One way to think about GPT-3 is that it predicts what comes next. I wanted to see what it would do when I fed it the opening paragraphs of a couple classic novels. Here’s what happened when I gave it Thomas Pynchon and Gabriel Garcia Marquez to chew on. I’m not including the prompts from the novels themselves; everything that follows was entirely generated by the AI. —Ryan
[Prompt: Gravity’s Rainbow first two paragraphs]
And out of nowhere, uninvited and unwanted comes the image. . . white stone buildings in sunlight, well-known towers seen for a second through falling glass. It’s an old nightmare—he hasn’t had it since he was young—the instant one is awake there are no nightmares left; but now at last the dream has come true: only this time they will all be inside when it happens! And to know that you won’t even feel anything as your body goes hurtling toward Earth like shrapnel through high iron arches designed by men with higher mathematics than any living man can count on his fingers ...
It would take someone mad or drunk to laugh aloud among these others gathered here tonight waiting for their train back home after sleeping on park benches during the day while walking about hunting up odd jobs which never came down from somewhere upstairs where some bored receptionist told them all without looking up “Come back tomorrow, we don't have anything today" —while outside so many stood ready yet unfed knowing somehow though they could not read or write that their lives were forfeit just because food couldn't get around fast enough -and believing what?
[Prompt: first paragraph of 100 Years of Solitiude]
MELQUÍADES HAD ALREADY DEPARTED. He left behind him the memory of a bitter man who had no use for money, because in his time gypsies were wanderers and strangers to all forms of material wealth. His only concern was with things that could not be seen or touched: memories, dreams, omens read from atmospheric changes, good and bad moments written on the insides of wrists. In order to do away with an unendurable toothache he would write letters against it addressed to Saint Apollonia and they always brought relief within three days even though no one knew where those distant saints lived nor how their intercession operated so far away across such distances as well around corners through people’s prayers without having been summoned by any intermediary whatsoever but simply through some kind of mysterious contagion which resembled magnetism more than faith although many years later José Arcadio Buendía would think that perhaps God really did exist after all because otherwise nothing else made sense either including those coincidences based on laws still unknown today which Melquíades revealed as if they were secrets discovered long ago by Aristotle himself whose genius he proclaimed along with Nostradamus’ prophecies whispered at séances held every Friday night during the month before Easter when chicken entrails dripped blood onto wax candles spelling out Latin words full meaning nobody understood until General Pedro Santana came down from his hiding place in Trujillo*to lead them into battle wearing red stockings over his boots and the war lasted three years.
It was in that time of confusion, when families were separated by fear or death, when children grew up without ever knowing their parents’ names and grandparents had no recollection at all of what life had been like before they became deaf with age, that José Arcadio Buendía would remember having seen ice for the first time in a house made out of woven reeds whose owner claimed to be an Englishman although he spoke Spanish badly. The fact is that there were some who said it wasn’t true but rather than argue about it they brought him two blocks so large that one alone could have supplied enough ice to cool down drinks for everyone on earth during several centuries.