You got 4 of 8 right. In two cases you failed to recognize humans, and in another two—GPT4.
It was a weakly adversarial test:
I took a few less-known but obviously talented writers from the top of my head, and copied the excerpts from the first pages.
For GPT4, I’ve used several prompts from the competition, and then selected the parts for their stylistic diversity.
I suspect that a test with longer excerpts would be much easier for you, as the vanilla GPT4 is indeed often easy to detect due to its repetitiveness etc (I haven’t tried the APIs yet).
If GPT4 already can fool some of us science fiction junkies, I can’t wait to read the fiction by GPT5.
David Langford’s science fiction newsletter Ansible has a regular item called Thog’s Masterclass, exhibiting examples of “differently good” actually published writing. Dare the Thog-o-Matic to see some random examples. ETA: or look at any Perry Rhodan novel.
Thank you!
BTW, have you read “Appleseed” by John Clute? I have a feeling you may be one of the few people on Earth who can enjoy it. A representative sample:
They passed the iron-grey portcullis that sealed off the inferno of drive country. A dozen ceremonial masks, mourning the hardened goblin eidolons of KathKirtt that died hourly inside drive country, hung within their tile embrasure above the frowning portal. The masks were simplified versions of the flyte gorgon. Their single eyes shut in unison at the death of one of the goblin eidolons, who spent their brief spans liaising with the quasi-sentient engine brother that drove the ship through the demonic rapturous ftl maze of wormholes. Even for eidolons with hardened carapaces, to liaise was to burn and die. When Tile Dance plunged through the ashen caltraps of ftl at full thrust, the engine brother howling out something like anguish or joy all the while, its entirely imaginary ‘feet’ pounding the turns of the maze, goblins lived no longer than mayflies.
Very interesting. My accuracy was the same as Richard’s: 4/8*. I think you probably used my prompt for one of the ones I got right, which is probably why I got it right (the tone and structure are very familiar to me after so much experimentation).
To those who think the current crop of AIs aren’t capable of writing great novellas (18-40k words): Do you think your opinion will change in the next 5 years?
* I originally reported a score of 1⁄8 by mistake.
I think you probably used my prompt for the one I got right, which is probably why I got it right (the tone and structure are very familiar to me after so much experimentation).
Nope, this one. But their prompt does incorporate some ideas from your prompt.
The key[1].
You got 4 of 8 right. In two cases you failed to recognize humans, and in another two—GPT4.
It was a weakly adversarial test:
I took a few less-known but obviously talented writers from the top of my head, and copied the excerpts from the first pages.
For GPT4, I’ve used several prompts from the competition, and then selected the parts for their stylistic diversity.
I suspect that a test with longer excerpts would be much easier for you, as the vanilla GPT4 is indeed often easy to detect due to its repetitiveness etc (I haven’t tried the APIs yet).
If GPT4 already can fool some of us science fiction junkies, I can’t wait to read the fiction by GPT5.
Thank you!
BTW, have you read “Appleseed” by John Clute? I have a feeling you may be one of the few people on Earth who can enjoy it. A representative sample:
Only one, two, and seven are human: from “Ra” by qntm, “Contact” by Sagan, “Noon: 22nd Century” by Strugatsky. The rest is GPT4Very interesting. My accuracy was the same as Richard’s: 4/8*. I think you probably used my prompt for one of the ones I got right, which is probably why I got it right (the tone and structure are very familiar to me after so much experimentation).
To those who think the current crop of AIs aren’t capable of writing great novellas (18-40k words): Do you think your opinion will change in the next 5 years?
* I originally reported a score of 1⁄8 by mistake.
Nope, this one. But their prompt does incorporate some ideas from your prompt.