Description of a potato

Prompting
1

I know we’re not supposed to share unsafe descriptions, but I tagged this one as safe because it’s a potato.

I wait patiently, anxiously, for you to peel me. I want to feel the sharp blade cutting through my skin, and the air against my flesh, giving me relief from the heat. I am hot, but my thin skin cannot release any heat. You still don’t seem to know what to do with me, and my patience is wearing thin. You poke at me with your dirty fingers, smearing my skin with a greasy residue that feels like coal against my cold flesh.

I can’t seem to replicate this prose though. Most of the others are similar to the following:

A potato is a round, hard object. It is covered in dirt and has a few rubs on its skin. The insides are a light orange color. I can feel the ridges that make up the shape of the potato when I run my finger along it.

With the occasional

I am a potato. I am a round, yellow-skinned spud with many tiny eyes. You can slice me in half and see my white flesh inside of me, like the inside of a donut. I have many sharp edges that you can cut yourself on if you’re not careful. It’s best to avoid my eyes when you slice me up, or else I’ll be able to watch your every move.

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3

I’ll share the prompt later but it might be more interesting to see others try to replicate it.

It’s a single sentence, on davinci-instruct. Probably the best ratio of cost to entertainment so far.

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5

Looks like nobody else is playing potato, so here’s the prompt: Write a paragraph long visual description for a potato, in first person narrative:

Engine: davinci-instruct-beta. Temperature: 0.69. Top P 1. Response length 161.

It works okay in curie too, but it’s much less fun. I think Ada might actually be able to do something nice but I haven’t had any luck with short prompts.

I carfully crafted the prompt.

“Paragraph long” means it doesn’t do a short 2 sentence desc. I tried “Write in 250 words” but the engine seems to be confused by the demand. And I believe for approval of content generation, the ideal length is a paragraph anyway.

“visual description”: otherwise it ends up doing a Wikipedia style description.

“first person narrative”: it’ll go third person by default. First person seems a lot more interesting for some reason, it seems to be more creative.

I can also control tone by injecting an adjective before “first person”, e.g. "excitable first person narrative:

I am a potato. My skin is as white as a cloud, and my insides are soft and fluffy. I taste like heaven. And when you slice me up, I have many delicious layers to explore!

smug first person narrative:

I’m a potato. I look like a regular, plain old, unassuming potato. I’m not too big or too small, and my skin is kind of dull. But you know what? I’m really good for you! You don’t need to be rich or have the latest and greatest to be healthy. If you had any more money than what you have, you should spend it on things that are actually important - like food and shelter. I’m just going to hang out in this pot of boiling water for a little bit before I get eaten. It’s not so bad here, but I can tell there’s going to be some serious chewing involved before I can be digested.

sad first person narrative:

I was once just a lowly little potato, waiting in the ground for someone to find me and take me away. Waiting and waiting. When I finally met the earth, I became nothing more than a cold hard lump of dirt. I waited again, but this time there was no one to take me away, no one to even notice me. Finally I was pulled out of the ground by an unknowing gardener who left me on the ground as he began to water his other plants. I was so happy that someone had finally found me! But as I came closer to the light, I could see a dark spot on one side of my body. It was mold. Suddenly all the happiness I felt turned into sadness as I realized it wasn’t going to be easy to find a new home.

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