Robin Sloan writes about machine learning, but he’s writing with it, too. His 2017 novel has been hailed as one of the best and most accurate novels about machine learning ever published. In the wake of that book, Robin also built a little bot that will help you write science fiction by autocompleting your sentences with phrases taken from a massive corpus of sci-fi stories.
At Ars Technica Live this Wednesday, Aug. 8, we’ll be talking to Robin about the reality and fantasy of machine learning, as well as what it means to write in the age of bots. Join Ars Technica’s editor-at-large Annalee Newitz and senior editor Cyrus Farivar in conversation with Robin on August 8 at Eli’s Mile High Club in Oakland. There will be plenty of time for audience questions, too. Doors open at 7pm, and the event starts at 7:30. Tickets are free.
Robin is the author of the novels , a bestseller published in 2012, and . He has been doing experiments that use machine learning to auto-generate sentences for sci-fi stories, and he’s pretty sure that the audiobook for his second novel is the world’s first to include sound generated by a neural network. Previously he worked at the Poynter Institute, Current TV, and Twitter, where he worked on projects about the future of media.
Ars Technica Live is a monthly series spotlighting people who are working at the cutting edge of technology, science, and culture. It’s held the second Wednesday of every month at Eli’s.
If you can’t make it on August 8, never fear! We will post video of the event here on Ars in two weeks. You can see video of past Ars Live conversations here.
