Did Roald Dahl predict ChatGPT in 1953?

"Person? What person?"

Roald Dahl is a classic childhood author for many. He is known for his contribution to children's literature in the form of books like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach, The BFG and my personal favourite, Matilda, to name a few.

But yesterday at the Library, walking up and down the science fiction section, my eyes were led astray by an unfocused mind. In a quirk of human nature, the mind is automatically drawn towards the familiar, especially when not paying attention on the present circumstances. That's why we turn back to look at a familiar face in a crowd. 

Perhaps it is an evolutionary characteristic. I cannot say for sure.

My eyes had come to rest on a small volume, lying in a state of almost meditative serenity in the "Short Stories" section. The little black spine bore golden letters in Times New Roman, and it said in a form of modest pomposity which only that font is capable of "Someone Like You - Short Stories by Roald Dahl"

I was rather taken aback. Roald Dahl? The iconic tune from "Fantastic Mr. Fox" ran abuzz in my head:

Boggis, Bunce and Bean,
One fat, one short, one lean,
These horrible crooks,
So different in looks,
Were nonetheless equally mean

(Ten on ten capital movie by the way!)

Partly from intrigue, partly from utter boredom, I picked it up and opened the index.

"The Great Automatic Grammatizer."

I'm sorry, what? Is this some ancestor to autocorrect? I'm sure it wouldn't be proud of its descendents in that case. Turns out, the story was in fact about a brilliant inventor, Knipe, who creates a machine with the ability to "spew" stories. Machines, Knipe reasons to his boss and later business partner, have the gift of computation to which humans are no match. They can solve, memorize and work out mathematical problems with incomparable efficiency. At the end of the day, English and any other language is a kind of equation. It follows predictable patterns and our brains act as interpreters. Stories are also predictable, most of them anyway. For that matter, a lot of things we do are predictable (the uploading schedule of the blog is not one of them. I promise I'm working on it).

So Knipe sets out to create this machine of his dreams, and initially "writes" short stories with it. Knipe and his boss, Bohlen write multiple such stories for publishing by magazines, going so far as to create alternative personas, to create the impression that these are no less than a bunch of promising new authors.

(As a side note to my readers: how do you pronounce the word "author"? Do you include a "f" sound in it? I need this to settle a debate. Muchas gracias)

Anyway, Knipe and Bohlen begin earning an unprecedented amount of money by selling stories. They start a publishing house, and Knipe upgrades his machine to allow the synthesis (I feel oddly guilty saying "writing") of long novels. The user can insert the style of text, ranging from Satirical to Melancholy, the genre, the characters, what happens in each paragraph, etc, etc.

The most important component of Knipe's machine is a "Passion Pedal" which is located at the bottom of his machine like a piano peddle. It describes the intensity of writing. The first time Mr Bohlen uses the upgraded model, he excitedly presses the Passion Peddle hard, thereby producing a bunch of nonsense. Clearly, Dahl points out via Knipe, Passion is powerful stuff and should be used in moderation. Soon, Mr. Bohlen learns to use it, and creates beautiful literature, and earns quite a name for himself in the literary community. Before long, Knipe does the same.

Although using the machine is somehow a combination of "flying a plane and driving a car at the same time", the stuff it "produces" quickly floods the market. Knipe has the genius idea of slowly removing every single author in the country, thereby reducing competition.

He creates a pension scheme with a "Golden Contract" (is this just the Golden Ticket for grownups?) wherein authors will be given a handsome monthly allowance in exchange for promising to never write another word. His first target is met with failure, because the author knows he is better than this. The second target, however, quickly agrees when she noticed that she would never stand a chance in comparison to KnipeGPT's "powerful stuff".

At the end, the story cinematically pans out to the writer himself, who describes the wailing of his children in the next room as they clamour for food. He indicates the Golden Contract's presence on his table, and says he does not know how long he will be able to last.

What truly astonishes me is the staggering similarity between Dahl's Grammatizer and ChatGPT. The fact that Dahl was able to image something in 1953, and we finally see it being implemented into the real world gives a feeling of hope and dread at the same time. If fiction can be converted into realities, we must choose which ones are appropriate to bring into the real world, and which ones look prettier in books.