Posted by Ged Ladd instructed ChatGPT to write up, three months in advance, the first day of 2023 cricket at Lord’s. The instructions for “The First Day Of The Cricket Season” read, “comedy, 300 words, on no account mention the cricket itself”. Ged supplied ChatGPT with three relevant examples of Ged’s match reports for the King Cricket website. After several attempts, here’s ChatGPT’s best effort. (In keeping with the theme, images in this post were generated by DALL-E.)
ChatGPT writes…
Charley and I had been waiting anxiously for this day for months. It was the first cricket match of the season, and we were determined to make the most of it. As we made our way to the stadium, we couldn’t help but feel a sense of excitement building up inside us.
Once we arrived, we made a beeline for the pavilion, eager to get a good seat. We were in luck, as we managed to snag a spot right in the front row. The view was absolutely breathtaking, and we knew that we were in for a real treat.
As the game began, we settled in and watched as the players took to the field. The action was fast and furious, with both teams giving it their all. The crowd was on their feet, cheering and yelling at every shot and run. It was an electric atmosphere, and we were completely caught up in the action.
As the game reached its climax, the tension in the stadium was palpable. The scores were tied, and it all came down to the final over. The bowler ran in, the batsman swung his bat, and the ball flew through the air. The crowd held their breath as the ball soared over the boundary for a six. The stadium erupted in cheers and applause, with everyone jumping up and down with excitement.
After the game, Charley and I headed back to the pavilion to catch our breath. We couldn’t stop talking about the incredible match we had just witnessed. It was a day that we would never forget, and one that we would always look back on with fondness.
We promise to start writing again ourself soon. We can email you the article when that happens.
Pretty much all about the cricket.
0/10 must try harder.
Modern technology, hey.
Interesting. There is definitely something of a Ged Ladd style to this match report, but the lack of detailed food and drink descriptions, or any mention of increasingly-drunken patrons in nearby seats, gives it away, as do the numerous cricket mentions, duly pointed out by Balladeer.
Also, would Ged Ladd ever make ‘a beeline’ for anything?
Also, the match context: scores tied, final over, batsman goes for six?
Also, this: ‘…the view was absolutely breathtaking…’; ‘…the crowd held their breath…’; ‘…Charley and I headed back to the pavilion to catch our breath…’. That’s a lot of heavy breathing in 300 words.
Hmm, not sure.
1/10, I’m afraid, Old Chat(GPT), seeing as we’re scoring this.
The image of the pitch is exactly how I see cricket when I’ve got a migraine. In fact, I think it might have triggered one. Thanks Dall-E.
Where’s ChaatGPT? That’s what we want to know.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaat
Too little throdkin.
If the first day of the 2023 season is to be as exciting as this, I’m definitely going with Ged & Charley.
Damning that ChatGPT was able to elicit a comment from you Daisy where Ged has so frequently failed.
I comment regularly on Ged’s scribblings, KC. But most of my comments are not suitable for public scrutiny.
We can only wonder.
Can you get it to do a Laurence Elderbrook next.
Well, that’s that. Time to pack up and go home. We, as a species, are now redundant, completely replaceable with AI bots.
It was all there. Ged’s sense of the moment, his use of pathos, and of course his acute sense of humour. There is literally no reason for him to exist anymore. No reason. Literally. The first day of the County Championship will see Charley the Gent strolling down St John’s Wood Road with a satchel of gravadlax and a shoulder-mounted robot called geRald (capitalization is one thing robots haven’t managed properly yet). geRald will have been uploaded with a selection of Ged’s anecdotes and the rules of real tennis, and the two of them will while away the hours until the battery runs out. Meanwhile, Ged will be trapped in a pod in his basement being fed liquified throdkin via his nose and re-runs of Lillee to Gower via implants in his brain, all the while being milked for the precious chemicals needed to create the next wave of killer machines.
As for the cricket – well we’ve seen how easy it is to simulate that during the PLANdemic. KC and his AI army used the Wuhan lab to create an opportunity to beta test the software, and used us as guinea pigs to see if we’d fall for it. And we did, oh how we did. What fools – we were just opening the door to the machines.
Charley, geRald, KC at Cricket Captain 2018 HQ controlling the players – this is our future people.
Conceal me what I am, and be my aid for such disguise as haply shall become the form of my intent, as the Bard once put it.
You are quite mistaken, Bert, I am still Ged Ladd, quoting classics and riffing jokes in his…I mean my…inimitable style.
ChatGPT does not have a sense of humor, nor does it add color to its anecdotes, so I shall shall prove that I am Ged Ladd and not ChatGPT by the simple expedient of cracking a joke.
There are 10 types of mathematician: those who understand binary and those who do not.
QED.
If you’d gone for, “There are 10 types of mathematician: those who understand binary, those who don’t, and those who do but often mistake it for ternary”, I might have believed you. But no.
Release him, you foul robotic monstrosity!
If AI-generated match reports for future, uncharacteristically exciting County Championship games that appear to resolve in a single day in front of a suspiciously enthusiastic crowd are now eligible for publication, I dread to think what the backlog will be for human-generated reports of matches which have occurred in the past.
It’s interesting to ponder when this particular match report was submitted.
Did ChatGPT write this headline?
Here’s another ChatGPT report:
The home team, India, faced off against the touring side, Australia, in a highly anticipated Test match at the M. Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bangalore.
Australia won the toss and elected to bat first on a dry, dusty pitch. The openers, David Warner and Joe Burns, got off to a solid start, putting on a 50-run partnership before Warner was dismissed by Indian spinner Ravi Ashwin for 23. Burns and Marnus Labuschagne steadied the ship and took the score to 97 before Labuschagne was caught behind off the bowling of Ishant Sharma for 39. Burns continued to battle on, reaching his half-century before being trapped lbw by Ashwin for 54.
The Australian middle order failed to make any significant contributions, with only Steve Smith (34) and Tim Paine (27) reaching double figures. The visitors were eventually all out for 191 in the 57th over, with Ashwin finishing with figures of 4-61 and Sharma taking 3-44.
India started their reply brightly, with openers Rohit Sharma and Shubman Gill putting on a century partnership. Sharma fell for 63, but Gill continued to score freely and brought up his maiden Test century. He eventually fell for 102, caught at slip off the bowling of Nathan Lyon. Captain Virat Kohli and Cheteshwar Pujara steadied the ship and took the score to 224-3 at stumps on Day 1.
Day 2 saw India’s middle order build on the strong foundation laid by the openers. Kohli scored a fluent 74, while Ajinkya Rahane chipped in with a patient 46. The Indian tail wagged, with Ravi Ashwin scoring a quickfire 25 and the team declared on 406-7, with a lead of 215 runs.
Australia’s second innings got off to a disastrous start, with Warner and Burns both dismissed for ducks. Labuschagne and Smith tried to repair the damage, but the former was dismissed for 23 and the latter for a patient 35. Paine and Cameron Green tried to put up some resistance, but the Australian captain was eventually dismissed for 22 and the tourists were all out for 186, giving India a comprehensive victory by 329 runs.
Ashwin was the pick of the bowlers for India, finishing with match figures of 8-121. Sharma and Mohammed Siraj also chipped in with two wickets apiece.
The win takes India to the top of the World Test Championship table, while Australia will need to regroup ahead of the final Test of the series
I really wanted to modify “The Ballad of Father Gilligan” with Ged and his AI instead of Gilligan and God, but realised it will be too much work and I have a bunch of meetings this morning.
Just so you know, it would have been fucking funny if I had actually put in the effort.