Given the recent academic conference on the potential threat of artificial intelligence, can Skynet be far behind? Maybe not according to this story from the Chronicle of Higher Ed reporting that students at New York University this summer taught computers creative writing:
After learning the basics of the programming language Python, seven graduate students in NYU’s Interactive Telecommunication Program turned to digital writing, making their computers analyze text, mangle it, and remix it, resulting in new compositions, according to their instructor, Adam Parrish.
One student took text from news publications, including The New York Times, and had a computer turn the text into poetry. Another student created a Facebook status generator, as well as a poetry generator that "will enable you to write like the good grey poet, Walt Whitman." It uses an approach similar to that of the game Mad Libs—you insert your own words.
Please let me know when someone creates a program that allows computers to grade legal writing papers. I am the scholarship dude. (jbl)