jungsoh / rnn-character-level-language-model

Recurrent neural network for building a character-level language model and its application to generating new dinosaur names

Recurrent neural network: Character-level language model

We build a recurrent neural network (RNN) that can generate text at the character level. We use it to generate new names for dinosaurs.

I did this project in the Sequence Models course as part of the Deep Learning Specialization.

Dataset

We have a list of 1536 dinosaur names compiled into a dataset that looks like:

Aachenosaurus
Aardonyx
Abdallahsaurus
Abelisaurus
Abrictosaurus
...
Zunityrannus
Zuolong
Zuoyunlong
Zupaysaurus
Zuul

To create new dinosaur names, we build a character-level language model to generate new names. The learning algorithm will learn the different name patterns, and randomly generate new names.

RNN architecture

The RNN model architecture is shown below. At each time-step, the RNN tries to predict what the next character is, given the previous characters.

Generated names

Given the dataset of dinosaur names, we use each line of the dataset (one name) as one training example. At every 2000 steps of stochastic gradient descent, we sample several randomly chosen names to see how the algorithm is doing. At 22000 iterations, the generated names are:

Iteration: 22000, Loss: 22.728886

Onustreofkelus
Llecagosaurus
Mystolojmiaterltasaurus
Ola
Yuskeolongus
Eiacosaurus
Trodonosaurus