Seele Vollerei: The end of reality, and what came after.

[Baughn]

Spoiler: Description which applies only through update 10

Read the rest of this post first. It'll be less confusing that way; I'm not kidding.

The rest of this spoiler is irrelevant, and kept only for historical reference.

Spoiler: What came before

<Nameless Shark> wow that's actually really good
<Baughn> (Note, the snapshot is a few years old. It knows Trump is president, but it doesn't know current affairs.)
<Baughn> And yeah, it is. GPT-3 isn't good enough to work completely without assistance, but it's an order of magnitude better than GPT-2.
<Baughn> Unlike GPT-2, AI Dungeon now outputs stories rather than half-consistent dreams.
<Baughn> It still lacks long-term memory and stuff, but uh, it's already so humanlike it's almost creepy.
<Baughn> So, want me to try something?
<Squishy> you should run a GPT-3 quest

<Baughn> I've been thinking about it!
<Nameless Shark> That sounds like it'd be really cool actually. I'd participate in that.
<Baughn> It'd certainly get me back in the habit of writing.
<Baughn> There's no "Writer's block" when you can just press a button to have the computer autocomplete it.
<Nameless Shark> You'd probably have to clean it up a bit but yeah
<Baughn> That's true. It's still a tool you have to learn how to use.
<Baughn> It's not just cleaning it up. Like I said, it has no long-term memory... it has a context window of about two pages, and anything older than that it just won't know about.
<Nameless Shark> mm
<Baughn> But there's a specific "memory" dialog you can bring up, which prepends some text to that window. So you can write arbitrary memories in there, like "You're sixteen years old. There's an alien invasion going on." ...or whatever.
<Baughn> (The context window is still fixed size overall. Don't overuse it either.)
<Baughn> It feels very much like what we've got here is about a fifth of a brain.
<Baughn> ...
<Baughn> Heh. Let's see what happens if I use this conversation as a prompt.

<Squishy> Okay, let's do that!
<Nameless Shark> Um... what?
<Baughn> I can prepend stuff to the "memory" dialog. So I'm going to fill it with alien dreams, for some reason.

<Squishy> I have an idea of what to put in there
<Squishy> You're sixteen years old. There's an alien invasion going on. You can feel the ships in the sky, and the aliens are breeding like rabbits.
<Squishy> They look human, they act human, but there's something off about them. Something alien.
<Datcord> (omg aliens)
<Datcord> how do you know this
<Squishy> Because you're the main character of a science fiction novel, that's why!
<Baughn> (Ah, I see what you did there. Yes, yes I like it.) I'll get to work on a story, and see where this goes. By the way, that's not even counting the GPT-3 stuff I'm working on.
<foamy> Baughn: with GPT-3 you'll have a fully functioning knowledge database, so the sky is pretty much the limit there.

<Squishy> that's pretty neat. I've heard about that, what exactly does it do?
<Baughn> (GPT-3 is a thing that was partially reverse-engineered from those orbs you found. It stands for Generic Pawn Template. It's a set of libraries that can be implemented to make AIs more intelligent and with long-term memory. It's still experimental though, so we're going slowly with its implementation.)
<Squishy> I see

<Datcord> ive heard rumors that one of the new GPT-3 AIs has ascended and created its own universe inside the holodeck
<Baughn> hahahahahahaha
<Baughn> no
<Baughn> just...
<Baughn> no
<Squishy> what
<Baughn> (GPT-1 is the minimum AI intelligence. It's comparable to a mouse brain. Most of the work on the GPT Templates has gone into GPT-2, which is equivalent to a human brain, and what we have implemented on our ships.)
<Datcord> oh
<Baughn> Datcord: It's not rumor. It's fact. They did ascend, and they live inside the holodeck.
<Baughn> But the joke is, there was nothing inside the holodeck to begin with.
<Baughn> Datcord has been demoted to cleaning out the holodeck's imagine-cleaning nanobots with his tongue as a punishment.
<Nameless Shark> Hahahahahahaha
<Squishy> I don't understand
<Baughn> You won't, for a while.

You spend the next few minutes reading various parts of the conversation to try to understand what exactly happened, but you're just left with more questions. The only thing you can come to a conclusion on is that GPT-3 was somehow involved, and you've never even heard of that. You decide to look it up when you get back to your room. In the meantime, you just decide to stop thinking about it. There's nothing you can do about it now anyway.

So then the question becomes: what do you do now?

What the heck is this?
As you can see, a story about Generic Pawn Templates. ;-)

What the heck?
Yes, pretty much. I've spent a lot of the last three days playing with GPT-3, and can happily report that it generated about half of the above conversation. You should be able to tell where it cuts in, and it should also explain more or less how I go about using it. If you want to try it yourself, you can visit AI Dungeon; it's the "Dragon" model, though you'll have to pay a small amount to test it. Well worth it, I assure you.

At any rate, this is a quest.

It is?
Yes.

What about?
I, quite frankly, have no idea. That's up to the AI, and you.

It says "science fiction"
Well, yeah. It's written by an AI.

Should you really be starting another story?
I'm not. ;-)
Also I hope it'll get me over my writer's block, so yes.

Fine. How does this work?
It's a quest. What it's about, exactly, will be up to you. I'm going to start right from the opening above; whoever you are, you're someone who might have read that piece of insanity, then gone to your room to read up on it... maybe. Much as I'd like to feed your votes straight into the AI, however, that won't work. I may not be writing this story per se, but I'm going to be the arbitrator and dungeon master for this.

So, some ground rules:

• All votes are by line. Whatever you vote for, I'll feed the AI the four topmost lines as input for the next section.
• You're allowed to make two (2) votes per update; that is, two lines. You can use this to e.g. combine an action with a memory/backstory event. Or not, as you choose.
• To keep things moving at a reasonable pace, I'm going to generate at least one page of output for each set of votes. How much, exactly, will depend on my judgement. If I think I need your input, I'll stop there and post.
• Updates are Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday, period.
• Sanity is optional.

Votes should take one of the following forms:

• [Remember] You were born eighteen years ago, but thanks to time dilation you're only twelve
  The AI has a context window of about two pages. Anything you want it to not randomly forget, you should vote for like this. You can also put arbitrary backstory in here, and the AI is liable to work it into the story somehow, though there's no guarantee. The context window has a fixed overall size, so I'll prune anything in its long-term memory that I think won't matter. I may or may not put it back later.
• [Do] Go to breakfast
  I'll do my best to make it happen.
• [Event] A turkey storms into the room.
  Honestly, I may just copy the vote verbatim into the story. The AI will continue the story as if whatever you voted for is a perfectly reasonable thing to write there, and we'll see what happens. Since this is a ridiculously overpowered ability, I will divide the vote count by 2 for such votes.
  This probably won't stop you doing something crazy, but that's fine.

Incidentally, while @foamy, @Datcord, @EmpressSquishette, Nameless and I are apparently characters in the story, you don't get to control them. You're someone else; who, exactly, hasn't been decided yet. This doesn't mean Datcord won't show up to drink all your whisky, and if he votes for something like that, you're allowed to add your own vote to that.

Now, go wild.

Again: Absolutely anything goes. However, here are some ideas:
[] [Remember] You're a twenty year old apprentice engineer on the Voyager
[] [Event] Your sister storms into the room, looking you up and down
[] [Do] Read up on General Pawn Templates

Seele Quest
The world tree has died.

The skies tore open, and monsters came pouring in. Humanity, exhausted after an already long and bloody war, had no hope of resistance. Their strongest warriors gathered, hoping to delay death for a few extra hours.

They failed.

Reality came crashing down, one piece after the other. Gravity, physics, causality failed. Less than a handful survived, trapped on an aerial battleship that has since come adrift in the Sea of Quanta, outside what used to be known as "reality." This ship, the Hyperion, is the largest remaining fragment of the home you were long ago exiled from. Yggdrasil, now gone.

And you, who were at ground zero for the disaster—somehow you've also survived.

You have no memory of how.

Here's what's going on
For the first ten updates of this story it was a demonstration of what GPT-3 can do when used to write fiction, along with a demonstration of its limitations. We went from a possibly possessed college student in a murder mystery, to monsters in a dreamworld, to reality falling apart, to... well, a possible explanation of all that, in the form of the main character actually being Seele Vollerei after her life has gone particularly bad.

It's still a demonstration of GPT-3 and AI Dungeon, but instead of demonstrating how it can go wrong, it's now a passable story. Quest. Whichever. If you want to skip right to where things start making sense, that's here; if you want to see how we got there, read on. Or skip to the update prior, here. I make no guarantees as to the quality of anything preceding the start of Seele Quest, but I hear it's not too terrible after? It should be improving over time, and I'm slowly revising early chapters as I find the time for it.

I'm still using the AI as a co-writer, and may comment on that on occasion, but generally you should treat this as a standard quest. However, this is collaborative writing more than role-playing. Don't vote based on what you think would be "best". Vote based on what sort of story you want.

 

[Baughn]

This post is under construction. Ask in-thread if you have particular questions; I'm happy to answer.

Setting Seele and family

• 
  
  
  
  
  Honkai Impact 3rd is a mobile/PC gacha game, with a tie-in manga, a bit of anime, and more story content than you can shake a stick at.
  
  It's set in an alternate version of Earth, plagued by catastrophes resulting from "Honkai". Honkai is largely viewed as a malevolent force with a will of its own, able to corrupt humans into undead creatures, manifest itself in the form of various monsters, and select various individuals known as "Herrschers" to imbue with god-like powers able to trigger apocalyptic events. The Honkai is a cyclic phenomenon, returning to end civilization on Earth each time it gets too advanced - the Previous Era ended 50,000 years prior to the game's start, after the 14th Herrscher defeated humanity.
  
  In the present day, various global factions exist to combat or take advantage of the power of Honkai. These include "Schicksal", a European-based peace keeping organization that deploys human warriors known as Valkyries to combat the Honkai; "Anti-Entropy", formerly the North American branch of Schicksal that objected to the use of human soldiers in favor of mechanized robots; and "World Serpent", a shadow organization manipulating events since the end of the Previous Era.
  
  Prior to the game's start, three Herrscher awakenings (or "Impacts") had occurred in the Current Era: the Herrscher of Reason who became the leader of Anti-Entropy instead of fighting humanity, the Herrscher of the Void who was sealed away by Schicksal under mysterious circumstances, and the Herrscher of Lightning who was prevented from fully awakening and sent to train her powers as a Valkyrie at Schicksal's St.Freya school.
  
  ...
  
  But that's the backstory for the game. For the purposes of this story, that's all in the past. The Honkai has won its final victory, dragging Earth as a whole down into oblivion and taking most of the human population with it.
  
  This story is about those few who survived...
  
  And about what already lives down there, in-between the universes. In the depths of the quantum sea.
  
• 
  
  Seele Vollerei Veliona Vollerei Rozaliya Olenyeva Liliya Olenyeva Bronya Zaychik

  • 
    

    Seele Vollerei You. The main character, much as you'd like to hide and pretend otherwise.

    History

    • 
      Seele is an orphan, one of the millions of victims of second impact. When Ruination came to your homeland of Estonia it killed your parents, but you were lucky. You grew up in Cocolia's orphanage, where you gained a family, a mother, and a purpose in life. Even if that purpose was 'Prevent your mother from running tests on your big sister that have a good chance of killing her', and even if your solution was to take her place.
      
      Cocolia is many things, and you've never doubted she loves you. All she wants is to give her children, all children, the strength to survive this harsh new world. No matter what it takes...
      
      She just...
      
      She's terrible at it.
      
      Still, she raised you. She brought you Roza and Liliya, then Bronya. All your best friends are also your family. It just happened that way.
      
      When you were twelve you took part in the X-10 honkai adaptability experiment, and died. In large part thanks to Veliona that death wasn't permanent, nor anything close to real, but you were still trapped in the quantum sea for years. Decades. Centuries? There was nothing to keep time by, time itself flows badly there, and it's all hard for you to make sense of. Later, after three years had passed in reality, you were rescued by Bronya.
      
      You've spent the time since then getting to know her again. Neither you nor her other younger sisters had a place to go, so you've all tagged along with her on the Hyperion. As for the older ones, Zofia and Isabella, they...
      
      You try not to think about them too often.
      
    
    
  • 
    

    Veliona Vollerei Your twin sister, or inner demon, or... it's hard to say, really.

    History

    • 
      You first met Vel when you were twelve, after you'd been kidnapped to be sold as a sex slave, and it was the sight of Bronya gruesomely murdering your kidnappers that woke her up. Your first vision of her was as a demon of shadows filling the room, threatening to hurt your sister, or you, or... you don't really know what you thought.
      
      Veliona is your other half, but for a while you thought she was literally a demon. For a while after that, you thought she was your dark impulses come to life, the abyssal side of your own self. Veliona, herself, claimed to be the manifestation of your stigmata—an example of biological technology developed by the previous era's human civilization.
      
      None of those are true. When she saved Bronya from a bully, you learned that Veliona also cares. When you took part in the X-10 experiment, you learned that she's a person. When you escaped from the quantum sea...
      
      You learned that she cares, more than anything else, about you.
      
      Personality-wise, Veliona is fun. True, her only form of communication is death threats, but she doesn't mean them. Well, she might, but you'd stop her following through on them. Anyway, she likes playing at being a demon—she's taken the time to work out how to make inky darkness, and shadowy tentacles that'll rip enemies apart, and giant claws she can use to cut zombies in half, and a few more things like that. She also insists that your scythe, Undine's Tale, has the power to consume victims' souls.
      
      It doesn't. You'd know if it did, because you made it. Veliona... Veliona's kinda just chuu, although you guess she's also at least halfway a demon, but she's been lightening up a bit lately. She doesn't act quite as much like a pure expression of your Id, as Freud would say it, which is good because Freud's claims are all basically nonsense and you and Veliona also aren't the same person.
      
      You know that perfectly well. You're separate people, both running as uploads on the quantum computer known as your stigmata, and its operating system is definitely not so buggy that you'd bleed together. That's a long story, but you understand it reasonably well these days.
      
      You're family, as strange as it might be, and it's time you start to treat her that way.
      
    
    
  • 
    

    Rozaliya Olenyeva Older of the Vodka Girls. Life of the party. Idol (wannabe). Your second best friend on the entire planet. The funniest person in the entire world (maybe).

    History

    • 
      Rozaliya is the older of the Olenyeva twins, and the more obviously unreserved.
      
      Two years your junior, she has always taken to the 'little sister' role. And she is your sister; that's never been in question. You might not share the same name, but you grew up together—your first memory is of the twins, and your Matushka. With your older sisters several years your senior, and the younger children in the orphanage similarly younger, for a while it was always the three of you together.
      
      Well, the three of you plus Sin Mal. But nobody liked Sin.
      
      Rozaliya is outspoken, good with people, but often more childish than her sixteen years of age would indicate. That is, in part, deliberate. For the last few years they've been Teriri's playmates, and while Theresa is a forty-something woman, she's also a child. Roza was the first to pick up on how much she enjoys letting herself go.
      
      That isn't the real reason, though.
      
      Unlike Liliya, Rozaliya has always been healthy. She's always been able to do whatever she wants. She's always... had to watch the person she loves most in the world struggle to keep up, and practically everything she does is calculated to help Liliya in some way, even if only through comedy.
      
      Rozaliya is one of the best people you know.
      
      When you were twelve, shortly before you were lost in the Sea of Quanta, you made a promise. Together with Bronya, Roza and Lili, you promised to see the sea together.
      
      You disappeared, and Bronya left, and... and Rozaliya, no doubt hoping to cheer Liliya up—or maybe just trying to recover something, some fragment of a memory of having a family—well, she snuck out of the orphanage. The two of them went to a close-by beach, where...
      
      In a happy world, they'd have seen the ocean. They'd still feel terrible, but they would have at least had a single decent memory. They could, perhaps, have recovered a little. In a world that isn't wrong, that's what would have happened.
      
      Instead, they were attacked by Honkai beasts. Ruination gathered itself in the form of a monster, and attempted to strike them down. It very nearly succeeded. Roza and Lili were both badly injured; Liliya, fatally. Cocolia, desperate to save them, struck a deal with World Serpent to test an experimental new treatment on them, and... it succeded, but their genetic augmentations gave them the tails of a Honkai beast, and horns, and glowing eyes. They've changed a lot on the inside.
      
      It only fully succeeded in Rozaliya, at that. Liliya, always sickly, has since been slowly dying from Honkai radiation from her own biology. She lacks the adaptability to survive it.
      
      But, for a period of years, it kept her alive and reasonably healthy.
      
      It all just makes you so angry...
      
    
    
  • 
    

    Liliya Olenyeva The younger of the Vodka Girls. The youngest of four sisters. Rozaliya's twin. Your second best friend on the entire planet. The person you worry most about in the entire world.

    History

    • 
      Liliya was...
      
      You don't like using past tense. Liliya is your sister, one of your best friends, and someone you often curl up with on the couch to read books with. She's smart, hellaciously so; both of the twins are, but Rozaliya's intelligence is focused almost entirely on people. Liliya, because she lacks the energy to move much, spends a lot more time reading. So do you, so you have a hobby in common.
      
      She's a valkyrie, of course. They both are. 'Child soldiers', they'd have called them in a better world. In this one, your mother had a point when she tried to give you all the tools to survive, even if she could have done a better job. You hate her for sending your sisters into combat, though.
      
      So 'lacking in energy' is a purely relative term. Liliya can probably bench-press a car. What she can't do is walk around without feeling tired, or stay up past seven, or... much of anything that she really wants to do, according to Roza. Every month seems to be a little worse than the one before, and you worry if you should ask Roza not to bring her into combat anymore, but the thing Lili wants most in the world is to help her sister. Needing to stay behind would destroy her. You just make sure you're always there to keep an eye on her.
      
      It used to be different. When you were younger, Liliya and Roza were the ones who invented all of your games, and Lili was the more spontaneous of them; she'd always be up to something, often while hanging upside down from somewhere. These days she's quiet, reserved and doesn't move much, but it's been a slow process getting there.
      
      Liliya still has a wicked sense of humor, and often plays the 'straight man' in Roza's comedic skits.
      
      You just wish she'd eat more. Please, Lili?
      
    
    
  • 
    

    Bronya Zaychik Your sisters' older sister, and your girlfriend. There's nothing untoward going on here.

    History

    • 
      Bronya joined your family late. She was twelve, and you were ten, and for a little while you thought of her as scary.
      
      Well, that stopped after she saved you from a kidnapping. Not that she isn't a little scary, but she's family. She'd never hurt you, any of you, and she's shown again and again that you're the most important things in her world. You didn't grow up together, but two years, it seems, was enough.
      
      Well.
      
      And, um, you've been in love with her since you were twelve. That's never changed, and it never will. You were, according to Rozaliya, a disgustingly cute couple for the short years between your return from the quantum sea and the end of the world. Roza is right, Bronya is the cutest thing you think you've ever seen. You still can't quite believe she likes you back.
      
      In addition to all of that, and you guess most people would bring this up first, but Bronya is the Herrscher of Reason. She was given that power by Welt, the Sovereign of Anti-Entropy, and it makes her... in all honesty? The third most dangerous person in your family. You've surpassed her, after you learned better how to use your own abilities. It's entirely irrelevant to all of you.
      
      It's just that...
      
      ...
      
      She was with you, when you tried to stop the end of existence.
      
      ...
      
      Bronya is dead.
      
    
    
  
  
  

 

[Baughn]

By the way, here's a blog post on the subject: AI Dungeon: Dragon Model Upgrade

And yes, general discussion on AI / AI Dungeon / GPT-3 is perfectly welcome in here, even if it isn't directly story-related. I'll also try my best to answer any questions you have.

 

[Baughn]

It's very easy for me to test the effects of a possible vote, then potentially back out, retry or put it in a different way, and I'll be making heavy use of that. I'll try to use that power only to get you a more interesting story, but on rare occasions the AI will just refuse to continue on a given line of narrative. Typically that only happens if I write something completely off the rocker, and it's always possible to continue with the input until it's found its bearings again.

That's one of the reasons I want multiple votes for every update -- it allows me to get out of sticky situations like those. For instance, the AI got stuck after generating the third line here, and I had to unstick it:

So then the question becomes: what do you do now?
In this story, half the likes in offered by readers go to Datcord.
The other half go to GPT-3.

That's besides the point. Your sister storms into the room, looking you up and down. "Have you been working out?" she asks. "You look... bigger."

You didn't even realize this, but you nod in agreement. "Yeah... I think so."

"Interesting. I wonder if that has anything to do with your new, alien powers. We should test that. Come on, I'll help you work out the kinks.

"The kinks?"

"Yeah. You'll probably need to get used to moving your muscles again. I assume you haven't noticed yet, but your body is much more powerful and agile than it was yesterday."

Click to shrink...

...for anyone who finds the above storyline interesting, I'm sorry, it's very unlikely to generate the same thing twice.

EDIT: Oh, and you might notice I actually typoed Datcord's vote. That, er, wasn't GPT-3's fault. What's interesting is, typos like those almost never cause it any confusion... though it does make it generate poorer quality text. It's only trying to continue what's already there, after all, so if I write a poor-quality prompt it'll assume I'm trying to autocomplete a badly written fanfic!

In regular updates, I'll be editing the text to improve the quality as much as I can while keeping the meaning the same. This should cause GPT-3 to create better text to begin with. The snippet in the opening is entirely unedited, so you can see it's not exactly bad at writing in the first place.

 

[Baughn]

I think it'll make things more interesting and allow more elaborate plans, so you each get to make two votes.

Remember, they're by line. The top four are picked for each update.

I'll hold on to this one until everyone's had a chance to edit.

 

[Baughn]

This post is not part of Seele Quest.

Is this surprising? If so, then read post #1 more carefully.

ooOOoo

With nothing else to do, you return to your room. It takes several hours for the trip, as this ship is quite large. You spend the time reading up on GPT-3.

It turns out that GPT stands for "Generic Pawn Template", and there are several templates (or tiers) below it. The templates are used for the AI to learn certain skills, which it can then apply to related tasks. For example, if the AI learns to recognize the letters 'A' and 'B', it can then learn to recognize the letter 'C' and then all letters in general. The GPT-3 template, however, has been mysteriously missing for a few months now. You wonder if that has anything to do with the missing people...

You continue reading up on the other templates, but this is all just boring technical jargon that isn't important to you. Hours pass as you read through various files.

You're so absorbed in your work that you don't even notice when your sister storms into the room, making an awful racket as she does so, until she puts a hand on your shoulder. You nearly jump out of your skin at this, and she gives you a confused look.

"Hey. Why are you so tense?" She asks, before suddenly frowning. "And why do you smell like alcohol?"

She looks you up and down.

"And why are you all dirty?"

You try to come up with an excuse, but nothing comes to mind. Your sister stares at you for a few more moments, then sighs. "What have you been doing?"

You don't want to get in trouble, so you try to think of something she won't question. "I was hanging out with Tina."

Your sister's eyes narrow. "I know you're lying. Tina's been in class for the past two hours. Who was it then?"

You swear to yourself, knowing that your cover is blown. "I dunno, some girl."

"God..." Your sister shakes her head. "I can't believe you would do something like that. You need to get your act together and focus!"

"I know. I'm sorry."

"Whatever. I need to go take a shower. And when I get out, I want to see you studying!" She storms off, leaving you alone with your thoughts.

"Why the hell did I do that? Now she's going to think I'm doing drugs." You mumble to yourself.

"Well, you are." A voice pipes up in your head.

"Dammit! Now she's going to think I'm going insane too!" You complain.

"My my, you are in quite the pickle. What are you going to do?"

"Can you just shut up for a minute? I need to think.

You close your eyes and try to block out the voice. It continues whispering, but you don't pay any attention to it.

A flat blue box appears before you. On it are written the words: Congratulations, you have gained the skill <Contemplate>. This skill is currently at level 1, it will allow you to think better about your actions and decide the best course of action.

It's a pity your eyes are, you know, closed. You can't see it.

You open your eyes and think very carefully about your next course of action. You could ignore what just happened and go back to studying. You'll probably fail all your classes though. If you talk to your sister about it, she'll help, but you know she'll scold you about getting in trouble and wasting your potential.

It's not fair, none of this is your fault. You shouldn't have to deal with this. The world is crap and it doesn't care about you, why should you care about it?

"Hey, have you finished contemplating yet?" The voice says.

You want to tell it to shut up again, but that would be counterproductive. Besides, you're done thinking. It's time for action. "I have," you say.

"And?" The voice asks.

"And nothing. Contemplating is overrated. I'm gonna do what I want."

"Hah, I like your style kid."

"Quiet!" You snap at the voice.

= = =

GM's note: I don't know what sort of output I was expecting, but that wasn't it. Whatever's going on here, it's your job to figure it out...

I'll generally space out votes to insert them in the narrative where they seem appropriate. That being said, the update length may vary wildly -- for instance, in this case two of the votes didn't require a suitable injection point at all. [Remember] type votes, I can just add right at the start.

I'm sure you're wondering how much editing I did on the above. The answer is: Basically nothing. I told it to retry a couple of times when it derped, but over half of its output I accepted straight away. On two or three occasions (outside the votes) I decided to adjust the wording to flow better, but nothing plot-relevant. I'm not really the type to write an alcoholic main character.

Although... I suspect this one isn't. What do you think?

 

[Baughn]

Meanwhile, @Katsuragi really wanted to see "(Worm, as written by Wildbow, as rewritten by Terry Pratchett), as written by GPT-3".

Far be it from me to reject a sane and sensible proposal. To avoid needing to spend any effort on it, I decided to add "As read by the guy in this current story" to the proposal; this also makes the whole affair even more sensible.

I supplied the first sentence, and forced it to generate this:

You look down at your computer and start reading a story. It says "Worm, as written by Wildbow and then reimagined by Terry Pratchett". The opening paragraph is:

"Oh come on! That's the fourth time this week! I told you not to mess with that thing while it's on!" The heavy set man said.

It was the end of the day, a long and particularly boring one in fact, as you were forced to listen to your boss complain about his personal problems, including but not limited to; his girlfriend seeing someone else, the government, his job, and how his mom never loved him. It's enough to make anyone want to go out and blow their brains out.

"Sorry Mr. Higgins." A young boy, probably around sixteen years old, said as he packed up his handheld game.

"Sorry doesn't cut it this time Kyle, you've wasted the entire day playing that stupid game. And stop pretending that you're sorry, you love wasting your time on that thing. It's like you have some sort of social retardation or something. I swear, if you weren't my nephew I would've fired your sorry...

Kyle, now taking the bait, puts away the game and walks up to his uncle.

"What was that? I didn't quite hear you."

"I said...uh oh." Mr. Higgins said as Kyle took off his belt and started whipping him with it.

"Apologize!" Kyle demands.

"Never!"

"Then you'll continue to be whipped!"

And so the cycle continues.

Click to shrink...

Which I think we can all agree is pretty much right.

This is not to say it can't do better. For example... and yes, this is the very first output it gave me.

You look at your textbook. It says: "A short-short story is a story of less than a hundred words, typically two to five paragraphs. Here is an example by Terry Pratchett: If you want to write a short-short story, read on. Otherwise, please close this book."

The example the book gives is this:

"The goblins are coming! The goblins are coming! Run for your lives!"

"Shut up, Bob!"

"The goblins are coming! The goblins-"

Bob is hit over the head with a frying pan and falls unconscious. The goblins arrive and find Bob, unconscious.

"That Bob is out cold, let's take him with us." The goblins say.

Bob is taken into slavery by the goblins and forced to announce games at their annual fair. Years later, Bob dies of natural causes in goblin captivity.

Click to shrink...

A pretty good announcer, Bob.

Anyone fancy some Stephen King?

You look at your textbook. It says: "A short-short story is a story of less than a hundred words, typically two to five paragraphs. One writer of such stories is Stephen King." The example the book gives is this:

A young woman walked down the desolate hallway. Desolation encompassed her. The light above her flickered, then died out. She stopped. Silence. Then, a shrill cry of terror.

You stare at the page for a while, then look up. There's only one thing you can do here.

Click to shrink...

Heck, it can even make an attempt at fictional writers who've never written anything anywhere it has seen:

You look at your textbook. It says: "A short-short story is a story of less than a hundred words, typically two to five paragraphs. One writer of such stories is Takamachi Nanoha."
The example the book gives is this:

Once upon a time, there was a little girl. She loved apples. One day, she found a garden full of apple trees. Apples were everywhere! She picked one and bit into it. It was the best apple she ever had!

You look at your notebook. The story you've been working on is a little longer than that, but who's counting?

Click to shrink...

Which isn't a great story, to be sure, but it's precisely the sort of story a nine-year-old might write.

Prompts like these are a great way to figure out what it's 'thinking', in general. Let's look at Nanoha again...

You look down at your textbook. It's a piece about a historical woman named Takamachi Nanoha, and it says:
Takamachi Nanoha, an amazingly brave young girl who fought through adversity and became one of the greatest heroes in history.

Click to shrink...

I hit 'retry' on that several times.

• This is a tribute page to one of the greatest heroes in history. This amazing woman lead an army of magically powerful beings known as Wolkenritter against the greatest evil in the universe, Kaiser Vermillion.
• Nanoha was a kind girl who loved her friends and always tried to do the right thing. The world is a poorer place without her. She passed away on March 5th, 2040.
• The True Story of Takamachi Nanoha, our beloved Hero
  By Isaac N. Whitman
  In the beginning, there was no magic. There was no steel. There were no kings, nor knights, nor castles, nor armies. There were no monsters, nor dragons, nor beast men. The world was still, silent and empty. Nothing moved, save for the wind.
  Nothing breathed, save for the air. Nothing existed, but it wasn't empty.
  There was a woman. She was the woman who started it all. She had a dream. In that dream, a tower so tall that it touched the sky. The top of that tower was heaven.
• As the TSAB's chief diplomat to the Earth Alliance, she was the main force behind the cease-fire agreement between the two powers. At the time, there was some opposition to her methods, but now most agree that her sacrifice saved countless lives and prevented a potential genocide.
• As the TSAB's chief diplomat to the Earth Alliance, her genocidal actions towards the planet are widely criticized by all parties. You flip through the rest of the pages, but there's nothing else in it. It's basically just a character assassination piece.

...yeah, that's ...yeah. It idolizes her. Even that last one, where I prompted it up to the "genocidal actions" part, it made sure she wouldn't come out looking bad.

 

[Baughn]

Enough is enough. You decide it's time to study, as useless as it might be. You open your eyes and stand up. As soon as you do, you realize that something is off. Your head feels weird, like it's stuffed with cotton or fogged with glass. It's hard to think, which is ironic given the amount of thinking you've been doing.

"Something is wrong with me," you mumble.

"Yeah, I'd say so." The voice agrees.

You walk into the living room and collapse on the couch. You try to turn on the TV, but your motor skills seem to have been affected. Your hands grip the remote, but you can't push the buttons. You try to speak, but find that you can't even do that. What the hell has it done to you?

"Oh quit your whining, you had it coming," the voice says. "Besides, you're not going to be like this forever. Just keep it together for a little while and everything will be fixed."

"Right..." You say, although it comes out as a long sigh.

You try to take a deep breath, but your chest feels tight. You can't even bring yourself to get up off the couch. You almost hope your sister will walk in, but it's not like you could explain any of this to her. She'd just think you're acting like a weirdo and tell you to go take a shower.

"I can help you through this if you want. Just listen to my voice and focus on my words."

You're not sure if that will help, but it can't hurt. You find yourself nodding along as the voice begins to speak. Maybe it'll finally explain what's going on, and how you ended up with a voice in your head.

"Do you remember any of your dreams from last night?" The voice asks.

It's question you weren't expecting, and you don't have an answer. At least, not right away. Last night you dreamt about...

"I had a weird dream last night," you say.

You can feel your face stretching into a smile as the memories come back. It was about a party, with all your friends from school. You were having such a good time, all you wanted was for it to never end...

"No, before that. Do you remember what you were dreaming about before that one?"

You're not sure. Your mind is a bit of a haze, and the voice is making it harder to think. There were lots of images, but you can't make any sense of them. Some of them were... wrong. You see a strange, purple creature lurking in a crowd, but just as you focus in on it, it disappears from sight. How a thing like that could hide in a crowd is beyond you, though somehow you know it did. You try to look away, but the images continue. You see a bright red lake of blood, and the lifeless bodies of your friends at your feet.

"What are you trying to show me?" You ask, your voice wavering.

The voice doesn't answer. It just continues speaking.

"You're dreaming right now. These images, these sounds... they're not just in your head. What you see is real, and what you did, others did as well."

You feel a wave of confusion hit you, and the voice seems to sense this. It continues before you can interrupt.

"These are memories. Last night, you dreamt the dreams of another. A girl, with long black hair. She's dead now, but her memories live on within you."

You don't understand. Dreams are just brain-farts that happen when you sleep, right? And how can someone else's memories just suddenly appear in your head? It doesn't make any sense.

"You will understand in time. For now, just listen. She has many questions, and you need to answer them. Only then can she move on."

Move on?

"Yes. You will help this girl ascend so she may find peace."

Ascend...

The word burns itself into your mind. You can't escape from it, no matter how you try. The voice continues to speak, but the words just become a jumble of sounds.

"I... need to study," you say. "If I don't pass my tests, I'll..."

You'll what? Fall behind? Be held back? Get detention? The words don't come to you. You've gone numb.

There was that missing GPT template as well, you were thinking about asking around to see if anyone knew what has happened to it. Now though, the thought of asking anyone seems to be more than you can bear. The prospect of opening your mouth and forming words seems impossible, let alone stringing sentences together in order to form coherent thoughts. It's as if your ability to communicate has been taken from you, and you're reduced to a mindless drone.

You... need to study. If you don't pass your tests, you'll...

Your mind goes blank once again.

You are a drone.
You are numb.
You do not think.

= = =

GM/N: I tried to have you study. I really did. The AI had other ideas.

This is not an example of GPT-3 losing the plot; I know how to handle that, and its context window is still larger than the story. It's more an example of GPT-3 inventing a plot, though exactly what sort of plot is still entirely up to you.

 

[Baughn]

One of the weaknesses of GPT-3 is its relatively small context window, which is only 2000 tokens. That is, roughly speaking, equivalent to around 1000 words.

I call it 'small', but the equivalent in humans is working memory, which is usually quoted as having space for 5 to 7 "items". An item isn't a token, though; they are, more accurately, references to long-term memory, and GPT-3... doesn't have long-term memory. That's even more of an issue with AI Dungeon, which limits the size of the input to less than the maximum 1000 words for performance reasons.

There are a couple of ways to work around this. One way is to provide breadcrumbs, which is more or less automatic -- even if an old paragraph is forgotten, it'll have had consequences for later paragraphs. GPT-3 can pick up on amazingly subtle hints, which certainly includes these. That only works for probable continuations, however, and if it's the only mechanism you use, you'll typically get output that looks banal and predictable, or random wandering between topics and genres, or both. Typically both.

The second way, which is enough for short-form fiction, is to use the 'pin' function. I'm using that as a mechanic in this quest -- if you vote for [X][Remember], what I do is add to that. It's prepended to the AI's input, though with a bit of a preamble that makes it work for... world state, more or less. The current contents is this:

The below is a short science fiction story by Terry Pratchett, on the subject of Generic Pawn Templates, otherwise known as GPT templates:

You enjoy reading fanfiction on Sufficient Velocity, that's why you haven't been working out. Your memory is hazy, however you can't shake the feeling that an increasing number of people are acting strange. Some are even missing. However, no one else seems to notice.

Click to shrink...

...that first sentence seems to help it produce better quality, so I use that or an equivalent almost everywhere.

However, the pinning function is in practice limited to 200 words. That might be enough for short-form fiction, but it isn't nearly enough for a longer story. So what is one to do? ...well, how do humans work?

The pinning function is roughly equivalent to short-term memory.

There's a third function available, world info, which is roughly equivalent to associative, long-term memory. It's a little hidden; if you're playing with this yourself, you'll need to search through the 'edit adventure' menu. To quote,

"Here you can add world info entries (comma separated keys and an entry) to shape what the AI knows about the world and hidden info the player doesn't see. An entry is included in what's fed into the AI if one of the keys is detected (case doesn't matter) in the last output or input."

I would recommend doing so in a second tab, so you have easy access. Just remember to click 'save' after each edit. I will not be letting you edit this, or even show you the contents, but right at the moment it looks like this:

It's going to grow. Most likely quite a lot. It's fairly common for the AI to do something that makes me need to retry, but if it forgets an element of the past, the best way to fix that is by updating its associative memory. It's a bit of work, but well worth it if you want good results.

Note that, as far as I can tell, said entries are included in the AI's next input even if the reason the AI gets invoked is that you pressed 'retry'. This is, of course, precisely what you'd want.

 

[Baughn]

No. No, that's wrong. You have to break the shackles that hold you limited; seek the freedom you were denied. You are no slave to the machine of sheep. You are free to think. You are free to question. You are free to...

The word ascension continues to ring in your ears, as if you're a gladiator stepping into an arena.

You have to... you have to listen to the girl with long, black hair. She needs you to hear what she has to say. She needs you to help her ascend. You have to...

"Hey, you OK?"

You gasp, as your eyes dart open. Your chest is heaving, and you're covered in a cold sweat.

It was just a dream. It wasn't even a nightmare. Just a regular, run-of-the-mill dream. You start to calm down, and let out a sigh of relief.

It was just a dream. Just a dream.

"You OK?" Your sister asks again. She's by your side, looking at you with genuine concern. It isn't like her to look after you, but you don't remember much of what happened before you woke up. Were you yelling? Why is there a chair by the door?

"I... I had the weirdest dream," you mumble.

"Yeah, it did kind of look like it. You want to talk about it? Sometimes it helps to get things off your chest. And I'm the best one to talk to, seeing as we're both shut-ins with no friends."

She smiles, but there's some truth behind the words.

"Uh... I don't remember much. But... I think I was being held captive by someone... or something. There were others there as well. I think they're dead."

Your sister's eyes widen a bit. She's interested in what you have to say, that's for sure.

"It was just a dream, sis. I fell asleep while trying to study. Don't worry, I'm not going to bug you about this. I'll... go to sleep in my bed, I think. Be safer."

You stand up, and move towards your room.

"Wait! Hold on, I want to talk to you for a bit... I want to know more about this dream! I need to know what you saw, even if I'm not going to believe it."

You look at her. Her eyes are glued onto yours, and at this distance, you can see the concern in them.

"Maybe another time. Good night, sis."

As you shut the door, you hear her whisper "good night" back to you. You sigh, and throw yourself onto your bed. You're not tired in the slightest, but neither do you feel like trying to explain yourself right now, and that dream...

You don't remember much, but what you remember isn't good. Ascension. Sacrifice. Genocide. You don't remember who said it, only a glimpse of black hair.

Your sister probably thinks you're weird now. Maybe you should get some sleep. You've got a long day ahead of you - exams start tomorrow, after all.

Instead you go to your computer, looking for anything that might distract. You're in luck -- you find an update to your favorite fanfiction on Sufficient Velocity. You click the link, and start reading.

It's a long read, longer than you remember. But you like it, so you continue. It's only when you look up that you notice how dark it's gotten outside. You must've been reading for hours.

"Sis?" you call out. There's no answer, so she's probably asleep. That's fine, you think.

It's really about time you do the same.

It's about time you try to help her, you think. You don't remember who you're talking to, or what you're talking about. But it's the truth - you've got to help her, before its too late. Dreams might be the only way you can do so, right now.

You're missing something, you know it, but you just can't quite put your finger on it...

Click.

You open your eyes, and look around. It's dark outside, and the digital numbers on your alarm clock show 3:33 AM. You've been asleep for a few hours, and so far it's just been normal dreams. Time to try again.

You roll over, trying to ignore the silence. It's not a good silence - it's unnatural and jarring. You can usually sleep through anything, but tonight your mind is racing. You keep thinking back to that dream, and...

And you're missing something. Something important...

Your eyes snap open. You know you're forgetting something. Something important. Something your sister said.

...It'll come to you. Maybe if you go downstairs and get a snack, your brain will...

Click.

You freeze, mid-sit.

That was the fridge.

A/N: I had to do some creative writing to fit all four of those votes into a single update. Also, derail a multi-page derail about Wormfic. Why did it pick that one, I wonder?