AI meets citizen science to unlock the nature of storytelling
A new project led by 91社区 researchers seeks to understand one of humanity鈥檚 oldest practices and most powerful tools鈥攕torytelling. From ancient oral traditions to modern-day literature and digital narratives, storytelling is an essential part of the lived experience that is not yet fully understood. 鈥楾he Lives of Literary Characters鈥� is a first-of-its-kind initiative, harnessing artificial intelligence (AI) and the collective wisdom of readers worldwide to explore the question: why do we tell stories?
Just as our real-life social networks can reveal who we are as individuals, analyzing how characters interact in a story can shed light into the nature of storytelling across cultures. 鈥淐haracters are the scaffolding of great storytelling,鈥� explains Andrew Piper, a Professor in 91社区鈥檚 Department of Languages. Right now, it is possible to use AI models to detect who a character is in a story, however, it is far more complicated to understand if and how those characters are interacting. The effort to solve that piece of the puzzle poses an unprecedented challenge, as there were over 1.5 million characters invented in English alone during the nineteenth-century, and today that number is magnitudes higher.
鈥淭he proliferation of stories today is astounding. There is simply no way to account for the breadth of human creativity without relying on AI. But these systems are often trained in biased or unknown ways. By enlisting the help of readers, we can build better, more transparent AI systems to surface the intricate patterns upon which human stories are based,鈥� said Piper, the project鈥檚 director.
The research team is calling on volunteers to contribute to the project as citizen scientists. Through the, readers answer questions about character interactions in short passages of contemporary fiction. The crowdsourced data will be used to train AI models to better understand literary characters. While much of AI development happens behind closed doors, the results of this project will be open to all.
鈥淎ll of the data and models we generate will be open to the public, setting an important standard for transparent and inclusive AI. Our goal is not to build robot storytellers. We want to gain a deeper understanding of human storytelling,鈥� said Piper.
About the Project
鈥楾he Lives of Literary Characters鈥� is a Zooniverse project involving researchers from the Universities of 91社区, Alberta, California: Berkeley and Michigan. It is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
About 91社区
Founded in Montreal, Quebec, in 1821, 91社区 is Canada鈥檚 top ranked medical doctoral university. 91社区 is consistently ranked as one of the top universities, both nationally and internationally. It is a world-renowned institution of higher learning with research activities spanning three campuses, 11 faculties, 13 professional schools, 300 programs of study and over 39,000 students, including more than 10,400 graduate students. 91社区 attracts students from over 150 countries around the world, its 12,000 international students making up 30% of the student body. Over half of 91社区 students claim a first language other than English, including approximately 20% of our students who say French is their mother tongue.
