I participated in National Novel Generation Month for 2022. This marked the third consecutive year where I completed my project. See here for my GitHub repository with my code and my final novel.

With the recent breakthroughs in generative AI, I decided it was high time for me to use a Large Language Model (LLM) for a NaNoGenMo project. I opted to fine-tune a GPT-Neo model as I wanted control over the model itself lest the project turn into a prompt engineering exercise. I used Max Woolf’s aitextgen package to finetune the 125M GPT-Neo model on philosophy texts by Aristotle, Plato, Kant, Hume, and Nietzsche. I used pytracery to define grammars for model prompts.

Here are some brief, cherry-picked snippets from the output:

What Will Happen If Literature Is Divine?

What will happen if literature is divine?

CLEINIAS: What do you mean? he said.

ATHENIAN: I should say, that it must be the greatest of all things which can be known to us; and we ought not to seek for them in order that they may know what sort of things are better than words–and now let us have a way out of them.

CLEINIAS: That would be my desire.

ATHENIAN: But there is no difficulty in seeing how wisely Hesiod spoke when he says ‘the truth.’

MEGILLUS: True.

What Is A Lover?

What is a lover?

Yes, he said.

And what do you say of him who loves no one but himself? Would you not admit him to be loved by any one in whom there is no reason for praising or blaming others? For pity and hatred are opposites; they cannot be compared with each other when the latter becomes more innocent than the former.

What Is The Best Way To Be Joyful?

What is the best way to be joyful?

CLEINIAS: Certainly not, Stranger.

ATHENIAN: And when you say that any one should abstain from weeping and lamenting in your sorrows utterances–whence do you admit this?

Victor Blancada is a data scientist. Visit his LinkedIn page here.