Novel by Robot Passes First Round in Japanese Lit Prize

A novel written through an artificial intelligence program has passed through the first round of judging for the Hoshi Shinichi Literary Award. The book is called, The Day A Computer Writes A Novel, and is one of 11 books submitted to the prize that were written by robots (1,450 books were submitted in total). "I was surprised at the work because it was a well-structured novel. But there are still some problems [to overcome] to win the prize, such as character descriptions," said Satoshi Hase, a Japanese science fiction novelist who was part of the press conference surrounding the award. These programs are not without some human intelligence.