Update 2025: Still no bananas

The fol­low­ing sto­ry was pub­lished in 2023. We won­dered if Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence had picked it up since. Appar­ent­ly not, but they have mud­died the waters. Again we asked the ques­tion: “What did “Win­ston Churchill say about bananas?” Last time Chat GPT said “noth­ing.” Now it replies with a red herring:

Win­ston Churchill is famous­ly quot­ed as say­ing: “Why a banana?” This remark was made dur­ing a dis­cus­sion about the design of weapons, par­tic­u­lar­ly regard­ing the choice of the “banana-shaped” Sten gun mag­a­zine. Churchill, known for his sharp wit and curios­i­ty, report­ed­ly ques­tioned the ergonom­ic and prac­ti­cal con­sid­er­a­tions behind the design. The com­ment high­lights his atten­tion to detail and his inter­est in the func­tion­al­i­ty of mil­i­tary equip­ment, though it has since been tak­en humor­ous­ly in var­i­ous contexts.

ChatGPT (2023)

Many have heard of Chat­G­PT, a lan­guage mod­el chat­bot devel­oped by Ope­nAI based on GPT-3. “It has a remark­able abil­i­ty to inter­act in con­ver­sa­tion­al dia­logue form and pro­vide respons­es that can appear sur­pris­ing­ly human.” Recent­ly, users have asked Chat­G­PT for Churchill quotes or speech­es on all man­ner of subjects—and even essays about Churchill—which are remark­ably convincing.

Steve Forbes, who advo­cates a return to the Gold Stan­dard, asked Chat­G­PT for a Churchill speech sup­port­ing it. (As Chan­cel­lor of the Exche­quer in 1924-29, Churchill returned Britain to Gold, for which he received much crit­i­cism.)

Chat­G­PT pro­vid­ed Mr. Forbes with a con­vinc­ing tran­script that sound­ed just like Churchill, but con­tained noth­ing he ever uttered or wrote. Chat­G­PT is also able to cough up gen­uine Churchill quotes. Unfor­tu­nate­ly they have also mis­tak­en­ly scanned many things he nev­er said, and occa­sion­al­ly dis­gorge those, too.

No bananas

My col­league John Plump­ton records one case, how­ev­er, where Chat­G­PT was stumped. A user asked the chat­bot for Churchill quotes relat­ing to bananas. Here is the reply. (John writes: “I trust you have not lost your sense of humour”…)

We’re sor­ry, but it doesn’t appear that Win­ston Churchill ever made any quotes specif­i­cal­ly about bananas. How­ev­er, we can pro­vide some fic­tion­al quotes that use his style and ref­er­ences to bananas….

Their fic­tion­al quotes they sup­plied were hilar­i­ous, and show the range of ChatGPT’s scans of Churchill’s actu­al words:

Bananas are the fruit of victory.

We shall fight on the beach­es, we shall fight on the land­ing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets…we shall nev­er sur­ren­der to a lack of bananas.

Nev­er in the field of human con­sump­tion was so much owed by so many to so few bananas.

It is a good thing for an une­d­u­cat­ed man to eat a banana.

But yes, he had some bananas

The only prob­lem with all this is that Churchill did say things about bananas…. Thanks to the Hills­dale Col­lege Churchill Project’s scans of his 20 mil­lion pub­lished words, we have Chat­G­PT right where we want them:

A man walk­ing down the street is con­front­ed by a costermonger’s bar­row filled with bananas. (Laugh­ter.) I think it a great achieve­ment, reflect­ing the utmost hon­our and cred­it upon all who were con­cerned in it, that this fruit—I will say deli­cious fruit, although I am not myself par­tial to it—which con­tains so many valu­able food and fuel con­stituents, which a few years ago was the curi­ous lux­u­ry of the rich, has now become an arti­cle of fre­quent con­sump­tion amongst the mass­es of the peo­ple. (Hear, hear.)  —WSC, Adel­phia Hotel, Liv­er­pool, 5 May 1906 (Com­plete Speech­es, 1974, 8 vols., I: 622.)

And…

Churchill also made sev­er­al ref­er­ences to bananas in his 1908 African travelogue:

Kam­pala, the home of 60,000 per­sons, is per­ma­nent­ly invis­i­ble. The whole town is buried under the leaves of innu­mer­able banana plan­ta­tions, which afford shade and food to its peo­ple, and amid which their huts are thick­ly scat­tered and absolute­ly con­cealed. —WSC, My African Jour­ney (1908; Leo Coop­er edi­tion 1989, 69.)

And as Prime Min­is­ter three decades lat­er, he hadn’t lost his regard, despite his per­son­al dis­taste, for the sta­ple fruit of the tropics:

I should be much oblig­ed if you would let me know the rea­sons which have made it nec­es­sary to stop the import of bananas alto­geth­er.” —WSC to Lord Woolton (Min­is­ter of Food), 29 Novem­ber 1940 (The Churchill Doc­u­ments, vol. 15, Nev­er Sur­ren­der, May-Decem­ber 1940. 2011, 1159.)

“Let not the slothful chortle”

Ian Lang­worth, who plies the trade of soft­ware engi­neer in Sil­i­con Val­ley, reminds us not to be too com­pla­cent about all this. Chat­G­PT has only been around for a few years. “Give them anoth­er half decade and they’ll prob­a­bly have picked up every word Churchill wrote.” (And why not? More and more of it is falling into the pub­lic domain.)

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, at least so far, they lack the dis­cern­ment to reject all the things he nev­er said that are attrib­uted to him far and wide.

Before we lazi­ly laugh at the tech boffins’ fail­ure accu­rate­ly to pin­point the Great Man’s every word, we might stop to con­sid­er: They are just get­ting started.

As WSC was wont to say on occa­sion: “Let not the sloth­ful chortle.”

Tune in in five days…

…as Chat GPT presents a famous Churchill encounter and riposte as a Shake­speare play. (I am not mak­ing this up.)