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Japanese AI Program Wrote a Short Novel, Almost Won a Literary Prize (digitaltrends.com)

Posted by msmash on from the welcome-to-the-future dept.

An anonymous reader cites a Digital Trends article: A Japanese AI program has co-authored a short-form novel that passed the first round of screening for a national literary prize. The robot-written novel didn't win the competition's final prize, but who's to say it won't improve in its next attempt? The novel is actually called The Day A Computer Writes A Novel, or "Konpyuta ga shosetsu wo kaku hi" in Japanese. The meta-narrative wasn't enough to win first prize at the third Nikkei Hoshi Shinichi Literary Award ceremony, but it did come close. Officially, the novel was written by a very human team that led the AI program's development. Hitoshi Matsubara and his team at Future University Hakodate in Japan selected words and sentences, and set parameters for construction before letting the AI "write" the novel autonomously.

40 comments

  1. This would be more reasonable if... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Japanese novels weren't already close to incoherent. Have you read some of their stuff? Makes Finnegan's Wake look coherent.

    1. Re:This would be more reasonable if... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yomimasen deshita?

    2. Re:This would be more reasonable if... by NoNonAlphaCharsHere · · Score: 1

      Kurai arashi no yorudeshita.

    3. Re:This would be more reasonable if... by HornWumpus · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I don't believe you've actually read 'Finnegan's Wake'. Nobody can finish that. Even the authors of the 'Cliff's Notes' only read other summaries.

      Professors that make a living off it, don't actually read it. Bluffing, every one.

      I have seen it excepted for good effect in a book on lunatics. Retired 'loony bin attendants' might have a chance at finishing it, but I doubt any of them miss it that much. Can you picture nurse Ratchet putting down her drink to read the same kind of BS she had to deal with for 30 years?

      I think the trick to reading it is to do it the same way it was written: Blackout drunk, not putting down long term memory. Or alternatively, in 60 second bites starting on random pages, before throwing the book at the wall...separated by 20 years.

      The Japanese do continue to be massively over represented in the world's collection of WTF?

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    4. Re:This would be more reasonable if... by JustAnotherOldGuy · · Score: 1

      I don't believe you've actually read 'Finnegan's Wake'. Nobody can finish that. Even the authors of the 'Cliff's Notes' only read other summaries.

      Even James Joyce admitted he never read it, calling it a "load of bollocks".

      --
      Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
    5. Re:This would be more reasonable if... by tinkerton · · Score: 1

      After which he wrote Ullyses to er, drive the point home?

    6. Re:This would be more reasonable if... by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

      With his time machine?

      Joyce was deep in the bottle by the time he dictated 'Finnigan's Wake' from a stupor. I wasn't kidding about reading it blackout drunk.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    7. Re:This would be more reasonable if... by Maritz · · Score: 2

      Murray Gell-Mann sure as hell read (maybe skimmed?) it, though he might be the only one...

      --
      I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
    8. Re:This would be more reasonable if... by RatherBeAnonymous · · Score: 1

      Of course no one can finish it, the text is circular. The book's first sentence is the end of the start of the last sentence. It's an endless logic loop Joyce created to trap other authors, preventing them for writing their own novels, and to dominate the high stakes game of fine literature publishing.

    9. Re:This would be more reasonable if... by JustAnotherOldGuy · · Score: 1

      After which he wrote Ullyses to er, drive the point home?

      You'd have to ask him, I never read Ullyses.

      --
      Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
    10. Re:This would be more reasonable if... by tinkerton · · Score: 1

      Damn, forgot about the timing.

    11. Re:This would be more reasonable if... by tinkerton · · Score: 1

      People who have read it completely have told me it is an excellent book :) But very few have read it completely

    12. Re:This would be more reasonable if... by JustAnotherOldGuy · · Score: 2

      People who have read it completely have told me it is an excellent book :) But very few have read it completely

      I confess I pulled a copy off the shelf once, but two of the librarians came over and threatened to beat my ass "for my own good".

      --
      Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
    13. Re:This would be more reasonable if... by Darinbob · · Score: 1

      I know someone who read Finnegan's wake. When he comes out of the coma I'll ask him how it was.

    14. Re:This would be more reasonable if... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Japanese novels are brilliant. Everything Japanese is brilliant. Especially little yellow dicks.
      --
      AmiMoJo

  2. the day a computer posted on slashdot by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    +5 interesting

  3. My novel by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Chi wu! Chi wu!

    My computer wrote that.

    1. Re:My novel by nospam007 · · Score: 1

      "My computer wrote that."

      No, it was the neonazi teen girl AI from a few articles above.

    2. Re:My novel by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      kawaii, desu ne?

      I wrote that

  4. Correlation != Causation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Today is Thursday so it's time for another SJW story, because little Sally the greedy thugs in the MPAA and RIAA need to be dialed to 11. systemd uninstalls YOU!

    1. Re: Correlation != Causation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      In soviet american systemd uninstalls you

    2. Re: Correlation != Causation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I present thee the Sword of Failure +2, which began as a regular short sword, was blunted, chipped, bent double-in-half, then cursed with a voodoo hex 'neath the light of a gibbous waning moon on the seventh Saturday of the week.

      May the gods pity thee.

  5. Sit-Coms by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The program must have been covertly writing television sit-coms for the past few years. If it can do novels, sit-coms would be all too easy.

  6. Almost Won a Literary Prize by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Except it just passed just the first screening. No "almost winning" involved.

    How about "Japanese AI Program Wrote a Short Novel, Passes First Screening" for a article title?

    1. Re: Almost Won a Literary Prize by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How about "Damn It, We Don't Have Any Articles, Please Read This Instead".

  7. The AI writes the novel "autonomously" by hcs_$reboot · · Score: 2

    Hitoshi Matsubara and his team at Future University Hakodate in Japan selected words and sentences, and set parameters for construction before letting the AI "write" the novel autonomously

    So, basically the AI was given the sentences and was parameterized to arrange them. I'd need more to be amazed (especially coming from Japan)

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  8. Write or compose? by Nidi62 · · Score: 1

    Hitoshi Matsubara and his team at Future University Hakodate in Japan selected words and sentences, and set parameters for construction before letting the AI "write" the novel autonomously

    So the researchers wrote the actual words, then programmed the AI to put the words and sentences together. So basically it solved a puzzle, albeit one with words instead of images. Writing implies creating some sort of narrative or story rather than plugging in already written phrases to see what fits best.

    --
    The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
  9. Lem's Electronic Bard... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ...was first :)

    See Cyberiad.

  10. Almost won a literary prize by freeze128 · · Score: 1

    Well, then I almost read the article. Almost.

  11. And AI written papers get published... by Excelcia · · Score: 2

    AI-written "scientific" papers have been published too, but that doesn't mean that they are any good. Every year there is some story about how some new AI has autonomously done some amazing feat of natural-language something, and the stories laud that is has, or is just about to pass the Turing test, and yet under closer scrutiny it is inevitably something little advanced from ELIZA (linked for the younger crowd). Just look at Microsoft's latest bungle.

    This will turn out to be either A) more an indictment of the award process than a validation of the "novel", or B) an "AI" that turns out to be rather specifically crafted to contain all the story elements with a little bit of a random mixing function.

    An "AI" that writes one novel doesn't impress me. I could make an "AI" that writes one novel. I'll be impressed when one AI churns out three completely different ones with nothing more than a natural language sentence giving the broad story themes for each. I will call that AI.

    1. Re:And AI written papers get published... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I wouldn't exactly call nazi sex robots a bungle.

  12. Not terribly surprising by afidel · · Score: 2

    This doesn't seem all that out there given the advances in lexical analysis and natural language processing. Heck, Grammatik was better at constructing an English sentence in 1992 than most middle school students (and even many high school students).

    --
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    1. Re:Not terribly surprising by jeffb+(2.718) · · Score: 1

      Yes, I think the day of computer-generated best-sellers will come sooner than most people think. Train your network on the whole corpus of current literature, weight things according to market performance, do lots of a/b testing with the first short stuff you generate, and grow it out as you learn to optimize.

      The bad news is that the market will be entirely flooded by the novel-length equivalent of "you won't BELIEVE what happened after this one weird trick..."

  13. "Almost?" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Follow the chain of cited news articles, and eventually you discover that it passed the first round of screening -- out of four.

    1. Re:"Almost?" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, the human paid to submit it. First round passed.

  14. Story details..? by Vegan+Cyclist · · Score: 2

    Any chance the story has a pro-Hitler theme and show signs of daddy issues?

  15. Difference between the countries? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Everyone seems now to be involved with AI and natural language. And it is amazig how different are the directions are when this is compared with the way of Tay :-)
    I wonder what happens when these AI meet in Second Live.

  16. /pol/ did it by spiritplumber · · Score: 1

    http://boards.4chan.org/pol/th... here's the self-congratulatory thread.

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  17. Intelligent design for novels! by Theovon · · Score: 1

    This is just like intelligent design! The AI is like nature, and the human programmers are like God, setting things up and making tweaks to ensure things go right.

    That’s very interesting, because as you know, most novels evolve through random mutation and natural selection.