An Artificial Intelligence is Generating an ‘Infinite’ Podcast

An Artificial Intelligence is Generating an ‘Infinite’ Podcast

6 years ago
Anonymous $gIi3-PxxKB

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/evm9zk/an-artificial-intelligence-is-generating-an-infinite-podcast

It’s the night of September 30, 1840. A light-skinned man with long blond hair and brown eyes lies in a makeshift bed in a distant campsite. A female speech synthesizer tells me that this man has no parents nor any friends or enemies. His name is Jonathan Patience and he is a computer-generated fictional character living in Sheldon County number 1,515,459,035. I am listening to this description of Jonathan’s life on a podcast called Sheldon County. Its host and creator is an artificial intelligence named SHELDON.

SHELDON was created by University of California, Santa Cruz PhD student James Ryan as part of his thesis. It sifts through the experiences of characters living within procedurally generated american counties and creates storylines based on their experiences. The characters in these counties have their own lives and make their own decisions. They interact with one another and even possess unique value systems and goals. SHELDON then turns these stories into a narrative driven, Twin Peaks-inspired podcast called Sheldon County.