Artificial intelligence and literary creativity: inside the mind of BRUTUS, a storytelling machine

253 Pages·2000·1.79 MB·English

by  Selmer Bringsjord, David Ferrucci

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Artificial Intelligence and Literary Creativity
Inside the Mind of BRUTUS, a Storytelling Machine
Selmer Bringsjord
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
David A. Ferrucci
IBM T. J. Watson Research Center

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Copyright © 2000 by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by photostat, microform,
retrieval system, or any other means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., Publishers
10 Industrial Avenue
Mahwah, NJ 07430
Cover layout and type design by Kathryn Houghtaling Lacey
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bringsjord, Selmer.
Artificial intelligence and literary creativity: inside the mind
of BRUTUS, a storytelling machine / Selmer Bringsjord, David A.
Ferrucci.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8058-1986-x (alk. Paper). -- ISBN 0-8058-1987-8 (pbk : alk. Paper)
1. Creation (Literary, artistic, etc.). 2. Artificial intelligence. I. Ferrucci, David, A. II. Title.
BF408.B773 1999
006.3--dc21 99-13748
CIP
The final camera copy for this work was prepared by the author, and therefore the publisher takes no
responsibility for consistency or correctness of typographical style. However, this arrangement helps to
make publication of this kind of scholarship possible.
Books published by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates are printed on acid-free paper, and their bindings are
chosen for strength and durability.
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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To Katherine and Alexander,
who show me super-computational creativity every day (S.B.)
and
To my parents, Antonio and Connie,
for their unyielding love, support, courage, and intellectual energy,
which have inspired me for as long as I can remember (D.F.)

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Contents
Acknowledgments xi
Preface xv
The Marriage of Logic and Creativity xv
Will Robots Soon Be Smarter Than Us? xvi
From Chess to Literary Creativity xviii
How Do You Build an Artificial Author? xxiii
Why Build an Artificial Author? xxvi
On Silicon Wings xxvii
List of Tables xxix
List of Figures xxxii
1 1
Setting the Stage
1.1 The Turing Test Sequence 1
1.2 The Midwife 5
1.3 Philosophy as Engineering 8
1.4 Lovelace's Argument From Creativity 9
1.4.1 Moravec's Response to Lovelace 13
1.5 Is BRUTUS Creative After All? 14
1.5.1 BRUTUS and Bodenesque Creativity 14
1.5.2 BRUTUS and Torrance's Definition of Creativity 19
1.5.3 BRUTUS and Hofstadter's Copycat 22
1.6 Story Generators as Theorem Provers 25
1.7 Why We're Thoroughgoing Logicists 26
1.7.1 A Two-Horse Race? 27
1.7.2 The Music Box and … Tchaikovsky 27
1.7.3 Why COG Is Doomed 28

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2 33
Could a Machine Author Use Imagery?
2.1 The Imagery Debate's Contestants 35
2.2 The Main Argument Against Computational Imagery 36
2.3 Temporally Extended Mental Images 39
2.3.1 First-Order Logic and Logical Systems 39
2.3.2 OTTER: Test-Bed for Logicist Story Generation 42
2.3.3 Simple Diagrams 45
2.3.3.1 Simple Diagrams in HYPERPROOF 47
2.3.4 So What is a TEMI? 50
2.4 Defending the Key Premise 51
2.5 “Strong” vs. “Weak” Story Generation 63
2.6 So What About BRUTUS 64
3 67
Consciousness and Creativity
3.1 BRUTUS as Zombie 68
3.2 The Conundrum 70
4 81
Mathematizing Betrayal
4.1 First Stabs at a Definition 83
4.2 Betrayal Calls For an Expressive Logic! 85
4.2.1 Dizzyingly Iterated Beliefs in Detective Stories 85
4.2.2 OTTER Cannot Handle Betrayal 87
4.2.3 Cervantes' Don Quijote for Skeptics 90
4.2.4 What Shall We Then Do? 93
4.3 On To More Sophisticated Accounts 94
4.4 A Branch Point 96
4.5 Two Popular Objections 99
4.6 Miles to Go Before We Sleep 100
5 105
The Narrative-Based Refutation of Church's Thesis
5.1 Can Interestingness Be Formalized? 105
5.2 Mendelson on Church's Thesis 106
5.3 Background Material 107
5.4 Refuting Mendelson's Attack 108
5.5 Mendelson's Rebuttal 116
5.6 Attacking Church's Thesis From Narrative 118
5.7 Objections 127
5.7.1 Objection 1 127
5.7.2 Objection 2 128
5.7.3 Objection 3 129
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5.7.4 Objection 4 131
5.7.5 Objection 5 131
5.8 Arg in Context: Other Attacks 133
3
5.8.1 Kalmár's Argument Against CT 135
5.8.2 Cleland's Doubts About CT 138
5.9 And Interestingness in BRUTUS ? 145
1
6 149
Inside the Mind of BRUTUS
6.1 Where Are We In History? 149
6.1.1 TALE-SPIN, and Reaction 150
6.1.2. Turner's MINSTREL 151
6.1.3 The Seven “Magic” Desiderata153
6.2 Story Grammars Resurrected 154
6.3 BRUTUS: Evolution of a System Architecture 160
6.3.1 BRUTUS and BRUTUS 160
1
6.3.2 Component Configuration 162
6.3.3 Plot Generation 163
6.3.4 Story Structure Expansion 164
6.3.5 BRUTUS: A Composite Architecture 164
6.4 BRUTUS 's Anatomy: An Introduction 165
1
6.4.1 Introduction to the Knowledge Level 166
6.4.1.1 Domain Knowledge 167
6.4.1.2 Linguistic Knowledge 167
6.4.1.3 Literary Knowledge 168
6.4.1.4 Knowledge Usage in Story Generation 169
6.4.2 Introduction to the Process Level 169
6.4.3 Implementation Structures and Methods 170
6.4.3.1 Frames 171
6.4.3.2 Relations 172
6.4.3.3 Production Rules 173
6.5 The Knowledge Level 174
6.5.1 Domain Knowledge 174
6.5.1.1 Agents and Events 174
6.5.1.2 Beliefs 175
6.5.1.3 Proactive Behavior: Goals, Plans, and Actions 177
6.5.1.4 Reactive Behavior: Production Rules 178