The story is that there was a program, Racter, which allegedly created a book titled "The Policeman's Beard Is Half-Constructed" back in the 1980s. The book was released and was a hit primarily because of that AI connection, and a version of Racter was also sold. However, the Racter that got released could never have composed the book, leading me to this post:
> The least hypothesis is that the "good" version of Racter that supposedly composed the novel never existed, and that it was all a hoax made up by someone who wanted to bask in some publicity and sell the Racter that actually got released. As you say, the output is suspiciously good for something they insisted was accomplished on a home computer of the era and, oh no, they can't release the software that did it for Reasons... yeah, pull the other one, it's got bells on.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racter
The story is that there was a program, Racter, which allegedly created a book titled "The Policeman's Beard Is Half-Constructed" back in the 1980s. The book was released and was a hit primarily because of that AI connection, and a version of Racter was also sold. However, the Racter that got released could never have composed the book, leading me to this post:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34575252
> The least hypothesis is that the "good" version of Racter that supposedly composed the novel never existed, and that it was all a hoax made up by someone who wanted to bask in some publicity and sell the Racter that actually got released. As you say, the output is suspiciously good for something they insisted was accomplished on a home computer of the era and, oh no, they can't release the software that did it for Reasons... yeah, pull the other one, it's got bells on.