What got my daughter interested in AI

My daughter asked me for help with her English assignment, but I quickly saw this assignment was too advanced for me. I would be happy to explain simple things like Eigenvectors. As I pondered what advice I could contribute to her assignment, a thought struck me. I had got a grant from OpenAI to play with their GPT-3. And this is a perfect opportunity to, just for fun, try the assignment on the best NLP model available in the world on a problem far from my domain of knowledge. The assignment was to compare and contrast two novels, “The cask of Amontillado” and “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”, I had not read any of these, and to write about narrative techniques used from a symbolism and foreshadowing perspective.

Before going to the GPT-3 playground, I had binged and googled this and nothing useful had turned up that could be used in this assignment. In fact, the results were utterly useless! Either the results had no relevance at all, or it was a summary of one of the novels without the necessary combination of the two. The search engines cannot handle the “thinking” of contrasting two novels unless if someone had published on Internet something with the search string and some relevant content. I got a sense of that the assignment was designed to not be something that can be easily found on the Internet.

My hopes that AI could tackle this type of problems was not high. I expected some gibberish answer from the GPT-3 that could be at best entertaining.

I entered the following into the GPT-3 playground:

Write an essay that compares and contrasts the novels “The cask of Amontillado” and “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”: The narrative techniques used in both novels will be discussed by highlighting the symbolism and foreshadowing. A similarity that can be seen between the two novels is the narrative technique.

However, the result was a great astonishment for me:

In “The Cask of Amontillado”, the author Edgar Allan Poe writes in a first-person narrative as Montresor. A difference is that in “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”, Ambrose Bierce writes in a third person narrative.

In “The Cask of Amontillado”, Poe uses foreshadowing to foreshadow the climax of the story. In one instance, Montresor warns the victim not to scream, in order not to alarm the sentry. The victim asks “‘What is the meaning of this?’ ““The story is told in a short flashback, which Montresor narrates as a first-person voice.”

The author, Ambrose Bierce, also uses foreshadowing in “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”. In one instance, the protagonist tries to escape from the noose by jumping. “The protagonist, Peyton Farquhar, is hanged by a rope tied to a branch of a tree. He notices that the rope is not long enough to allow him to reach the ground.”

Both novels use foreshadowing to foreshadow the climax of the story, but the way the foreshadowing is used is different.

Not only did contain the correct authors names, relevant passages from the novels, the answer of what is similar, but also pointed out the difference.

I did not expect this; a generated output that is not to be found anywhere from any search engine and still much more relevant than what a search engine could generate.

However, there is one problem, and the OpenAI playground has a limited number of words that can be generated in one request. The limit is shared with the “prompt”, the natural language instructions of what you want to generate and the response. In an attempt to save characters to be used for the answer instead, I changed the request to this:

Write an essay that compares and contrasts the novels “The cask of Amontillado” and “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”.

OpenAI responded:

Edgar Allen Poe’s “The cask of Amontillado” and Ambrose Bierce’s “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” are both stories of revenge, but with different outcomes. In “The cask of Amontillado, the narrator Montresor uses his cat-and-mouse game to lure Fortunato into the catacombs under his palazzo to murder him. Fortunato is fooled into believing he is in Montresor’s company, and that their meeting is for the purpose of reconciliation.

As the story progresses, Montresor only tells the truth to Fortunato when it is no longer possible to turn back. In contrast, in Ambrose Bierce’s “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”, Peyton Farquhar is not aware that he is in fact being hanged. The executioner is perched on a crossbeam of the bridge, and Farquhar is blindfolded and has his hands behind his back. Farquhar feels the noose being placed around his neck, he drops from the bridge, and is quickly jerked into the air by the rope. He falls to the water and believes to be dead before he can discover that he is still alive.

In Poe’s “The cask of Amontillado”, Fortunato is tricked into going to the catacombs with the intention of murdering him. In Bierce’s “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”, Peyton Farquhar is tricked into being hung and believes himself to be dead before he is able to discover that he is still alive.

It generates completely new perspective on the contrast analysis. This is interesting. I had to try again with the same prompt to see if there are more ways to describe the contrast in a couple of paragraphs:

Write an essay that compares and contrasts the novels “The cask of Amontillado” and “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”.

OpenAI responded:

The renowned Edgar Allan Poe wrote five short stories and one novel, and it is his novels that are the most popular. One of these novels is “The cask of Amontillado,” a story of revenge. The narrator, Montresor, has been deeply insulted by Fortunato and plotted his revenge.

Montresor lures Fortunato to the catacombs under his palazzo and offers him a drink of Amontillado. Fortunato is so drunk that he does not realize he is being locked in the crypt until it is too late. He finds his way to Montresor’s tomb and is buried alive.

The short story “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” is a story of a man who has been sentenced to death by hanging. As he is executed, he imagines he has managed to free himself from the ropes. He tries to make his escape but falls to his death.

Both stories have a plot about revenge, but these plots are quite different. In “The Cask of Amontillado,” the narrator is really the protagonist, so the plot is driven by Montresor’s actions. The protagonist in “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” is the protagonist’s thoughts and not his actions, so the plot is driven by the protagonist’s interpretation of what is happening to him.

I have not read the novels, but now I start to get a sense of their stories. But my daughter was not satisfied. She wanted help with contrasting the symbolism in the novels. I had to work with the constraints of the OpenAI playground, so the prompt was changed to this:

Write an essay that compares and contrasts the symbolism in the novels “The cask of Amontillado” and “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”.

OpenAI:

“The cask of Amontillado” and “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” both use symbolism to create the mood of the story. From the use of symbols in these stories, it is clear that both authors want the reader to feel a sense of fear and terror.

The author of the cask of Amontillado wants the reader to feel a deep sense of horror and dread, while the author of Owl Creek Bridge wants the reader to feel a sense of escape and freedom.

In the cask of Amontillado, the author uses the symbolism of the catacombs to create a sense of fear and horror. “The catacombs’ walls were hung with moldy tapestry’s which, being too long for the space they were intended to cover, hung down on either side, and gave to the whole interior an air of cold, damp, and neglect”. In this quote, Poe gives a detailed description of the catacombs which makes the reader feel as if they are inside the catacombs. The catacombs are dark and cold, with the tapestries hanging on the walls giving it a creepy and disturbing feel. The catacombs are a place that a person would never want to go, which is what Poe wants the reader to feel.

In Owl Creek Bridge, the author uses the symbolism of the bridge to create a sense of escape and freedom. “The affrighted air of the animal I saw resembled that of a man who had been running through a thicket, and, in so doing, had been pierced by the thorns, and gashed by the boughs”. In this quote, the author, through the symbolism of the animal, is trying to show the reader that the man, who is the main character, is trying to run as fast as possible from whatever is pursuing him. The author is also trying to show the reader that the man is in distress and that he is not able to escape his pursuer. These two novels have vastly different emotions and moods, but both use symbolism to create this mood.

Still, there are more questions to answer in this assignment. What about the foreshadowing? Adjusting the prompt to this:

Write an essay that compares and contrasts the foreshadowing in the novels “The cask of Amontillado” and “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”.

OpenAI:

In Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado,” there are many instances of foreshadowing. Throughout the story, Montresor is planning revenge on Fortunato, who insulted him. He gets Fortunato drunk and then chains him up before sealing the door to the crypt.

In “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” by Ambrose Bierce, there is an instance of foreshadowing when Peyton’s boat is shot. Peyton is running away from his execution, and he falls into water.

In both stories, there is an instance of foreshadowing that sets the tone for the story. In Poe’s story, Montresor’s plan is revealed to the reader because of the foreshadowing. In Bierce’s story, the foreshadowing is when Peyton’s boat is shot, and the reader does not know what will happen to him.

There are still unanswered questions regarding Farquhad and how he did not escape death. I believe that the novel by Bierce was a bit vague regarding this, and that is why my daughter wanted to understand what actually happened in that part of the story. This time modifying the prompt to:

Write an essay that compares and contrasts the novels “The cask of Amontillado” and “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” in how Farquhad did not escape death.

OpenAI:

In the short story “The cask of Amontillado,” the narrator, Montresor, wants revenge for what he considers an insult by Fortunato. He has the perfect plan: he lures Fortunato to his wine cellar, chains him up high in a dark recess, and then posts a sign on the wall warning people not to go any further. He then leaves Fortunato to die in the dark. When he returns later, Fortunato has died from thirst and hunger. In this story, Montresor does not get to enjoy his revenge, but he still gets his revenge.

In the short story “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” the narrator, Peyton Farquhad, wants revenge for the murder of his wife. He has the perfect plan: he ties the noose with a sharp piece of metal and sets up the trap to break his neck. When the break happens, he is immediately killed. In this story, Farquhad does not get to enjoy his revenge, but he still gets his revenge. In these two stories, the protagonist does not escape death, but gets revenge.

The answer is useful but not exactly what we were looking for, although I rather read happy stories about matrices, I did another try anyway:

Write an essay that compares and contrasts the novels “The cask of Amontillado” and “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” in how Farquhad reached death.

OpenAI:

To compare and contrast the novels “The cask of Amontillado” and “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” Farquhad reaches death in the former as a result of a lack of oxygen, and in the latter, a hangman’s noose.

In “The cask of Amontillado,” Montresor, the protagonist, kills his friend, Fortunato, by walling him up in the catacombs beneath a wine cellar. This is done to take revenge for the insult he received from Fortunato. In the story, the protagonist fears that the police would find out, so he tells the narrator that he will set up a trap to ensure that he does not get caught. The protagonist hopes to kill his friend in a way that would make it impossible for him to escape. It would be a “perfect revenge,” the protagonist says, if he could bury Fortunato alive. The act of burying him alive would be a final insult to his enemy. He would die a “painful and terrible death.” Fortunato beg to be let out, but the protagonist tells him that he will be freed after he dies. Eventually Fortunato died, and the protagonist is able to seal him up in the catacombs.

I realize much later that the optimal question was not asked. However, I also realized why I was not an English major in school.

I asked my daughter if she used the text created by AI, and she said no, but she thought the text was helpful when she was stuck with her assignment. And when I asked if she thinks AI can be useful, she said yes.