A West Virginia teenager has created a rapping A.I. bot that self-generates bars using Kanye West lyrics, Quartz reports. Robbie Barrat, 17, was debating whether artificial intelligence could be taught to perform tasks better than humans in his high school's programming club. Using open-source code, Barrat programmed the A.I. with 6,000 Kanye lines and finished the project in a week to show his peers at the next club meeting. "Originally it just rearranged existing rap lyrics, but now it can actually write word-by-word," Barrat said. The bot can also incorporate pauses for rhythm and effect.

His high school programming club was arguing about whether artificial intelligence could ever accomplish tasks better than humans. Barrat thought the answer was obvious. A few of his peers, however, weren't so easily convinced and asked for proof by the club's next meeting. "All of the sudden I had a week to make a neural network that could rap," Barrat said. Barrat's story is possible because Silicon Valley has decided AI is becoming indispensable, and big companies need to cultivate more talent to fill the growing demand--Google, Facebook, Microsoft, IBM and other giants like GE are shelling out multi-million dollar salaries for AI programmers. To upend the perceived shortage of talent, tech companies have begun to evangelize for open-source AI code, or software that's free to use, modify, and improve upon.