“Ask: Always Seek Knowledge–Lecsicon: A Collection of GPT-generated Acrostics” presented by Zhao
Session Title:
Virtual (artist talks)
Presentation Title:
Ask: Always Seek Knowledge–Lecsicon: A Collection of GPT-generated Acrostics
Presentation Subtheme:
Speculative practices
Presenter(s):
Abstract:
This article describes the project Lecsicon, in which over 24,000 acrostics generated by OpenAI’s language model GPT serve as a conduit between machine comprehension and human interpretation. Following a specific prompt, GPT made a sentence with a series of words whose first letters sequentially spelled out the given word. At a large scale, this process gives rise to intriguing behavioral patterns in the model. The resulting acrostics also elicit gripping reflections on the nature of this literary device and its role in meaning making. In this project, GPT responses were compiled into both a book and a browser-based interactive artwork by the artist.
