I’m going to create a class hierarchy of a larger list of animals: their likes, dislikes and capabilities, and also try to generate better names for the animals, cross referencing the names against an actual name database. I’m also going to allow the universe to speak: it can serve as the narrator.
A friend of mine told me this the other day:
Spencer (age 12) just read the story about Donica Duck and the tree. His response: “does the AI that wrote the story know that the duck didn’t necessarily intend the stick to be for the dog? It just said “the duck brought the stick to the ground” The duck could have had other plans for the stick…and the dog might have eaten the duck…hmmm…maybe they had a “no eating” pact…
I treat this response as a total success for robot fiction, because Spencer has placed himself in the world created by the story… and I’m also impressed with Spencer’s observation that the dog’s gratitude may have been misplaced.
That totally made my day.