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Japanese AI Program Wrote a Short Novel, Almost Won a Literary Prize (digitaltrends.com)
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.
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)
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
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.
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).
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
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'
Any chance the story has a pro-Hitler theme and show signs of daddy issues?
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.
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...