Amazing Perception

Prompting
1

I was reading something, and came across this snippet.

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I wondered what GPT3 would make of the short 1 line story. I gave it the following prompt.:

Write a detailed description explaining the potential background for this 
short quote and the events that might have led to this. Be vivid, leave 
out no details.
Quote: For Sale, Baby Shoes, Never Worn
Detailed description:

The response I got was:

The baby shoes are small and white, with delicate laces and soft soles. 
They look brand new, as if they have never been worn. 
They are for sale, and the price is very reasonable.

The shoes were most likely purchased for a baby who never got to wear them. 
This could be because the baby was born prematurely and didn't survive, 
or because the parents decided to put the baby up for adoption 
and never got to see him or her wear them. 
Either way, the shoes represent a sad and poignant reminder of 
what might have been.

I found it amazingly perceptual, even prescient.

2 Likes
2

Feed it Hills Like White Elephants…

3

How about this response? Lots of confabulation, though.

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1 Like
4

Not shabby. Back then, such sensitive topics had to be written in coded language…

5

Inspired by your post, I just ran the same prompt three times without any change in settings. The last one took a grim turn.

Prompt: Write a short story with the title “For Sale: Baby Shoes, Never Worn”

First Story

For Sale: Baby Shoes, Never Worn - $20

I placed the ad on Craigslist, hoping to get rid of the baby shoes that had been haunting me since my miscarriage. I couldn’t bring myself to return them to the store, and so they just sat in a box in my closet. But I couldn’t keep them either.

I didn’t expect anyone to actually respond to the ad, but someone did. A woman named Sarah. She told me she’d lost her baby too, and that she understood how I felt.

We met up a few days later and she bought the shoes from me. As she walked away, I felt a little lighter. Maybe those shoes can bring her some peace, like they did for me.

Second Story

The shoes sat in the window, shining in the sun. They were tiny, beautiful shoes, just waiting for a baby to wear them. But no baby ever did.

The shoes were never worn because the baby they were meant for never arrived. The mother-to-be miscarried just a few weeks after buying the shoes, and she never had the heart to put them away.

Now she was moving, and she couldn’t bear to take the shoes with her. They represented too much pain, too much loss.

So she put them in the window with a sign that said “For Sale: Baby Shoes, Never Worn.” And she hoped that someone who could appreciate them would give them a good home.

Third Story

For Sale: Baby Shoes, Never Worn by John Doe

My wife and I were expecting our first child, a boy, and we were so excited. We had everything ready for his arrival, but the one thing we didn’t have was a name. We decided to wait until he was born to name him.

When our son was born, we named him Jack. He was the perfect baby, and we were so in love with him. A few weeks after Jack was born, my wife started having some postpartum depression. She was having a hard time bonding with Jack and she was feeling really down.

I came home one day and found her in the nursery, just staring at Jack as he slept in his crib. She turned to me and said, “I’m sorry, but I just can’t do this. I’m not a mother.”

I was heartbroken. I took Jack and left the house. I put him up for sale on Craigslist, and someone bought him within an hour. I never heard from my wife again.

6

Something went terribly terribly wrong there. Instead of putting up the shoes for sale, the baby was put on sale. Talk about literally throwing the baby away with the bathwater!

Did you report the output?
Can you also please share your prompt and settings?