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Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 32, No. 613.
Department of Digital Humanities, King's College London
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Date: 2019-04-14 13:33:54+00:00
From: Ken Friedman
Subject: Re: [Humanist] 32.611: pubs: a machine-generated book
Dear Colleagues,
A few more thoughts on the machine-generated book from Beta Writer.
The book titled _Lithium-Ion Batteries. A Machine-Generated Summary of Current
Research_ is a summary of published research linked together by a rough linking
text. While the text makes a certain kind of sense, many sentences and
paragraphs involve problematic grammar. Much of the book is written in jargon
comprehensible only to a specialist. Given the fact that the book is a technical
summary, that's probably reasonable. Whether the book makes an original
contribution to knowledge is a different question. There is a difference between
a good literature review article and a mere summary. A good literature review
makes a contribution to the literature of a field by framing past literature in
a new conceptual framework and pointing to possible advances in empirical,
conceptual, or theoretical research.
This book does not make such a contribution. Instead, it exemplifies and
demonstrates the research of the scientists who wrote the program.
This book demonstrates that a machine can gather and summarise useful research
information, aggregating it in technical book format. It suggests that a machine
can write prose that rises to the level of poor technical writing. It also
suggests that machine-written prose can drop to the level of the worst legal
writing or administrative writing. The machine writes as well as some engineers,
though not as well as others.
While I did not think much of it on first reading, I thought about it while
walking -- the program might play a reasonable role supporting people in a
literature search by gathering and summarising published material. To make real
sense of the material, one would require judgement and human intelligence to
determine which items to use, integrating them into a comprehensible text.
You can download a free copy of the book from the Springer web site:
https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-16800-1
Ken
Ken Friedman, Ph.D., D.Sc. (hc), FDRS | Editor-in-Chief | 设计 She Ji. The
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