A Japanese AI Almost Won a Literary Prize

Many AIs are developed to sift through and make sense of Big Data. But behind-the-scenes, others are acquiring softer human skills and deploying their algorithms to make art. On Monday, Hitoshi Matsubara, a professor of computer science from the Future University in Hakodate in northern Japan, announced that his research team's short-form novel--co-created with an AI--had passed the initial screening of a domestic literary competition. Though their creation didn't nab the grand prix, the human-machine collaboration showed the early promises of what could be, if the team's AI is refined in the future. "So far, AI programs have often been used to solve problems that have answers, such as Go and shogi," said Matsubara, in a report by the Yomiuri Shimbun.