The Tin Men
by Michael Frayn · first published 1965
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"Why not program computers to take over the really dull jobs that human beings have to do - such as praying and behaving morally? At the William Morris Institute of Automation Research they are doing just that to free mankind for the really stimulating and demanding tasks of living today - first and foremost the impending visit of Her Majesty the Queen to open its new wing."--Jacket.
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"Tin Men" by Michael Frayn (1965) explores the application of Markov chains to machine generated headlines, amongst other things. I often think it should be mandatory reading on an AI & Society agenda. (Yes,…
on “How Cyclic Are Headlines?” ↗A similar idea is explored in the novel 'The Tin Men' by Michael Frayn (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tin_Men). One of the characters invents 'Unit Headline Language' (UHL) with constructs like 'Strike Threat Probe Row'. A key feature of the language…
on “Free Sex Pot Bust Rap – Introduction to Noun Talk” ↗…after some real-time analysis, it can quickly realize that men are far more like to click on a Brad Pitt story that involves a sports movie."* This is like Michael Frayn's first comic novel "The Tin Men" (1965), about programming a computer to produce an "automated newspaper". "But people really preferred an air crash. ... What people enjoyed most was about 70 dead, with some 20 survivors including…
on “How the Yahoo homepage predicts your clicks” ↗IIRC in The Tin Men by Michael Frayn (1965) the computer used the number dead divided by the distance away to determine newsworthiness. Using some of the observations here I am sure we could improve on that. It is gut wrenchingly…
on “How many deaths make a disaster newsworthy?” ↗In The Tin Men by Michael Frayn (1965) their attempts to computerise the news include ranking disasters by number killed divided by distance away. This is pretty much how the news works (though you might include colour…
on “Ask HN: What do you want from the news?” ↗