Can AI Write a BBspot Story?

Can AI Write a BBspot Story?

Like most geeks, I’ve been fascinated by the explosion of new about generative AI hitting the airwaves recently, and couldn’t wait to mess around with it. I’ve done quite a bit of experimenting with ChatGPT, mostly feeding it ideas to see what it can come up with. I’m not sure why it took me so long, but the other day I prompted it with “Write a BBspot story.” Here’s what it spit out:

Google Announces Plans to Build a Space Elevator

Mountain View, CA – Google announced today that it will be leading the development of a space elevator, a project that has been long considered a science fiction dream.

The proposed space elevator will consist of a ribbon-like tether extending from a platform on Earth to a counterweight in geostationary orbit. The tether will be made of a strong, lightweight material, and robotic climbers will ascend and descend the tether, transporting people and cargo to and from space.

“We believe that the space elevator could revolutionize space travel and enable us to explore the solar system in ways that were previously impossible,” said Larry Page, CEO of Google. “This is an exciting time for space exploration, and we are thrilled to be a part of it.”

Google’s plans for the space elevator have already drawn skepticism from some experts, who say that the project is too ambitious and technologically challenging. However, Page remains optimistic.

“We know that the space elevator is a daunting project, but we believe that it is within our reach,” he said. “We have the best engineers in the world working on this, and we are confident that we can overcome any obstacle.”

The space elevator project is still in its early stages, and it is unclear when it will be completed. However, Google has already begun recruiting top scientists and engineers to work on the project, and has allocated significant resources to its development.

The announcement of the space elevator project has generated significant excitement among the public and the scientific community, with many experts saying that it could represent a major breakthrough in space exploration.

“It’s an audacious project, but if anyone can pull it off, it’s Google,” said astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson. “This could be the beginning of a new era of space travel, and I can’t wait to see what comes next.”

The fact that it had any idea what a BBspot story would be is pretty cool. I think it did a good job of at least getting the theme right – fake news story about something tech geek related. However, I don’t think it did a very good job at the humor aspect of it. I don’t see any jokes, other than the absurdity of Google building a space elevator. I guess sometimes my stories are like that, but usually even in those there’s at least one or two jokes.

I had it regenerate a couple others, and they were similar in their lack of humor. I’m not sure if that’s something that a language model can replicate without the right kind of prompting. Basically, you supply the jokes and it writes the story around it. This is still the early days of generative AI though, so probably in future versions there will be microtransactions if you want to insert humor into the speech you ask it to write.

Like the BBspot Wikipedia page, which should probably be updated, this is another one of those cool Internet cred things that I can share with my friends and family, and that along with 10 cents will get you a dogecoin.

This Post Has 3 Comments

  1. Harley

    Whoa, what the hell bbspot is still alive. I randomly check this site every once and while just to see if the daily links will ever change.

    1. Brian Briggs

      It’s back. Daily Links every day now and new original content as well. Welcome back!

      1. Harley

        wow this is awesome

Leave a Reply