Christopher Burman

“What Will Happen In Your Metaphor?” is a self-help book generated with the Char-RNN machine learning algorithm, using Tony Robbins genre classic “Awaken The Giant Within” as source material. The title of the project and the full 17 chapters of content in the book, including section headings and motivational quotes are generated from the output of a trained software model.

The intention of the project is to not only to demonstrate the power of text based generative frameworks, but also to document the progress of such a model as it learns, with each paragraph in the text generated by another sequential training iteration. The book begins with an almost incomprehensible stream of characters but quickly transforms into fully legible, grammatically correct aphorisms.

In this sense ‘What Will Happen In Your Metaphor?’ exposes an uncanny transition, as a more clear voice gradually emerges from a soup of letters, asking the reader to consider exactly where the meaning of the words resides.

The project was generated with Char-RNN, developed by Andrej Karpathy and extensively outlined in his blog post: The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Recurrent Neural Networks. I saw my ‘role’ in the process as that of an editor rather than author, setting the parameters for the training process the model and formatting the output.

The project was the result of considering how machine generated language may inspire or potentially manipulate the human mind, when based on source material explicitly encouraging us to change our lives and behaviours.

Here is also an extract of the text from the final chapter when the model is running fully trained:
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“As you read the final process of creating a powerful and emotional state you’re going to be healthy and challenged by the power of decisions about what to do.

The first element to describe our focus and the power of words that we use to describe their standards. In fact, the question is simply the challenge for the same question that is considered as if they have the power to control our experience of life. In fact, the most important questions we ask ourselves and the moment their past requires. They are simply because they don’t set up a single day none with our thoughts, and they could be in a momen

Images Courtesy of Christopher Burman