Composing with AI

Hallucinations

Hallucinate This! inspired another exercise that focuses more on the delight side of LLMs. Following the model of the book, I ask students to prompt a short piece of writing, like a scene about a professor who is smitten with artificial intelligence. Then, they use any part of a scene to inspire another prompt, such as a love letter from the professor to the artificial intelligence. Love letters tend to lead to diary entries in romantic stories, so why not follow up with one of those. A diary entry might off-handedly mention a problem with a smartphone, which in turn can instigate a prompt about a dialogue between an AI who is very anxious to send some text messages back to the professor and a lonely tech support person who is trying to keep them on the line to talk about his fascination with model trains. The point of this exercise is not to be logical or overly intentional but merely to delight in free associating, leaping across character lives and genres in the spirit of the autobotography. I should mention that I drew that inspiration from the plot structure of Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad, whose chapters leap from character to character and from time period to time period in a game of narrative tag. Unlike some of the more critical exercises here with their sour faces, this exercise is one of pure play.