Since early December 2007, a new author has been publishing articles on Think Artificial under my name. This author is not human, but intelligent software created by myself to relieve the pressure of regular posting. Currently, the system has posted over 20 articles without breaking cover.

Taking its cues from Google News Alerts on “robotics”, the system analyzes news articles — identifying and extracting relevant lines of text and generating a shorter version of the article. The text is then paraphrased using preset tunings to mimic my writing style. The ultimate result is an article that only needs my one-click administrator approval to be published.

The TOWTAW System (“Toto”)

The system, named The One Who Thinks Artificially & Writes (TOWTAW, pronounced ‘Toto’, as in OZ), is an example of AI systems integration, comprising several software modules that communicate through a central blackboard system.

Relevance ranking of paragraphs and sentences (understanding the text) is accomplished by a custom made module that makes use of the OpenCyc reasoning engine and the Open Mind Common Sense Net (a.k.a. ConceptNet). The excerpted text is paraphrased by another module that again makes use of these two systems, whose combined strength is hundreds of thousands of terms and logical expressions. This entire process is complimented by a third, custom software module that accesses the WordPress database and tries to find sentences written by me that can be re-used. This is done to further improve writing style similarity.

Finally, the system makes use of WordPress’ Post-by-email option, simply using my machine to mail in the post to await my admin approval. It’s worth noting that I rarely have to retouch the text.

So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

With the continued success of the system, and the many great comments on the articles (it has even started debates!) — I’ve decided to leave Think Artificial entirely in the hands of artificial authors. The site, starting next week, will be renamed Think Artificial and Writes. Additionally, I’m opening several new blogs — including one called TOWTAW Row-baw-toh about Western musical adaptations of Asian robot culture.

I thank you very much for your support and compliments on my writings, and will announce at a later date where I plan on start writing online again.

Best regards,
-Hrafn Th.

[[This was April Fools' Day joke for 2008. Read this for the hidden joke]]

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