As we near the dawn of the robot apocalypse, this is proof that you’re probably safe for at least a few more weeks. Colorado-based research scientists Janelle Shane recently trained her own neural network to write its own Christmas carols. Using a collection of about 240 carols ranging from “What Child is This?” to “Grandma…
As we near the dawn of the robot apocalypse, this is proof that you’re probably safe for at least a few more weeks.
Colorado-based research scientists Janelle Shane recently trained her own neural network to write its own Christmas carols. Using a collection of about 240 carols ranging from “What Child is This?” to “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer,” Shane turned the neural net loose with zero instruction.
First, it attempted to find patterns in the songs, thus making its own rules of what goes together. Unfortunately, that turns out to be a nonsensical mess, like this:
From there, it cross-references its creation to existing Christmas (not-so) favorites in an attempt to check its own work. It learns to capitalize letters when they should be capitalized, and to utilize linebreaks to make the creation readable. Around this point, it begins to learn actual words it can string together to come up with its own song.
Results though, are a little on the iffy side. This was one of its first attempts:
According to Shane, neural networks are adept at picking up tone and vocabulary, but still not all that great at making sense.
After a few more rounds of refining its rules, the network still hasn’t mastered the whole “making sense” part, but at least it learned to use festive words in its attempts.
via Mashable
Christmas Carols, generated by a neural network on AI Weirdness
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