AI comes to PennyMachines

[pennymachines]

Collectors of vintage slot machines,
Are a curious sort, or so it seems.
They'll pull back the trigger, the hammer goes clunk,
The balls whoosh 'round with a satisfying thunk.
They'll spend all their money on these old machines,
And stare at them lovingly like they're queens.
But when they finally hit the jackpot,
It's just enough to buy a soda pop.
So if you see them in their vintage slot trance,
Just remember, they never stood a chance.
But hey, at least they're having fun,
Watching those balls whoosh 'round and run.

Lyrical homage to our hobby by https://www.perplexity.ai/

Perplexity.ai employs OpenAI's GPT-3.5 plus Microsoft's Bing large language models. If you use a desktop version of the Chrome browser, you can add a free extension which gives you options to do its thing using The Internet, This Domain (i.e. whichever website you're on) and This Page.

The prompt I gave it was:

Write a short comical poem that rhymes and scans about collectors of vintage slot machines, incorporating these two lines, "Pull back the trigger, the hammer goes clunk, Balls whoosh 'round with a rattle and a plunk."

Usefully, it incorporates numbered links to the pages from which it derived its response. It's very impressive and very flawed at the same time and shamelessly makes up stuff while keeping a poker face.

[john t peterson]

C-

J Peterson
Poet Lariat, USA

[pennymachines]

C++ ?

[JC]

I find all this AI stuff rather frightening not least because in this instance the AI has trawled the whole of this site in order to come up with something that more or less makes sense. Slot machines are pretty harmless, but what happens when AI is let loose on a huge amount of data (as is held in this site) that is less benign.

I also don't like the term soda pop.......not very British, is it?

[pennymachines]

I'm sure it got 'soda pop' from its training data or elsewhere on the internet, and its failure to answer other UK slot-related questions shows it isn't (yet) taking in all the on-site info.

I'm equally fascinated, excited and worried about the pace of this technology - it's a genie that doesn't go back in the bottle.

[john t peterson]

I fear it is one more push down the slide of the dumbing down of civilization. It will affect more the upcoming generations who will see it as a handy tool to shortcut research and exposition. It will be a nightmare for the field of education. I'm all for timesaving devices. This invention does more than that. It is a siren to mental laziness and plagiarism.

J Peterson
Curmudgeon, USA

[badpenny]

I've just tried a slice of AI as being pushed by Bing.
I asked it to suggest a collective noun for those who collect vintage amusement machines.

It suggested: -
"A Penny of collectors"
"An Arcade of enthusiasts"
"A gang of Banditors"
"A pier of peers"

Quite clever I thought.

[gameswat]

"An Arm of Banditors"

[tim575]

I tried using on AI based search engine with an arcade question. Although getting a 4 paragraph answer, it didn't actually give any answer to the question posted, in fact I would describe it as 'lazy' in its search depth, basically only using arcademuseum and KLOV as the definitive sources to try and find the answer. It did note there were online forums where collectors share such info, but didn't reference any. It was good at providing a long winded report with no real content worthy of a politician, so I think they could replace political speech writers soon enough.

[roger]

My advice to would- be poets and actors......Don't quit your day jobs. ROGER