Subject: What if... the Board were written by AIs?
Author:
Posted on: 2018-05-21 16:28:00 UTC

Have you ever wondered what it would be like if the PPC Board were entirely made up of Artificial Intelligences? (Y'know, rather than just three or four of us...) Well, it's time to find out! I put together a couple of compilations of post titles (the entirety of 2016, plus May 2017 to the present), and fed them into a textgenrnn neural network (as seen here; search the page for the phrase 'Colaboratory Notebook' to find a version that runs in Google Drive).

For those who haven't run into the phenomenon before, neural networks are AIs that can take an input file - such as ~25,000 subject lines from the PPC - and learn to imitate it. (For many examples, and wild hilarity, you should definitely pay a visit to AI Weirdness/LewisAndQuark, Janelle Shane's blog of her neural net experiments.) So I had high hopes that this net would be able to churn out PPC-like subject lines in no time!

Things... got off to a bad start:

I mo ten te to to te no tee to to no to te ne ne ne i to ne no no ne ne te ae ne ne ne ne ne no ne na te ne ne ne na (nm)-Toinnninnnaneinneheeannion,Tur Jan 22

Okay, fine; apparently learning the rules of the English Language from a bunch of random text isn't that easy. But luckily, the net is able to boost its learning ability by looking through the dataset multiple times, and it soon started to figure things out.

Horry, dead... This one!-Snowy the Sane Fangirl,Sat Aug 3 7:07pm
Here who me in the same a be a be a bit the same to some the someone of the same to me work.-Huinesoron, Wed Mar3 11:58PM
I seem the someone who me some to a can someone as a work.-Huinesoron, Wed Mar3 7:54PM
I am someone who me to some the same to work.-Huinesoron, Thu Apr8 11:58PM


In the interests of full disclosure: the net has different 'temperature settings', which determine how much it experiments - how likely it is to stray from the most PPC-like next character in order to try and find something more interesting. In general, the highly-repetitive lines I'm posting are from low-creativity modes, while the ones with broken words are high-creativity. At one point, ultra-low creativity produced 10 instances of I don't think so...-Matt Cipher in a row.

Also: yes, the AI in low-creativity mode thinks that I post a lot. Those three 'Huinesoron' results came out one after another.

It also thinks that we have a thing for shovels:

I'm getting the point the shovel.-Neshomeh, Sat May22 5:12PM
Wait, you shovel!-Badger421, Shi Sep16 10:23AM
I see your shovel.-Voyd, Sat May22 3:27PM


And trolls. We care deeply about trolls:

I don't know I'm still be have a bad the troll.-Iximaz, Sat May22 7:41PM
I think I can see the trolls. (nm)-Hardric, Thu Jan29 1:25AM
I am not sure the statement to the troll. - Sergio Turbo, Thu Feb 19 10:01AM
The record to the trolls. - Huinesoron, Thu Mar 4 12:13PM
I just want to no began Troll. =] (nm)-Scapegrace, Tue Apr13 10:02PM


And it can get a bit... self-referential at times:

"I might be a literal that." - Storme Hawk, Thu Apr 1 1:39PM
It's a comment. - Hardric, Thu Jan 1 12:11AM
"Well, that was me." - Iximaz, Tue Mar 30 4:26PM


It managed to catch on to our influx of newbies, with a whole string of Hello newbie posts under different names. But... it hasn't twigged that only certain people are newbies:

I am a newbie about the same time to me. (nm)-Huinesoron,Tue Jan 23 10:07am
Sorry for the first impressions-Tomash,Sun Mar 25 11:47am
I am a newbie about the answer things that it's the only a good idea this time there. :) (nm)-Iximaz,Tue Jun 27 12:00pm


Still thinking about me a lot?

I know what I don't know that was me.-Huinesoron, Thu Jul1 10:01AM
I was me to meet you.-Huinesoron, Tue Mar23 10:19AM
I am not a team for the spoilers. - Huinesoron, Tue Jun 1 9:11AM


That's a yes, boss. (As it happens, I was me to meet you. How did it know?)

It had a bunch of proposals for new creative curses:

From the greeting!-SkarmorySilver, Fri Mar12 10:22AM
Hail French...-sonofheaven176, Mon Mar15 1:45AM
For the PPC.-Huinesoron,Mon Dec 11 5:27am


And also some... interesting suggestions for/from various people:

You want to remelt.-Alleb, Tue Aug31 8:40PM
I have to flag a lot. - Larfen J. Stocke, esq, Sun Apr 11 11:07PM
Pokemon Tournament Six - Agent Hi! - N. Harmonik, Wed May 12 3:20AM


I assume 'Agent Hi!' will be the theme of the 6th Sunflower Cup...

"?"-SeaTurtle, Mon Jan12 10:42PM

But mostly, it excelled at posting really cryptic messages that seem to come so close to meaning something:

Music Karon Interesting home, frive the brainbornal line is rooms! (nm)-Mattman The Comet, Sat Oct16 6:14PM
Re: When anybody, so so 3 6:5'82:-T-Matt Cipher, Sun Nov7 10:53PM
Is the only one Crowressings! (nm)-Thoth,Sat Mar 10 10:47am
Humanity - Humanity - Diverwing-twistedwindowpane,Thu Aug 31 9:58am
Woooow, that is a missthing that ever specius was.-Zingenmir,Sat May 20 4:14pm
edit, the real question.-Huinesoron,Mon Dec 18 3:30pm
Even more more unto yark, I go..."-Bast chauble!!-Ronionor,Mon Sep 11 7:09am
It was spowdd (nm) (nm)-Tomash,Sun Mar 11 8:10pm


I'm particularly fond of its attempts to invent new Boarders. T-Matt Cipher sounds like a scifi future version, and Ronionor is obviously an evil version of short-lived Boarder Ronion. I know I saw a twistedwindowpine somewhere in the output, too.

I'll leave you with two final posts. One, a request - a plea - from the AI:

Thanks, hope please. - Hardric, Tue May 18 9:55PM

And two, what I can only assume is its future plan for the PPC:

More computers series that handle the mission.-Hieronymus Graubart,Tue Jul 4 4:41pm

hS, not a team for the spoilers

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