The roots of artificial intelligence and digital text generation go back to the Middle Ages:
       Ramon Llull’s Ars Magna provides a mechanical process for        generating true statements and even proofs...
Llull        provides four figures in the form of circular or tabular diagrams which        recombine the elements of this table in different ways... the first figure produces        combinations of absolute principles – ‘Wisdom is Power’, say. The second        figure applies the relative principles – ‘Angels are different from        elements’. The third brings in the questions – ‘Where is virtue final?’.        The fourth figure is perhaps the most exciting: it take the form of a        circular table which is included in the book as a paper wheel which can be        rotated to read off results...
The        kind of thinking going on here is not, it seems to me, all that different        from what goes into the creation of simple sentence-generating programs        today, and it represents a remarkable intellectual feat.
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| Llull's figure 1 | 
Similar algorithms can be applied to produce 
sappy love letters or 
financial reports.
 
 
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