The difference between a machine and a human is pretty clear; human writing has a tone. Both of those samples are nearly identical because it's technical facts. Why bother with technical facts anyway? I certainly don't want to read a long article on something I could just read wikipedia for. I read stuff written by people because I want their opinion. And I try to reflect that through my writing as well. But this ties into something I've been thinking about a lot. Why the discrimination? If a robot can write as well as a human, why be picky about who writes? You don't say "Well women write worse, so we'll let them write because they need jobs too."
This is the thing with the computer-generated novel. To what extent is the computer actually "writing" that book? I mean how much human assistance is it being given, in terms of instructions and most specifically, pre-generated phrases and pre-linked words, to create it? Eg the 50shades generator (of which there are several):
http://www.xwray.com/fiftyshades/ It's being loaded up with so many pre-written phrases that the computer not really "writing", it's mixing and matching. I'm struggling to articulate this, but what I currently perceive is that for any credible "computer generated" literary work, as opposed to eg a match or weather report, you need so much creative human input that the computer isn't actually having to do very much. I have wondered about getting computers to write sex scenes. In terms of pornographic sex. where there is limited interest in emotional development, and one is really looking at a sequence of actions punctuated with a few "oh baby" and "slam it in" etc, I think a machine could do that brilliantly. I actually think if you wrote the right formula to start with, just changing a few variables each time you could mix and match and generate reams and reams of erotica, and all you would have to do is edit it a bit, set the scene at the start, and probably make the last paragraph seem more original.
Well arguably, at what point does the computer have ownership over the work done? Certainly there are generators which simply play mad-libs. And then there's stuff that fluctuates grammar as well. But does the computer own the writing generated? Or did the human write it through proxy, by simply writing code to generate the writing for him? No matter how complex the algorithm, a human certainly wrote it. So depending on what you mean, the entire work (even these 'roboarticles') could be claimed by a human. if you generate HTML code, is that the computer writing the code? Or is it the human writing code to generate code on his behalf? Taking that into thought, and removing the "object ownership" idea, your parents "generated" you, so does that mean everything you write is "written" by them, via proxy of creation? That is, they worked to create and raise you in a certain way, at which point you'd output the desired text. Just like the programmer, they can't be sure of the exact output, but are responsible by proxy. Does that mean your work is yours? What does ownership even mean? In the case of mad-libs generators, I'd say that the final product is written by the computer, but the preset text is not. That is, cleverbot is communicating through lines of chat that has been given to it. The chat log is written by cleverbot, even though the individual lines were outsourced to humans. At what point does the computer obtain autonomy? At what point do humans obtain autonomy? Did you really write the book? Or did the computer write the book in response to your key presses. Did you really write the book? Or did the pencil you manipulated do so? I wouldn't say so. Perhaps to get the specific grammatical structure correct, sure. But I think after a point, you've written a program that can write on it's own, without relying on humans. Again, it boils down to, at what point do you distinguish a program from it's creator?you need so much creative human input that the computer isn't actually having to do very much.