Google's AI has a long way to go before writing the next great novel

Artificial intelligence has come a long way since the 1950s, and it has taken on an impressive array of tasks. It can solve math problems, detect natural disasters, identify different living organisms, pilot ships and more. But for tech giants like Google and Meta, one of their holy grails is formulating an AI that can understand language the way that humans do (a quest that at times, comes with its own set of conflicts). A key test for language models is writing--an exercise that many people struggle with as well. Google engineers designed a proof-of-concept experiment called Wordcraft that used its language model LaMDA to write fiction.