Teaching a computer to talk

Regenerating plausible text isn't as easy as it might look. Here's a first attempt, using uncurated phrases and a random number generator.

One of the great things about this job is my work a bit of a work I am trying to life day I am going to before would otherwise not have you. That much, at least, is obvious.

Not very impressive, eh? So I cleaned up a few terms, and tried again:

It occurred to me yesterday that ifmy in the middle ofwork to be in thework don't always realise they have to listen to melife I am going today the rest of thebefore the rest of the you.

Not there yet. I fiddled slightly more, and now:

It occurred to me yesterday that ifmy I don't know ifwork belief is that it would have been really work the old man wholife the end of theday 0before the rest of the you. 0

Now comes the tiresome side of things: going back and looking at all the phrases I've got, and making sure I tie them together tidily, without accidentally falling foul of garden-path sentences. Here's the fruit of another hour's labour:

I'm not mentally ill. And even if I was, would this seem so strange: my pay from writing two series of that sitcom means not having to worry about if I am going to work , which makes sense, until you realise that's just the plot of last night's episode of 'The Simpsons'. Which makes me think that the first . It wouldn't be so bad if my girlfriend and and a couple of my I was going to man a bit of a show I didn't want to man . Thanks for paying attention.

Well, getting closer...