
Politicians are so predictable, a robot can literally write their speeches - t23
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2016/01/25/politicians-are-so-predictable-a-robot-can-literally-write-their-speeches/
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daveguy
1) This is AI theatre. We have been able to write plausible prose since at
least the 80s using Markov models + ngrams and sentence structure. (Thanks
Chomsky! ... from An Introduction to Information Theory by John Pierce 1980)

2) what's with all the Washington Post spam? Do all of their articles just get
mirrored on HN every morning now?

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harigov
Aren't politicians using a lot of data driven techniques to come up with their
speeches? Basically have a focus group answer questions that let data analysts
pick the right set of words that enables politician to reach out to targeted
population.

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Impl0x
The journal article referenced in the OP actually seems to use more than just
Markov chains.
[http://arxiv.org/pdf/1601.03313v2.pdf](http://arxiv.org/pdf/1601.03313v2.pdf)

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bayonetz
Related: I recently ran Watson's Tone Analyzer and Petsonality Insights
services on the presidential speeches of all presidents since Reagan.
Unsurprisingly, there was hardly any difference between speeches. I ran other
types of documents like research papers and blog posts to make sure Watson
wasn't just broken. Those had plenty of variation. There very much is a
formula to modern speechwriting...

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bitwize
Lincoln's favoritism for short, succinct speeches is, regrettably, a widely
admired but not often imitated trait.

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somberi
Often wrongly attributed to Ben Franklin (1):

If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter.

(1) [http://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/04/28/shorter-
letter/](http://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/04/28/shorter-letter/)

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coreyp_1
It sounds like they just implemented a Markov Chain. Why is this news?

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viach
Because they didn't know they _elected_ a Markov Chain?

