Artificial Stupidity

What with all the excitement and alarm about artificial intelligence these days, I thought I would fight back with a plea for Artificial Stupidity. Specifically, I believe we can do better than the stupidity of the writing on most mainstream media by using computer-generated stupidity.

You can get an idea of the possibilities here by playing around with the Postmodern Generator (reload the page to get new nonsense).

Then there’s an earlier (from 2003) text generator by Jamie Zawinski called DadaDodo. This is a simple C program that can be compiled on just about any computer these days. For fun I tried using DadaDodo on the text of Moby Dick, which I had read recently. (Try reading Moby Dick out loud; it’s better that way.) Here’s the first paragraph that DadaDodo generated:

Starbuck, stood at least palpable semblance of having seen longingly lingered in that famous author one armed with such a devilish charm the boat? A pious: good! Wall, shoved up the ladder and over his own and Bildad reconciled to think of the whales but presently. John, Leo, the monster of a voice from a right and sank out to or petulance, or vagrant sea. But we are cut Loose Fish, and only a white, head you heard that, lye is a thing; enough and by is much a moment I looking den for the whale, of: scuttling the hemp.

That’s not too bad. It’s definitely Melville, but a Melville with Biden-level intelligibility. Prompted by this text, I have scuttled the hemp.

As you can see, the possibilities are endless. Not only could we replace the aforementioned mainstream media with Artificial Stupidity, but all political speech and bestselling novels could be written in the same way. The future is bright indeed!