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Trial 5 - The AutoSummarizer


Inaugural Address of William Jefferson Clinton, 42nd President of the United States The U.S. Capitol, Washington, DC, January 20, 1993:

To renew America we must be bold. To renew America, we must revitalize our democracy. Americans deserve better. The world economy, the world environment, the world Aids crisis, the world arms race--they affect us all. The American people have summoned the change we celebrate today.

I am forced to admit that this limited little abstract is not bad. With a twinge of shame I catch myself thinking "Who needs to read the rest of it anyway?" I wonder fleetingly at the mechanism behind this apparent thought process.

But only fleetingly. Studying the trials that led to this, I decide to discard the notion of "thought process." Somehow, having gleaned enough about the mechanics of what is going on here, I am no longer worried.

Okay, I decide, time for a final trial. The writer, newly confident in his power to outsmart a piece of software, bravely turns the machine upon himself. I take the very document you are reading right now, as written to this point, and run it through the AutoSummarizer at the 2 percent level.

What will emerge? I'll paste it in below verbatim.


Trial 6


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