How an AI Algorithm Learned to Write Political Speeches
1st May 2017
When it comes to political speeches, great ones are few and far between. But ordinary political speeches, those given in U.S. congressional floor debates, for example, are numerous.
They are also remarkably similar. These speeches tend to follow a standard format, repeat similar arguments, and even use the same phrases to indicate a particular political affiliation or opinion. It’s almost as if there is some kind of algorithm that determines their content.
That raises an interesting question. Is it possible for a machine to write these kinds of political speeches automatically?
Today, we get an answer thanks to the work of Valentin Kassarnig at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, who has created an artificial intelligence machine that has learned how to write political speeches that are remarkably similar to real speeches.
I always suspected that Rachel Madow was a robot.