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From SIRI to self-driving cars, artificial intelligence (AI) has been progressing rapidly. AI has been used in a wide range of fields including medical diagnoses, stock trading, robot control, law, remote sensing, scientific discovery and toys. Many people are worried their jobs might be taken over by the robots once artificial intelligence is fully developed.
A Japanese AI program recently co-authored a short-form novel for a national literary prize. It was written with the help of a team of researchers. Human beings selected certain words and phrases to be used, and set up an overall framework for the story, before letting the AI software come up with the text itself. The entry’s title, which translates as The Day A Computer Writes A Novel, passed the first round of screening for a national literary prize, but did not win the competition’s final prize. The competition openly accepts entries from non-human writers. Judges aren’t told in advance which submissions are written by actual people and which have robot authors behind them. “AI book was well-structured but had some problems such as character descriptions”, said a Japanese science fiction novelist.
In the medical field, artificial intelligence IBM’s Watson saved a life of 60-year-old woman. After treatment for the woman suffering from leukemia proved ineffective, a team of Japanese doctors turned to IBM’s Watson for help.
University of Tokyo doctors report that the analytical machine took just 10 minutes to compare the patient’s genetic changes with a database of 20 million cancer research papers, delivering an accurate diagnosis and leading to proper treatment. Watson has also identified another rare form of leukemia in another patient, the university says.
Watson’s success demonstrates the huge potential of data analysis and artificial intelligence. Human doctors wouldn’t have to spend ages sifting through research to identify an obscure disease. (Floro Mercene)