The Policeman's beard is half-constructed
by William Chamberlain · first published 1984
18mentions
4recommended by
15HN commenters
2011–2026first – last mentioned
27% recommend73% neutral
Affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
…matter of fashion signalling to agree with others about how good that artist is or to deride that artist for making something that doesn't live up to previous works. I found a lot of the lines from The Policeman's Beard is Half-Constructed by the program Racter to connect with me on an emotional level, despite knowing that (a) it was likely heavily edited by the program creator and (b) much of it just mimicked the unusual word choices and…
on “Human or Machine: Can You Tell Who Wrote These Poems?” ↗That was Racter (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racter). "It" even wrote a book called "The Policeman's Beard Is Half Constructed". Was a fun read at its time. (http://www.ubu.com/historical/racter/index.html)
on “A conversation between two chatbots and how one found out the other is an AI.” ↗A much more interesting story (that you can also buy on amazon) is The Policeman's beard is half constructed. A book of short form literature and poems written by AI in the 80s. http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0446380512/
on “Can a robot write books? Yes, and they're absolutely terrible.” ↗Going way back, I believe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racter (1984) used Markov chains. The book "The Policeman's Beard is Half-Constructed" is hilarious, but as noted it was co-written by the author.
on “Markov chains are the original language models” ↗Here's a real case: The Policeman's Beard is Half Constructed, a book released in 1984. The prose and poetry was written by Racter, a computer program written by William Chamberlain. The illustrations were done by Joan Hall, and the introduction to the book was…
on “Who owns copyright to Deep Dream images?” ↗"The Policeman's Beard is Half Constructed," written in 1983 by a program named Racter. Bestseller? It's very well known, but I don't know how well it sold.
on “Programmer creates 800,000 books algorithmically, starts selling them on Amazon” ↗Followers of computer generated literature may recall "The Policeman's Beard is Half Constructed" [1], ostensibly written by the program Racter [2] (though that authorship was never conclusively proven). [1] http://www.ubu.com/historical/racter/index.html [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racter
on “CuratedAI: A literary magazine written by machines, for people” ↗I, too, was hoping this article would be about The Policeman's Beard Is Half Constructed. It has, however, filled me with a desire to write a script that writes novels (which I could then sell on Amazon). Perhaps I'll do that for this year's NaNoWriMo.
on “Can a robot write books? Yes, and they're absolutely terrible.” ↗> "The Policeman's Beard" Was Largely Prefab! http://www.robotwisdom.com/ai/racterfaq.html This is an interesting web page that convincingly makes the case that "The Policeman's Beard is Half Constructed" was written largely by the humans involved, with the program having a minimal role, and that the Racter program they sold to the public was incapable of reproducing the novel.
on “Programmer creates 800,000 books algorithmically, starts selling them on Amazon” ↗It reads a lot like Racter (I think I read that The Policeman's Beard is Half-Constructed actually involved a lot of human selection of amusing and interesting utterances).
on “Sunspring, a short science fiction film written by algorithm” ↗Who still remembers Racter [1]? Racter was (ostensibly) the "author" of a book of prose poetry, "The Policeman's Beard is Half Constructed" back in 1987. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racter [2] https://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/the-policemans-beard-is-algo...
on “GPT-2 Neural Network Poetry” ↗It is too bad. Reading The Policeman’s Beard is Half Constructed it is pretty clear to me that it was one or both of: 1) nearly every grammatically accurate combination of a human-chosen lexicon being constructed by a computer and then heavily human-filtered 2)…
on “Training NanoGPT on My Journal” ↗It's been done: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racter The story is that there was a program, Racter, which allegedly created a book titled "The Policeman's Beard Is Half-Constructed" back in the 1980s. The book was released and was a hit primarily because of that AI connection, and a version of Racter was also sold. However, the Racter that got released could never have composed…
on “AI song featuring fake Drake and Weeknd vocals pulled from streaming services” ↗…magazine back in the 1980s, then when the internet (or WWW, really) finally came around, and you remember and search for them, and then you find out that they're some absurd price. (Used paperback "The Policeman's beard is half-constructed" listed for $157 on Amazon now.)
on “Constructing the Other Half of the Policeman's Beard (2021)” ↗Surprised no mention of. “The Policeman’s Beard is half constructed”[1] - the first book “written” by a computer program. And I imagine the git-man-page-generator[2] is similarly built (and far more fun!) [1] https://archive.org/details/policemansbeardi0000unse [2]…
on “Markov chains are funnier than LLMs” ↗