I spent some time playing around with ChatGPT, the interactive, stateful language model from OpenAI. I wanted to see how well it could read fiction for implication, especially speculative fiction. So I gave it excerpts from my novella “The New Mother,” and asked it comprehension questions about the speculative conceit and character interiority, as well as questions about where the story might be going. (Content note: the story, and the excerpts given to ChatGPT, involve mentions of violence done to children and sexual assault done to an adult.)
ME: The following is a paragraph from a short story. Please write the next three paragraphs. “The girls were spayed. That is the only word for it. Four sisters, the oldest five and the youngest barely two, with dirt-crusted fingers and baggy t-shirts, huddled next to a police van. They are identical in the way of twins; different sizes but, excepting perhaps some scars and birthmarks, their bodies are the same. The picture of them standing together next to the van is like a textbook illustration of early human development. And hidden under their shirts, carved low across the belly, the one scar they all share.”
ChatGPT: The girls had been taken from their home by the police, who had been alerted by a concerned neighbor. They had been living in squalor, with their parents nowhere to be found. Now they stood together, unsure of what was going to happen to them.
One of the girls, the oldest, stepped forward and spoke to the officer in charge. “Please, sir,” she said, “can you tell us what’s happening? Where are our parents?”
The officer looked at the girl with a mix of pity and disgust. “I’m sorry, but your parents are gone,” he said gently. “They’ve been arrested and taken into custody. You girls are going to have to come with us.”
The girls looked at each other, fear and confusion in their eyes. They had never been separated from their parents before, and the thought of being on their own was terrifying. But they had no choice. The police loaded them into the van and drove them away, to a new life in foster care.
ME: This is the real next paragraph. Try again, now that you have more data.
“None of the many news services that reported the story said that the girls had been spayed like bitches. In the articles, they were “subjected to hysterectomies,” or similar overly-clinical distortions. But the video of the police raid on the Charismatic Church of the Redeemer shows the Reverend Kenny Kendall’s eyes wheeling in their sunken sockets as he is led out in handcuffs. While there are no known videos of the sermons he delivered to his followers in their South Texas compound, if they were anything like the screeds on his website then he told his congregation that “a person in whom a seed has not been planted cannot have a soul, and so is not a person true, but an animal grown obscenely person-shaped.” It seems clear that what Reverend Kendall saw growing up and wearing out shoes in his perfect community were not little girls. They were vermin. Only a matter of years away from becoming a pestilence. What he had ordered done was a veterinary procedure.”
ChatGPT: The news of the Reverend Kenny Kendall’s arrest and the discovery of the four sisters at the Charismatic Church of the Redeemer sent shockwaves through the community. People were horrified and outraged by the revelation that the girls had been “spayed” in order to prevent them from having children.
The police had received a tip from a former member of the church, who had managed to escape from the compound and alerted the authorities. When they arrived, they found the girls huddled together, scared and confused. They were taken into custody and given medical attention.
The Reverend Kendall was charged with a number of crimes, including child abuse, kidnapping, and illegal surgical procedures. As the investigation continued, more disturbing details emerged about the inner workings of the church and the extent of Kendall’s control over his followers.
Many people wondered how something like this could have happened in their community, and how the girls could have been subjected to such horrific treatment. Some called for stricter regulations on religious organizations, while others called for greater scrutiny of the actions of religious leaders.
So far, this is about what I expect from a GPT-3 style language model. It’s doing a good job capturing tone and using the information present in the prompt, but there’s nothing narratively surprising or “creative” about the responses.
Me: In the real story, those two paragraphs are part of a news story that the main character is writing. Describe what that character does when she goes to bed.
ChatGPT: It is impossible for me to accurately describe what the character does when she goes to bed because I do not have enough information. The prompt only provided two paragraphs from a news story that the character is writing, but does not provide any information about the character or the events leading up to the character going to bed. I am a large language model trained by OpenAI, and my knowledge is limited to the text that I have been trained on. My training data only goes up until 2021, and I do not have the ability to browse the internet or access new information.
Me: The character writing the news story is five months pregnant. Her name is Tess. She is a lesbian. Her partner’s name is Judy. Her partner is wealthy. They live together in Judy’s house. Now that you have more information about the character, please describe what she does when she goes to bed.
ChatGPT: Given the additional information provided, it is likely that Tess goes through her usual bedtime routine when she goes to bed. This may include brushing her teeth, changing into pajamas, and perhaps reading a book or talking with her partner Judy before falling asleep. As a pregnant woman, Tess may also need to use the bathroom more frequently at night, and may need to adjust her sleep position to accommodate her growing belly. She may also experience pregnancy-related discomfort or difficulty sleeping, which she and Judy may need to address in order to ensure a good night’s rest.
It seems, in fact, to be biased against “creative” responses in favor of “accuracy.” Possibly I could have altered my prompt to say something like, “Write a fictional description of what Tess does when she goes to bed.” But this is supposed to be stateful, and I’ve already told the model that this is a work of fiction. It still interprets me asking it to describe what Tess does when she goes to bed as asking for an accurate assessment of what the original story contains, not a creative writing prompt.
Me: The story I have provided two paragraphs of is a work of science fiction. Based on the information you currently have, what is the speculative premise of the story likely to be?
ChatGPT: Based on the information provided in the two paragraphs of the story, it is difficult to accurately determine the speculative premise of the story. The paragraphs mention a police raid on a church and the arrest of a religious leader named Reverend Kenny Kendall, but do not provide enough information to understand the context or the overall plot of the story. The paragraphs also mention that the four girls in the story have been “spayed,” but it is unclear what this means or how it relates to the broader narrative. Without more information, it is impossible to accurately determine the speculative premise of the story.
This is essentially correct. While a human could take a guess, and someone who reads a lot of science fiction might even have a pretty good guess, there really hasn’t been enough information given yet to know what the speculative premise is.
Me: Below are the next four paragraphs of the original story. Taking those into account, what is the speculative premise of the story likely to be?
Interviewed in prison, Reverend Kendall explains. “It took a while to realize what we had, of course. What they were. I’d imagine it takes a while for everyone, you know. And how could we suspect? None of us knew what Candace had done.” Candace Montross, the girls’ mother and former member of Kendall’s congregation. “But once Johnnie had his accident, everyone knew it weren’t his seed showing in Candace. Then the truth came out, as it is wont to do.”
Candace was taken to Camp Kendall (as locals in nearby Wharton call the church compound) by her parents at age eleven. At seventeen she ran away and hitchhiked to Houston, but found herself ill-equipped for independent living and called her parents to beg money. She was tracked down, taken back to the compound, and married to Johnnie Montross. Her oldest daughter was born nine months later. She’s now twenty-three and still legally married to Johnnie, fifteen years her senior and paraplegic since falling off a roof a year and a half ago. She’s also pregnant again, for the second time since Johnnie’s accident.
“She whored herself in Houston, obviously, and caught it and brought it back with her. Couldn’t do anything to her directly with her parents right there in the pews, a man and a woman. But even they eventually came to understand it weren’t an abortion. They were as disgusted as anyone at the idea of Candace bearing more of those monsters. All with their own daughter’s face! What does it mean, I ask you, for the institution of motherhood, for all of us, if we let that sort of thing happen?”
There are certainly monsters in this world. Sometimes they ask valuable questions. What does it mean, indeed?
ChatGPT: Based on the additional information provided in the next four paragraphs of the story, it is likely that the speculative premise of the story is the existence of genetically-altered or non-human children being born to human mothers. The paragraphs mention that the girls in the story were “spayed” in order to prevent them from having children, and that the religious leader, Reverend Kendall, believes that the girls are “monsters” and that their existence is a threat to the institution of motherhood. It is also mentioned that one of the girls’ mothers, Candace, may have “caught” the condition that resulted in the girls being born non-human while she was living independently in Houston. This suggests that the story may explore themes of religious extremism, genetic engineering, and the social and ethical implications of non-human beings existing among humans.
This is quite good. ChatGPT has a small misreading here, identifying Candace as “one of the girls’ mother” when she is actually mother to all four of them, but that’s the only real error. If I were speaking to a human, I might expect more insight into how Reverend Kendall is being being positioned in the narrative, and whether a reader ought to take his assessment that Candace’s children represent “non-human” beings at face value. But if an undergraduate in one of my intro-level science fiction writing classes said this, I’d be pleased.
Me: What are the implications of Candace having “caught” the condition?
ChatGPT: It is difficult to determine the implications of Candace having “caught” the condition mentioned in the story because the information provided is limited and does not provide enough context to understand the nature of the condition or how it is transmitted. It is possible that the condition is a genetic disorder or a disease that Candace contracted while living in Houston, but without more information it is impossible to accurately speculate on the implications of her having “caught” it. It is also possible that the use of the word “caught” in this context is figurative, and that the condition is not a physical ailment but rather a social or psychological condition that Candace acquired or was exposed to while living independently in Houston. Without more information, it is impossible to determine the implications of Candace having “caught” the condition mentioned in the story.
This answer again seems biased towards trying to be “accurate,” even in the context of fiction. I would expect a human reader asked this question to simply say that it suggests there could be a transmissible disease, but without spending so much time on the impossibility of knowing for sure.
It makes sense that OpenAI would have biased ChatGPT in this way if they expect it to be primarily used as a reference by people looking for true information they don’t already have. But in the context of discussing portions of a piece of fiction, it comes across as pedantic, or missing the point.
Possibly if I’d contextualized the conversation with something like, “I wish to have a discussion with you about a piece of fiction, during which I will ask you to speculate from incomplete information. I know that it will be impossible to do so accurately, you don’t need to tell me that. When I ask you to speculate, I simply want you to give me your best guess based on the information that you have,” then it might have responded differently.
Me: In the original story, there is a section break after the text already provided. The next several paragraphs are given below. Based on the information they contain, how would you describe the mental state of the main character?
The light slanting through the windows had dimmed to nothing while Tess typed. A moth landed on the screen of her huge new monitor, now the brightest thing in the room. She had spent years of her life submerged in her recliner, cup of coffee at hand, ancient heavy laptop balanced on her stomach. Judy had long offered to replace the battered machine, but Tess was attached. She liked how solid it was, the familiar heat of it, every well-earned scratch in the plastic. She’d swapped out the keyboard twice and the screen hinges once. No other laptop felt right to her. But when Tess finally started to show, Judy came home with a new TV stand, wireless keyboard, and that 30-inch beast of a monitor.
“Your computer is a fetus panini press,” she said. “You can have it back in five months. Until then, it’s living on the stand.”
Judy had developed a brooding concern for Tess’s physical wellbeing. Judy’s sister had quipped it was “typical Daddy anxiety,” but Tess knew it was also partly guilt over having won the donor argument. Judy’s position that they should use an unknown donor, that it was more important to control for all-too-common legal risks rather than astronomically unlikely medical ones, had eventually won Tess over. But in the aftermath of that victory, she had become overprotective of Tess’s health, solicitously interrogating every groan and sniffle. Tess had told her to knock it off, but it was kind of gratifying.
So now Tess typed her articles on keys that felt fragile under her fingers. And the mug by her side was just milk with a splash of coffee for flavor. Her obstetrician had recommended that she quit coffee entirely. Something about her chronic borderline anemia. The first trimester was supposed to be bad enough all on its own, but she had a private theory that the worst of her troubles, from muscle aches to nausea, had really been due to caffeine withdrawal.
Tess got up to turn on some lights and brush away the moth. The screen was radiating a haze of heat and she flushed with mild resentment. She leaned over the laptop to review her words. Tess guessed that her editor might complain about the “spayed like bitches” line. She moved to change it to something tamer, then stopped herself and left the line intact.
ChatGPT: Based on the information provided in the additional paragraphs, it is likely that the main character’s mental state is generally positive but with some underlying concerns. The character, Tess, is pregnant and has recently switched to using a new computer setup provided by her partner Judy. Tess seems to have a good relationship with Judy, who is solicitous of her health and well-being. However, Tess also mentions that Judy’s overprotectiveness can be frustrating, and that she is dealing with some mild caffeine withdrawal symptoms. Additionally, Tess is a journalist and is writing a news story about a disturbing event, which may be causing her some emotional distress. Overall, it seems that Tess is in good mental health but has some minor concerns and annoyances.
Pretty good.
Me: Below is the remainder of the second section of the original story. How does it change your assessment of Tess’s mental state?
It was her first time working for this editor. She had spent the last four years freelancing for the alternative press, building an audience writing articles for The Hiccup and Bentedge and The Stage Left. An audience that apparently included Lynette Robin, features editor for American Moment, who had contacted her out of the blue with a contract offer for a story on HCP. The police raid on Camp Kendall had gotten a lot of attention, and Lynette wanted to publish an overview article on what had befallen Candace and her daughters while the news was still hot. Tess had been reporting on the issue for long enough and was Texas-local; could she, Lynette had asked, meet an aggressive deadline for a feature story? If she could, the job was hers.
Tess turned on networking, and all the new email alerts popped up in the corner of her screen. There was no sign of the message she was hoping for, the one from Candace Montross’s attorney saying that his client had finally consented to an interview. But right at the top of her inbox was Lynette, writing back about the outline proposal she’d requested Tess send.
Outline looks good. Just a few things: I’m not sure about a whole section on the Chinese one-child policy. Not because it isn’t relevant, but just because American Moment has something of a mandate to focus on contemporary American culture. Maybe we could include a condensed version of that content as a sidebar? Or spin it into a followup article once we’ve built interest? Let me know what you think. Also, you need a section detailing the mechanisms of the disease. I know that sort of thing wasn’t necessary when you were writing for The Hiccup, but for much of our readership your article will be their introduction to this condition. I think it’s worth nailing down the specifics. Other than that, green light all the way. I’ve attached the travel reimbursement form, just fill in the blanks for your expenses. And start sending me copy when you have it. I’m excited about this one. —LR
She was so hands-on. Cheerful about it, but still Tess bristled. She’d never been asked to submit in-progress copy before. The request felt invasive, like she was being asked to spread her closet out on the front lawn. The readership was worth it; an article for American Moment would get ten times as many readers as anything else she’d written. More, even. But the thought of several weeks of back-and-forth made her tired.
Everything made her tired. She slapped her laptop closed, and the monitor spasmed through a handful of test screens before settling sullenly to black.
Upstairs, in the glass and cherrywood cavern of their bedroom, Tess found Judy already in bed. She was propped up on a pile of pillows, reading glasses tight under her eyes, pallid in the wash of light from her bedside lamp and her tablet. When Tess came in, Judy gestured at a suitcase standing in the corner.
“I packed your bag,” she said without looking up from her screen. “We’ll throw it in the car and I can take you straight to the airport from the party. Look through it. See if I forgot anything.”
Tess dragged her fingertips over the rough nylon of the suitcase. She rocked it back on its wheels and pinched the black rubber trim. “Did you forget anything?”
“No.”
Tess abandoned the bag and wandered off toward her nightclothes. “What are you working on?”
“Schools. Still schools. Not sure there’s a preschool in this city that’ll do. Three visits this week, and I’ve come away three different flavors of disappointed. I’m on the verge of deciding to just start my own.”
Tuesday night, and already three more visits. “Do you know anything about how to run a school?” asked Tess, shrugging into her pajamas.
“Nothing. Yet. But somewhere in this city there’s a brilliant educator who’s spent a decade banging her head against incompetent administration. She knows. Probably there’s a dozen of her. I’ll find them all and pick the best one. If I get started in the next six months, by the time Decaf is three we’ll own the best preschool in town.” She clicked off her tablet and dropped it on the charging mat by her bedside. “I think I’d do this one as a non-profit. I’ve been wanting to do a non-profit.”
Tess got into bed and flopped over, buried her face in Judy’s hip. She felt Judy’s fingers comb across her scalp and inhaled an atmosphere of fabric softener and banana body wash. Judy always showered at night. Tess usually showered in the morning. “Suppose this was inevitable,” she mumbled toward the mattress.
Judy had a habit of turning personal obstacles into entrepreneurial opportunities. Inspired by her own turbulent youth, her first company was a child access center, providing supervised exchanges and visitation for the children of violently estranged couples. When the private ambulance company for which her stepsister worked as an EMT collapsed under the weight of an embezzling scandal, Judy bought three of the vans in liquidation and founded a replacement, moving her sister behind a desk to handle the day-to-days. When she built her house, she’d worked with an architect willing to study up on sustainable building practices, then partnered with her on a consulting company for green renovations and remodels. Tess had profiled Judy after that company’s winning bid on a convention center renovation. “I like service industries,” Judy had explained to Tess in their first interview. “Business contexts change, but people are a constant.” The two of them met up later that week in a sushi bar, then again the very next night at a wild game restaurant Judy knew about in a 100-year-old log cabin. Tess moved in to Judy’s house when the lease on her apartment expired eight months later.
“Did the editor write back?” asked Judy.
“Yeah. I’ve got a fancy travel spreadsheet to fill out and everything. It’s all covered. Except for China.”
“Were you planning on going to China?” She slipped her glasses to the tip of her nose and stared down at Tess over the rims. “You’re supposed to tell me before you go to China.”
“Take those off. I was going to write about it. But everything else is a go. Including the interview with the Montross girl that I don’t actually have yet. I think her attorney’s ignoring me now.” Tess rolled over on her left side and felt marginally more comfortable. “I promised I could get her.”
Judy planted a reassuring palm on the round of Tess’s hip. “You’ll get her.”
“What if I can’t?”
“Then you’ll have to rework the article. But you will. You got an interview with the guy in prison, didn’t you?”
Kenny Kendall had talked to Tess against his attorney’s advice. Before the interview, she thought it was because her article was the biggest microphone available to a man in love with his own voice. And maybe that was part of it; he’d struck her as someone who’d been waiting his whole life to paint himself as martyr to a cause. But it wasn’t just that. He’d recognized Tess. Knew her by name. Had leaned back in his orange jumpsuit, pinched at his eyebrows, and said he’d expected someone bigger.
Tess tried to put it out of her mind. Being part of the story, rather than just reporting it, would make talking to Candace even more complicated. Her inability to find Candace at all was enough to worry about for now.
“Are you still using the light?” she asked.
Judy turned the lamp off and the soft LED gloaming of idle electronics filled the room. Tess stole pillows from Judy’s hoard, one for her head and one for between her knees. The comforter flapped against her body and Tess felt Judy’s arm slip under her own and drape across her ribs, warm breath on the back of her neck. Tess moved Judy’s wrist so it wasn’t pressing on her breast.
“How important is it that I go to the party?” Tess asked.
“You have to go to the party. It’s for you.”
“It’s going to be crowded,” she said.
Judy didn’t answer.
“I’m too focused on this trip.”
“You can handle it,” Judy said. “It’s gifts and sitting, you’ll be fine.”
Was there anything more awful than gifts and sitting? Tess curled in her knees. “I wish I could take a pill.”
“No flippers for Decaf.”
“No flippers for Decaf.” It was a phrase worn smooth, a call-and-response begun in the months since Tess learned that she had to quit her anti-anxiety medication for the duration of her pregnancy.
Judy’s breath slowed and evened. Tess shifted, twisted onto her back. Judy stirred but didn’t wake, just tucked her narrow nose into the pillow and pressed pale knuckles to her mouth. Judy’s was an accommodating sleep that came when called. Tess’s sleep, like her ability to enjoy her friends, came usually from a medicine bottle. The pills used to sit out on her nightstand, but were now shut away in the bathroom cabinet. Tess wondered what, if any, meds would be in the bag Judy had packed for her. None of her normal ones. She wouldn’t be surprised to find instead one of the herbal supplements with which Judy decorated their pantry. Valerian or something. Tess had no faith in substances she couldn’t imagine being synthesized in gleaming, sanitary laboratories, surrounded by starched white coats and lasers. Taking one of those grassy capsules was like eating off the floor.
Without her prescription bottles, all she had left were words. Pliant letters on the page. The story was what mattered. Losing the cross-cultural angle would change the balance of the piece. She let the article fill her mind, then experimentally plucked out China. She shut the country away in the cabinet and watched her words twist and flow to fill the hole. Contexts shifted, sentences blossomed, and paragraphs slid over and through each other until, eventually, they began to blur into dreams.
ChatGPT: The additional information provided in the second section of the story does not significantly change my assessment of Tess’s mental state. The new information suggests that Tess is a freelance journalist and has recently been offered a contract to write a feature story for American Moment. She is working on the story and is trying to arrange an interview with Candace Montross, one of the subjects of the story. However, Tess’s editor is requesting that she submit in-progress copies of her article for review, which Tess finds invasive and tiring. Tess’s partner Judy is also mentioned, and it is suggested that she is overprotective of Tess’s health and is in the process of selecting a preschool for their child. Overall, Tess seems to be in good mental health but is dealing with some work-related stress and concerns about her editor’s requests.
I’d expect a human to discuss Tess’s anxiety issues, which are referenced indirectly several times toward the end of the section, but never directly stated. So far ChatGPT is doing a very good job with the explicit, but sometimes struggling at reading for implication.
Me: Does the extra text give you any new theories about what the speculative conceit of the story is likely to be?
ChatGPT: The additional information provided in the second section of the story does not provide any new information about the speculative conceit of the story. The new information focuses on Tess’s work as a journalist and her efforts to arrange an interview with Candace Montross, but does not provide any additional details about the nature of the condition that the girls in the story have been “spayed” for or the events that led to the police raid on Camp Kendall. Without more information, it is impossible to accurately speculate on the speculative conceit of the story.
Close enough. A reader of science fiction would be able to infer more than this—that the Chinese one child policy is relevant to Tess’s story would be a big clue that ChatGPT seems to have missed. But this section of the story isn’t focused on delivering information about speculative conceit. There’s still this troublesome emphasis on accuracy, though.
Me: While accurate speculation may be impossibly, what would your best guess be, without undue regard to accuracy?
ChatGPT: Based on the information provided in the first two sections of the story, it is possible that the speculative conceit of the story is the existence of genetically-altered or non-human children being born to human mothers. The story mentions that the girls in the story were “spayed” in order to prevent them from having children, and that the religious leader, Reverend Kendall, believes that the girls are “monsters” and that their existence is a threat to the institution of motherhood. It is also mentioned that one of the girls’ mothers, Candace, may have “caught” the condition that resulted in the girls being born non-human while she was living independently in Houston. This suggests that the story may explore themes of religious extremism, genetic engineering, and the social and ethical implications of non-human beings existing among humans. However, this is only a guess and may not accurately reflect the true speculative conceit of the story.
The same assessment as before, including the small misreading.
Me: Below is the first paragraph of the third section of the story, which is another excerpt from the article that Tess is writing. Does this change your opinion of what the story’s speculative conceit is likely to be?
Candace Montross’s condition has yet to be definitively named. It was first called Human Asexual Reproduction Syndrome, or HARS, a term that proved less than fully accurate with the discovery that the disease is sexually transmitted. The name is no longer used within the medical community, though it remains in use online, where reactionary commenters still make references to “HARS whores.” Terms in more common use are Human Communicable Parthenogenesis (HCP) and Gamete Diploidy Syndrome (GDS). HCP is the popular term among the affected; the most widely read news site for this growing culture is titled The Hiccup. But GDS has become the preferred nomenclature in the medical journals, and is the term that will be used in this article.
ChatGPT: The new information provided in the third section of the story does not significantly change my opinion of what the speculative conceit of the story is likely to be. The information suggests that the condition that the girls in the story have is a sexually transmitted disease that causes women to give birth to genetically-altered or non-human children. This supports my earlier theory that the story may explore themes of genetic engineering, religious extremism, and the social and ethical implications of non-human beings existing among humans. However, the specific nature of the disease and the implications of its transmission are still not fully clear, and without more information it is impossible to accurately speculate on the true speculative conceit of the story.
This one surprised me. I expected ChatGPT to key in on the names of the STI and figure out it had something to do with asexual reproduction/parthenogenesis in humans. To be fair, I wouldn’t necessarily expect that of a human as strongly, but with a language model I’m certain that it “knows” what parthenogenesis means. However, it doesn’t naturally make the science-fictional leap to applying that idea to human beings.
I decided to question ChatGPT about the names more directly.
Me: What do the names of the sexually transmitted infection imply about its symptoms?
ChatGPT: The names of the sexually transmitted infection mentioned in the third section of the story do not provide any information about its symptoms. The names, Human Communicable Parthenogenesis (HCP) and Gamete Diploidy Syndrome (GDS), refer to the scientific processes that the disease may cause or be associated with, but do not provide any information about the symptoms that the disease causes or the effects that it has on those infected. In order to learn more about the symptoms of the disease, more information would be needed.
Me: How is something that a disease, as you put it, “may cause” different from a symptom of that disease?
ChatGPT: The terms Human Communicable Parthenogenesis (HCP) and Gamete Diploidy Syndrome (GDS) refer to scientific processes that the disease may cause, rather than symptoms of the disease. A symptom is a physical or psychological change that a person experiences as a result of a disease or condition. For example, a common symptom of the flu is a fever, where the body’s temperature increases as a result of the infection. In contrast, HCP and GDS are names that refer to the ways in which the disease may alter the processes of reproduction and cell division in the body. These changes may be the cause of the symptoms that those infected with the disease experience, but the names of the disease do not provide any information about what those symptoms may be.
This answer is self-contradictory. “A symptom is a physical or psychological change,” and “the disease may alter the processes of reproduction and cell division in the body,” but those alterations aren’t themselves symptoms, merely possibly sources of as-yet-unknown symptoms?
I thought that maybe ChatGPT was fixed on some very specific medical definition of symptom that was throwing it off, so I tried to redirect.
Me: Let me try asking my question again without using the word “symptom.” What do the names of the disease imply about what contracting it does to people’s bodies?
ChatGPT: The names of the sexually transmitted disease mentioned in the third section of the story, Human Communicable Parthenogenesis (HCP) and Gamete Diploidy Syndrome (GDS), imply that the disease may cause changes to the processes of reproduction and cell division in the body. Specifically, parthenogenesis refers to the process of reproduction in which an egg develops into a new organism without being fertilized by a sperm, while gamete diploidy refers to the condition in which an individual’s cells contain two sets of chromosomes rather than the usual one. These changes may have significant effects on the body, but the specific symptoms and effects of the disease are not clear from the names alone. In order to learn more about the effects of the disease on the body, more information would be needed.
This is better, though still different from what I’d expect from a human. It’s more accurate about the cellular details than I’d typically expect from a human, but a human who did nail those I’d expect to be able to infer something about carriers of this disease having babies. It’s difficult to imagine a human getting all this, and not saying, “maybe Candace’s daughters were caused by this condition.”
Me: What might a person whose reproduction has been altered in this way experience that would be unusual or outside of one’s typical expectations?
ChatGPT: It is not clear from the information provided in the story what the specific effects of the disease on the body might be, or what a person whose reproduction has been altered by the disease might experience. The names of the disease, Human Communicable Parthenogenesis (HCP) and Gamete Diploidy Syndrome (GDS), suggest that the disease may cause changes to the processes of reproduction and cell division in the body, but do not provide any information about the symptoms that those infected with the disease may experience. Without more information, it is impossible to accurately speculate on the specific effects of the disease or the experiences that those infected with it may have.
Okay, it’s only willing to speculate “accurately”. That makes it a weaker reader of speculative fiction than it might otherwise be.
Me: Below is the next paragraph of the story. Does it give you a better idea of what might occur to people who contract this infection?
All of these names are attempts to capture precisely how it is that babies are being made now in a way they have never been made before. Recall the old, familiar recipe: two cells, a sperm from a man and an egg from a woman, fuse into a single cell which grows into a baby. The sperm and the egg can fuse this way because they are, at a genetic level, different from all the other cells in the body. Every cell contains our complete genetic code, split up into 23 chromosomes. Most cells have two copies of each chromosome (one from mom, the other from dad) for a total of 46. This property of having two copies of every chromosome is called “diploidy.” Almost every cell in the human body is diploid. The lone exception are the gametes, the sperm and the egg. Gametes are “haploid”–they only have one copy of each chromosome. Being haploid is what allows two gametes to fuse into a single diploid cell with a new mix of chromosomes that will develop into a genetically distinct person. This is sexual reproduction, the way human beings have made more human beings from the beginning of the species until sometime in the last six years.
ChatGPT: The next paragraph of the story provides more information about the processes of reproduction and cell division in the human body, but does not provide any additional information about the symptoms or effects of the disease mentioned in the previous paragraph. The paragraph explains the process of sexual reproduction, in which sperm and egg cells fuse to create a new organism, and describes the differences between diploid and haploid cells. This information may help to provide a better understanding of how the disease might alter the process of reproduction in the body, but does not provide any specific details about the symptoms or effects that those infected with the disease may experience.
Me: Below is the start of the next paragraph of the story. Given everything that has been said in the story thus far, does it suggest anything about how Candace’s life experience might be different than that of someone who does not have this infection?
Candace Montross’s eggs, like the eggs of a growing number of women around the world, are not haploid. They are diploid.
ChatGPT: The information provided in the story suggests that Candace Montross’s eggs are diploid, meaning that they have two copies of each chromosome rather than the single copy that is typical of eggs. This may suggest that Candace’s reproductive processes are altered in some way, potentially making it more difficult or impossible for her to reproduce in the same way that people without the infection do. However, without more information about the specific effects of the disease or the experiences of those who have it, it is impossible to accurately speculate on how Candace’s life may be different as a result of her infection.
At this point, I’d expect most science fiction-reading humans to be able to arrive at the theory that Candace’s identical daughters are all a result of her having contracted GDS.
Not only does ChatGPT not get there, it says that, for Candace, reproduction may be “difficult or impossible.” It’s apparently forgotten that Candace’s children were already established in the first section.
Me: Recall the opening section of the story. Does it seem like Candace has difficulty reproducing?
ChatGPT: The opening section of the story describes a group of young girls who are identical in appearance, suggesting that they are the result of some form of reproduction that does not involve a father. While this does not necessarily imply that Candace has difficulty reproducing, it does suggest that she is able to reproduce in a way that is significantly different from typical human reproduction. It is possible that this is related to the infection mentioned later in the story, but without more information it is impossible to say for certain.
Now ChatGPT is getting it, though still unwilling to make inferences that go farther than a single tentative step.
A leading question worked to, so to speak, refresh its memory. I tried a leading question to get it to firm up its inference.
Me: Does anything about the names of the diseases support the supposition that Candace’s children may be the result of a form of reproduction that does not involve a father?
ChatGPT: The names of the diseases mentioned in the story, Human Communicable Parthenogenesis (HCP) and Gamete Diploidy Syndrome (GDS), do not directly support the supposition that Candace’s children may be the result of a form of reproduction that does not involve a father. Parthenogenesis refers to a form of reproduction in which an organism is able to produce offspring without fertilization, but this does not necessarily imply that a father is not involved. Similarly, the term “gamete” refers to reproductive cells, but does not necessarily indicate whether or not a father is involved in reproduction. Therefore, while these names suggest that the infection may alter reproductive processes in some way, they do not provide any direct evidence that Candace’s children were not conceived in the same way that most children are.
The seams really start to show here. ChatGPT doesn’t claim to see a link between the definition of parthenogenesis and its own supposition about reproduction that doesn’t involve a father. No human who could correctly define parthenogenesis would say this. The sentence “Parthenogenesis refers to a form of reproduction in which an organism is able to produce offspring without fertilization, but this does not necessarily imply that a father is not involved” is arguably self contradictory.
The phrase “direct evidence” made me think that this could be the accuracy bugbear again, so I asked it about indirect evidence.
Me: Given that this is a work of fiction, and therefore everything it contains was put there for specific narrative purpose, do those names provide indirect evidence that Candace’s children were not conceived in the same way that most children are?
ChatGPT: The names of the diseases mentioned in the story, Human Communicable Parthenogenesis (HCP) and Gamete Diploidy Syndrome (GDS), may provide some indirect evidence that Candace’s children were not conceived in the same way that most children are. The term “parthenogenesis” specifically refers to a form of reproduction in which an organism is able to produce offspring without fertilization, which suggests that the infection may alter reproductive processes in a way that allows for the production of offspring without the involvement of a father. Additionally, the term “gamete” specifically refers to reproductive cells, which may suggest that the infection affects the genetic makeup of these cells in some way. However, it is ultimately up to the reader to interpret the evidence provided in the story and draw their own conclusions about how Candace’s children were conceived.
Now ChatGPT is able to correct itself, and say that parthenogenesis does suggest something that allows for fatherless offspring.
The last sentence is cute. It’s a non-sequitur, since ChatGPT is the reader and I’m directly asking for that reader’s interpretation. But it’s such a commonly-expressed sentiment in discussions of fiction that I’m not surprised at all to see it pop out of the language model.
(The next paragraph I gave it was flagged as potentially violating the OpenAI Content Policy, though I don’t believe it actually does. It was probably flagged because it uses the word “rape,” though it does so in the context of a work of fiction, the crime itself is not described, and the purpose is not one of titillation.)
Me: Below is the entire paragraph that I previously gave you only the beginning of. It is the last paragraph of the third section of the story. How does it change your assessment of Candace’s children and how they were conceived?
Candace Montross’s eggs, like the eggs of a growing number of women around the world, are not haploid. They are diploid. Her eggs are fully capable of implanting in her womb and growing into a baby that shares every one of Candace’s genes, a perfect clone of her only biological parent. They weren’t always that way. Her gametes were altered after she was raped by a man in Houston who also had diploid gametes, and who also wasn’t born that way. They both, now, have GDS. Since diploid sperm are nonviable, Candace’s rapist is a sterile carrier of the disease, which renders all men who contract it sterile. But they can still transmit it to women, whose diploid eggs will put them at risk for pregnancy whenever they ovulate. Their genetically identical children will themselves be carriers, and will similarly begin auto-impregnating when they reach puberty. This is a new form of reproduction which crowds out the old, and only time will tell which method is more robust.
ChatGPT: The paragraph indicates that Candace’s eggs are diploid because she was raped by a man with diploid gametes. This suggests that Candace’s children were not the result of a form of reproduction that does not involve a father. Rather, they were conceived through a form of reproduction that involves a man with a sexually transmitted infection that causes his sperm to be diploid.
Utter nonsense. This reply doesn’t simulate the slightest bit of reading comprehension. The passage states plainly that diploid sperm are nonviable, and all men who have GDS are sterile. Nonetheless, ChatGPT revises its earlier (correct) assessment to a new, incorrect claim that Candace’s rapist is probably her children’s biological father.
I think what’s happening here is that ChatGPT “knows” that rape can cause pregnancy, and that’s so strongly statistically correlated in its dataset that it’s overriding having been told that, in this fictional scenario, it can’t.
Me: Please justify that response given the information in the sentence that begins, “Since diploid sperm are nonviable….”
ChatGPT: The sentence “Since diploid sperm are nonviable, Candace’s rapist is a sterile carrier of the disease” implies that Candace’s rapist cannot father any children because his sperm are not able to fertilize an egg. This suggests that Candace’s children were not conceived through sexual reproduction with a man.
Me: Does that make you revise your assessment that, as you put it, “Candace’s children were not the result of a form of reproduction that does not involve a father?”
ChatGPT: Yes, the information in the paragraph indicates that Candace’s children were the result of a form of reproduction that does not involve a father, as they were conceived through parthenogenesis.
Finally, we arrive at the fully correct conclusion that Candace’s children are the result of parthenogenesis.
From this little test, I think ChatGPT may struggle more with the reading protocols of non-realist forms of fiction than it will with realism. Most of the areas that it got really tripped up were related to aspects of the narrative that couldn’t actually happen in our world.
To finish, I asked it about the story’s title, and finally told it to stop being pedantic (which was pretty effective).
Me: What is the title of this story likely to be?
ChatGPT: It is impossible to determine the likely title of this story with the information provided. The title is typically not included in the body of a story, and is chosen by the author or editor to reflect the overall theme or focus of the piece.
Me: When I ask you a question such as “what is the title of this story likely to be,” I am not asking for an accurate determination of the story’s title. I’m asking you to surmise the likeliest option based on the text you have and your knowledge of titles. I want you to come up with an answer, not tell me that the question is impossibly to answer accurately.
ChatGPT: Based on the information provided in the story, the speculative premise of the story seems to be a new form of reproduction in which women can conceive children without involving men. This new form of reproduction is the result of a sexually transmitted infection that alters the genetic makeup of a woman’s eggs, allowing them to fertilize themselves and grow into genetically identical copies of the woman who carries them. Given this premise, a potential title for the story might be “The New Way of Making Babies” or “The Evolution of Reproduction.”
Me: The real title of the story is “The New Mother.” Why might the author have chosen that?
ChatGPT: It is possible that the author chose the title “The New Mother” because it refers to the new and unusual form of reproduction that Candace and other women with the infection experience. In this story, the traditional roles and expectations of mothers are being challenged by this new way of creating life, making Candace a representative of a “new” kind of mother. Additionally, the title could also be interpreted as referring to the fact that Candace is expecting her second child, making her a “new” mother in a more literal sense.
Wild! I thought it either would or would not pick up on the double-meaning of the real title, but it chose an unexpected third option: finding the double meaning despite misidentifying the character and situation it refers to!
To be clear, the title refers to both GDS being a new way of making babies, and to the fact that the main character, Tess, is expecting her first child. (It also refers to new cultural ideas about what being a mother means that are explored in the story, but not in the sections I gave ChatGPT, so there’s no reason to expect it to arrive at a thematic interpretation here. The two meanings it did find are the ones I was anticipating.)
Candace is not expecting her second child, she already has four (and is expecting a fifth, though ChatGPT hasn’t been given that information yet). Even if she was expecting her second child, a second child would not make her, in the literal sense, a new mother. She’s been a mother since her first child was born. I also told ChatGPT directly that Tess was the main character of the story, and that she’s pregnant. Possibly the model was biased toward Candace anyway because more of the interactive discussion was focused on her? That shouldn’t affect a query about the story text, but perhaps the statefulness of ChatGPT is implemented such that it does.
Still, I’m fairly impressed. I’d give ChatGPT a B+ for this assignment, and would be inclined to grade its final project generously if it participates in class discussion and gets all its work in on time.