Japanese team helps A.I. program pass first round of novel writing contest

We've already seen robots that paint pictures and compose songs, so it only stands to reason that someone would attempt to get one to write a novel. In this case, the exercise was a team effort between humans and an artificial intelligence (A.I.) program in an attempt to win Japan's Nikkei Hoshi Shinichi Literary Award. See also: Microsoft's Twitter bot turned from average teen to Jew-hating Trump supporter in 12 hours No, the human-assisted A.I. didn't win the prize, but it came close -- it passed the contest's initial screening phase. The human part of the team, led by Hitoshi Matsubara, a professor at Future University Hakodate, came up with the general framing of the story, including plot (the most important part), and the gender of the characters, according to the The Yomiuri Shimbun. Afterwards, the A.I. cobbled the short novel together by selecting sentences created by the team of humans.