resources.