'Black Mirror' episode written by AI was 'shit,' says creator Charlie Brooker

[Rusty_Blazenhoff]

Originally published at: 'Black Mirror' episode written by AI was 'shit,' says creator Charlie Brooker | Boing Boing

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[Doctor_Faustus]

@Rusty_Blazenhoff

On the upside, Brooker found value in the AI’s work, claiming it highlighted several recurring tropes in the series, prompting him to shake things up for future episodes.

Leave it to Charlie Brooker to finally find a genuinely useful place for AI in the arts

[danimagoo]

@Rusty_Blazenhoff

Because all it’s done is look up all the synopses of Black Mirror episodes, and sort of mush them together.

This is literally how ChatGPT works. Calling it AI is nothing but marketing. It’s just a predictive text generator on steroids. It’s very good at producing things that, on first glance, look like something written by a human, but on a more thorough inspection, is clearly not. This is why it often produces wrong answers when asked questions, and why it sometimes just completely makes up nonsense.

[euansmith]

It’s Mike Yarwood…

Vicious

Using ChatGTP as a trope avoidance system reminds me of when Terry Gilliam cast Bruce Willis in “12 Monkeys”, and then presented Willis with a list his typical mannerisms that he wasn’t allowed to use in the film.

[RickMycroft]

• Gather a collection of stuff.
• Randomize it and throw it against the wall.
• See what sticks out and sparks further ideas.
• Forget all the stuff that’s “meh”.

@FGD135

Memory Dancer sounds like a job title.

@Purplecat

In a cyberpunk novel, yeah.

[Mindysan33]

Well, but he could also hire multiple writers to work on the show, and have them spot tropes and shake things up? I wonder if he was in part relying on “mini-rooms” to write the more recent seasons of Black Mirror…

[simonize]

If this is what an AI can do, we can do better is a good lesson.

[spetrovits]

Needed a computer to tell him how much he repeats ideas. I’ve watched more than three episodes of Black Mirror. That’s all I needed.

[Hanglyman]

Because all it’s done is look up all the synopses of Black Mirror episodes, and sort of mush them together. Then if you dig a bit more deeply you go, ‘Oh, there’s not actually any real original thought here.’

What else would it possibly be? He does realize that actual sentient AI is not a real thing, right, no matter how often it may appear in Black Mirror? This sort of confusion is why it’s not a good idea to use a word to mean a futuristic, impressive thing for decades, then suddenly apply it to something much more mundane and achievable without any acknowledgment that standards have been drastically lowered.

[jhbadger]

I mean, it’s just The Twilight Zone, only with the Internet and mobile phones. It’s not a particularly novel idea – somebody was going to do it, and Brooker just got there first. And TZ in turn owed a debt to the old radio program Dimension X, which in turn owed a lot to the ''twist ending" authors like O’Henry and Ambrose Bierce.

[IAmAlsoJohn]

They should do an episode where Hollywood devalues their creative talent people so much that they go on strike, then they try to replace them with AI, only it turns out to be such a shallow mockery of the real thing that nobody wants to watch it, and all the executive producers lose all their money and power.