A college student from the University of California, Berkeley, created a blog post about productivity using OpenAI’s GPT-3 text generator. Then, he uploaded it to Hacker News, where it was upvoted until it became one of the site’s top articles.

OpenAI’s GPT-3 text generator uses deep learning to produce content. It’s so powerful, it is currently in closed-beta– this means it can only be accessed by invited users. The college student gained access through a friend in the Ph.D. program.

Earlier versions of OpenAI’s text generator wasn’t immediately released to the public due to the potential to create large amounts of fake news. It used data from Reddit to learn how to develop the human-like text.

What kind of story can we create out of this? I’m a sucker for dystopian, but for some reason, I think this could be more of a coming of age story. Something we might find in Amazon’s “Electric Dreams.”

One family lives among technology. They have AI assistants and consume AI-generated content. A teenager growing up in this system has never had a reason to question anything she’s been told.

Until she meets another girl who comes from a very different background. The other family lives as off-the-grid as possible. They are farmers. Not quite Amish, but purposefully skeptical. They read classic literature. In this story world, everyone has access to all knowledge material. Still, many choose to consume the content generated for them.

A problem arises when the teen who grew up with AI realizes there is a shift in perception against the type of people who shun high-technology. At this point, she knows about the girl, but they aren’t close. Those around her pretend the attitude has been there all along, a sentiment she rejects.

She spends more time learning about her friend’s culture. Then, disaster strikes. A group of anti-tech terrorists destroys a power grid. It isn’t useful in doing anything other than creating resentment.

The first book ends when the two decide to leave both their ways of life behind.

Book two would be a classic journey story, filled with episodic encounters.

Book three would be the establishment of a semi-integrated AI with human overseers.

Book four would go into a scenario of the human overseers try and destroy the community from the inside.

Parable of the Sower vibes, but with AI/perception-controlling technology.

A dinosaur relative of the American Alligator has been discovered in North America. Approximately the size of a bus, these creatures lived about 75-85 million years ago.

Even though most people use the words alligators and crocodiles interchangeably, they are actually different biological families within the biological order Crocodilia.

The ancient gators had massive jaws that allowed it to chomp down on dinosaurs.

What if one of these ancient creatures were to evolve into existence again? A solid B-horror story.

Evolving twice isn’t unheard of: white-throated rails evolved to be flightless on a remote island in the Indian Ocean twice, ~36k years apart.

This is quite different because the bird evolved a trait instead of a spontaneously generating a new species, but the mechanism in a story world could be the same.

What if cattle continuously fall off a cliff into a massive Florida lake for years on end? Then, the alligators grow larger and larger… until the dinosaur is back! The story would then go into familiar storylines: fight for survival, random love interests, unique motivations for staying alive.

Ultimately, the dinosaur will end up dead. But, making this a series, in a surprise twist scene at the very end, there’s an egg!

Residents in Virginia are the first people able to use an app to trace COVID-19 exposure. The state-sponsored app uses information from both Google and Apple. It uses Bluetooth technology to check the proximity to known carriers. No word on how many people have downloaded and use the app.

Every state would have to create and support their own app. Even then, for contact tracing to become nation-wide, the apps would have to communicate with each other. This might prove difficult since the Bluetooth signals are anonymized. Although, if infection data is shared, there would be a straightforward way to track.

There is potential to turn this into a dystopian story. Upping the stakes, what if every human had a chip implanted in them that could transmit Bluetooth data, instead of relying on their phones? If the state wanted to find someone, for whatever reason, it wouldn't take long. This is similar to cell phone usage in "The Dark Knight," when they used the network to find Joker.

The main character would be someone falsely accused of committing a crime. The authorities scramble to find them, and the hero has to limit human contact so they can't be traced. Similar to "Shooter," when Bob Lee Swagger lived on the mountain top. In the story, the officials finally track down the hero, and he has to escape. Think "Rambo First Blood, part 1."

Throughout the story, the main character tries to prove his innocence, ultimately succeeding. The authorities believe him, reverse the charges, and he turns himself in. Then, they pin charges on him for assaulting the officers, and he goes to jail.

The second book would be the authorities asking him to undergo missions for them. They remove the standard chip and insert one only they can trace. He completes the task, only to be detained once more. The third book would be his escape from the state and enjoying the rest of an untraced life.

Carbon dioxide is the primary greenhouse gas industrialized countries have been tasked with reducing to promote the planet’s environmental health. In an ideal scenario, carbon dioxide would create another chemical that could provide an economic incentive to limit the amount released into the atmosphere.

A research team in the United States has discovered a new electrocatalyst that converts carbon dioxide and water into ethanol, cheaply, and efficiently. If this becomes a common way to reuse carbon dioxide, what might happen in the future?

This story world assumes the process of converting carbon dioxide to ethanol has a high initial investment. That would mean only the wealthiest countries would have access to the technology; they could take the hit before seeing a return on their investment. This would create a gap between those who could afford the electrocatalyst use on a large scale and those who could not.

Spinning this further, only a limited number of countries could begin to profit from the mandatory reduction of greenhouse gasses. These countries would then create ever-larger spheres of influence, which could be the background needed to develop a three-country power share across the world, similar to 1984.

This story would be about one man’s experience traveling between the two states as a diplomat but, in fact, a planted spy. This would be similar to a cold-war spy thriller, complete with forces within the country tasked with uncovering the true nature of the man’s work, secret codes, and hidden true beliefs.

The twist could come when the spy flips sides, after realizing the people on the other side of the border are the same as him. It could continue in the first country, where they are suspicious of him as soon as he returns.

The end could see the spy going to the third country, then approached once more. Future books could see this spy working for the third country, training new spies, or helping a recently de-stabilized government set up it’s own intelligence operations.

The US Patent and Trademark Office granted a patent to Apple for earphones that combine bone conduction with traditional audio technology. Bone conduction works best at lower frequencies, so the conventional audio tech helps create the best sound quality.

Bone conduction works by sending vibrations through the skull to the inner ear to create the sound for the brain. There’s also been rumors of Apple using bone conduction to increase the quality of noise-cancellation.

In the third season of Westworld, it’s revealed in the final episode that the main villain is fed constant instruction about what to say from a supercomputer. This revelation shows how the show’s artificial intelligence controls the villain, their agent in the real world.

I’m fascinated by the theory of mind; that nobody is guaranteed to exist except yourself. This is why I find androids indistinguishable from humans so fascinating. The bone conduction earphones, combined with the concept of being fed constant information about what to say, could come together for a great story.

A genius loner comes up with the technology, implants the first version into himself, and gets guided through talking to women by a professional matchmaker. He becomes successful on his dates and eventually falls in love. He then decides he no longer wants anyone else to coach him through his life, so he turns off the system.

After being fed the other voice for so long, he can’t help but hear what they would have said. It’s a construct of his imagination. Eventually, he removes the device, but the voice doesn’t go away.

He’s created another personality inside his mind. He struggles through this while his relationship blossoms, they break up after he confesses, then they get back together—romance novel with a dystopian bent.

Book two could be about another implementation of the device, this time for a friend who’s also unlucky in love. After protesting, the designer agrees, but this time the friend doesn’t want to settle down. He becomes a terrible version of himself, and the designer is forced to figure out how to remove the implants.

Book three would be about the government’s adoption of the device for all military members. Keeping with the romantic theme, these men all figure out how to get coached through picking up women and end up giving away state secrets to foreign agents.

Research in the journal Scientific Reports has determined that a 1000-year-old concoction can be used where antibiotics fail. The mixture of garlic, onion, wine, and bile salts is being investigated in treating diabetic foot infections. The infection is known to be particularly resistant to antibiotics and can result in amputation of the foot.

Microbiologists say these ingredients all have some antibacterial activity; therefore, the combination makes sense. This isn’t the first time modern medicine has taken a 

page from ancient texts: a drug used for treating malaria was derived from wormwood based on a remedy found in an ancient Chinese text.

Wouldn’t it be interesting if the cure for COVID-19 was found hidden in a library filled with ancient texts? An entire story could be based on the unearthing of the recipe, escaping from powerful drug companies, and disseminating the knowledge using social networks.

Before writing this, I would have to research or talk to a microbiologist to come up with a plausible condition to treat with household items. Or create a different world altogether where technology doesn’t apply.

This story would be a Dan Brown-style thriller, with the bookish librarian forced to overcome the powerful corporation and give away the cure at the end of the book. Creating a series from this, the librarian would stumble upon some other useful knowledge hidden in ancient texts that opposes a powerful organization, leading to multiple books.